Walking around Lyttelton Harbour

Kilometre by kilometre, Citycare is helping Christchurch City Council by connecting communities around Lyttelton Harbour via an aspirational walkway from Godley Head to Adderley Head.

The Head to Head Walkway is a recreation track being developed in collaboration with local volunteers.

Citycare landscape team has been working on eight track sites in the harbour basin near Christchurch providing safe access and connecting our communities with their local environment.

Most recently steps were built at Black Point, between Charteris Bay and Church Bay.

Earlier, stairs were built to make it easier for pedestrians to access Paradise Beach at Charteris Bay.

Citycare Business Unit Manager Phil McLoughlin says the complicated structural carpentry involved in this type of walkway project requires a specialist team and the landscapes crew has expertise and experience to know how to build paths in all sorts of environments.

“They are experts at solving problems and working out how to build the required walkway,” he says.
Project Engineer Phil Frame, who has worked for Citycare for 34 years, says “We build steps and stairs in all sorts of tricky situations.

“The jobs are particularly tricky when the guys have to carry everything into the site – the timber, the cement, the water, the shingle and the tools,” he says.

Once they used a helicopter to transport the equipment to Pony Point at Cass Bay, but usually the daily routine is continuous walks in and out of the site with each piece of six-metre timber and buckets of shingle.

Often the journey involves hundreds of metres of strenuous carrying.

“It is hard yakka and I really respect the guys for their work as it is not easy,” Phil Frame says.

One part of the track used 13 tonnes of shingle which was manually carried to the site by the bucket load.

“When you build something it gives you satisfaction as you can see it, but it’s also rewarding as we know people will use it,” Phil Frame says.

“While we are working, people often walk by and say we’re doing a fantastic job as we’re making it safer for them to walk in their neighbourhood,” he says.

So, what’s the difference between a step and a stair, you may ask?
Stairs are above ground, have a handrail and include large timbers securing the side, while steps are cut into the ground and kept in place with a riser.

The same team also handles playground installations and such jobs as the gym equipment being installed currently at Malvern Park in St Albans.