How would you fancy clearing 26km of Whanganui’s Matemateaonga Track? It’s what Derrick Field and a team of volunteers did as 2023 drew to an end.

Field had worked in the area with the NZ Forest Service for five years in the late 1960s when the Matemateaonga Track and others in the Waitōtara Forest first opened. 

“Seeing the condition now was disappointing,” he said. “It was hard to see how a track like that, once heavily used and promoted as suitable for novice and family/school groups, and which was the jewel in the crown of the Lands and Surveys Department, could be almost abandoned.”

The 42km track goes through Whanganui National Park following an abandoned road that, before WW1, used to be a tourist route linking the King Country to Taranaki. 

Field confirmed the maintenance with DOC Whanganui and rallied a volunteer team of five.

“With an average age of 65 (four aged 69–75), we were the ideal team to take on the challenge of getting the track back into shape over 10 days,” he said.

Together with two DOC chainsaw operators, the group cleared the worst of the track from Humphries Clearing to Puketōtara Hut.

“After 10 days of backwards and forwards,  there were a few blisters to show for it,” he said.

The work was funded by the Backcountry Trust and in November the team cleared another 17km of the track.