Small band of volunteers proud of colossal Boat Creek restoration

Proud to be Me is a regular series of profiles with ordinary and extraordinary people in the Selwyn District doing remarkable things. This is week is National Volunteer Week, and Coen Lammers speaks to Hamish Jones, the driving force behind the award-winning Boat Creek Restoration Project.

Hamish Jones and the large band of volunteers who help out on the Boat Creek Restoration Project are a text book example that many hands make light work.

Over the past seven years, Jones and a core group of fellow volunteers have been at the heart of a mega-effort to restore 18 hectares of land surrounding Boat Creek, a spring-fed subsidiary flowing into the lagoon at the mouth of the Rakaia River.

The project, running along the southern boundary of Rakaia Huts village, was last year recognised at the Selwyn Awards, winning both the Community Volunteer Award and the Environmental Action Award.

“There have been about 70 people involved one way or another, contributing in excess of 8,500 hours of voluntary labour” says Jones, but adds that a core group of about four to six people has carried the project from “the get-go”.

Jones, who has lived at Rakaia Huts for nearly nine years, says the work has often been full on.

“When you’re on a roll, there’s just so much work that needs to be done and you don’t necessarily stand up and have a look at what you’ve achieved until somebody else says maybe you’ve actually done quite well,” says Jones, referring to the awards ceremony last August.

In its award entry, the project was described as “an exceptional example of what can be achieved when a community unites behind a shared vision” — a volunteer-led effort that has turned a flood-damaged, weed-choked reserve into a haven for native wildlife and a valued public space.

For the 67-year-old Jones, restoration was never going to mean planting a few trees, cutting a ribbon and walking away.

“Our goal right from the get-go was that we didn’t want to be one of those projects that got some money, planted some trees and then five years later it was all just long grass and a few trees,” he says.

“We wanted to make sure that we would look after what we set out to do.”

That promise, he says, was also made to the people and organisations that backed the work financially.

“We wanted to make sure that the people that gave us money could see value in what they had funded us to do.”

Jones is proud of the scale of what has been achieved by a small band of volunteers through thousands of hours of unpaid work, planting more than 12,000 eco-sourced native plants, restoring water flow, improving water quality and fish spawning habitat, and developing walking tracks that have helped reconnect local people with the reserve.

He is quick to also acknowledge the wider effort behind the project — local whānau, volunteers, businesses and environmental experts — and argued that the restoration’s deepest impact has been the pride and stewardship it has fostered in the community.

Jones explains that the group has completed stage one, restoring 3.5 hectares of an 18-hectare block.

Like many volunteer organisations, the biggest challenge now is sustaining the project. “It’s very easy to get people to come along and plant trees, because that’s fun and exciting,” he says.

“But it’s not so easy to find people who will turn up … one or two hours a week and just sort of ferret away at all the little jobs that always need to be kept on top of — weed control, track maintenance, looking after the creek,” says Jones. “So someone will always have to chip away at invasive weeds such as old man’s beard or convolvulus to stop them getting hold and strangling the good work.”

Jones and his wife settled at Rakaia Huts after 20 years in social services, managing up to 300 staff in senior roles with IHC and Ideas Services around the South Island.

He had never been involved in a conservation project, but his experience developing services for people with disabilities and their families proved unexpectedly useful.

“You need to be able to work with communities. You need to be able to work with agencies. You need to be able to bring people along with you. And that’s exactly what you have to be able to do when you work with a community volunteer group as well.”

Jones says the Boat Creek Restoration Project is a legacy project and many of the volunteers, aged 40 to well into their 80s will never see the full fruition of their work.

“We’ve got kahikateas and totaras that can grow 30 to 50 metres tall, but we'll never see that. So we're doing this for generations beyond us,” says Jones who enjoys the thought of leaving something behind that younger generations can enjoy.

“We want to make sure that we are leaving it in a condition that is worth looking after in the future, and hoping that someone in the future will also see the value in it and look after it.”

Last modified: 26 Jun 2026 10:18am