McDonald Fencing and Construction
Conservation trust taps family firm for Gabrielle recovery push
When Whakatāne earthworks contractor, fencer and family business owner Bain McDonald got the call for help from deep within the remote forests of mountainous inland Hawke’s Bay, he didn’t hesitate for a beat.
“Yep – we’re up for that. How soon do you need us?”
The call had come from Pete Shaw, forest manager at the Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust. Pete and his team at the Trust had spent decades, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, improving and building a network of roads and access tracks across thousands of hectares owned by the Trust in the Maungataniwha Native Forest and an adjoining former pine forest, which the Trust is converting back into native bush in the largest project of its kind in the country.
These roads, tracks, bridges and access infrastructure are vital for the Trust’s conservation work. It runs one of the most prolific kiwi conservation projects, as well as initiatives designed to restore or protect populations of the endangered whio (Blue Duck) and flora such as the incredibly rare kākābeak (ngutukākā) and various types of mistletoe.
Yet all this investment in infrastructure was wiped out in just a few hours in February 2023 when Storm Gabrielle wreaked havoc across Hawke’s Bay.
The pressure of millions of cubic metres of rainwater sluicing through the narrow valleys scoured riverbeds and overturned rocks the size of shopping- trolleys. Together, the water, debris and land slips eliminated hundreds of kilometres of hard-won roads, tracks and trails.
Entire lengths of road and huge two-metre double-culverts were blown out by slash.
William McDonald is Bain’s son. He manages the family business, McDonald Fencing and Construction, and like his dad he understood immediately the implications for the Trust.
The impact was illustrated clearly when Pete Shaw and his wife Jules spent three hours in the dark and cold of the small hours, walking out to collect a single kiwi egg for incubation and hatching.
Before the storm that nest was just a four-minute walk from the nearest vehicle access point.
“Multiply this additional time and effort across much of what the Trust’s team and their network of volunteers do on a daily basis, like accessing pest trapping lines, and you’ll get some idea of the impact on their work,” William said.
“It was essential to get our kit in quickly to fix their roads, trails and tracks.”
Bain and his wife Shorty loaded a 16-tonne excavator onto a transporter and set off for Maungataniwha. It’s usually a five-hour drive from their base in Whakatane, but on a machine transporter it’s a whole day event.
“It’s a long trip so Mum went down as well, just to make sure dad didn't fall asleep at the wheel. In the end it got too late so they pulled over somewhere with a fantastic view, made a billy tea, watched the stars, went to sleep in the truck and carried on in the morning. No drama.”
It didn’t take team McDonald very long to figure out an efficient and effective way to run the operation in such a remote location, and so far from base. With one operator on site at a time, they have evolved a week-long rotation that avoids excessive travel.
“it’s tough on our operators if we tell them to go down there for a whole week, come out for two days and then go back down there for another week,” William said. “So we’ve set up a rotation where the operator goes down on a Monday, does a handover with the previous operator, then stays until the following Monday.”
The priority for the infrastructure recovery team is clearing the main roads and reinstating bridges and culverts.
“We’re clearing a lot of slips and other blockages, replacing blown-out culverts and moving a lot of rocks,” William said. “Opening up tracks one by one.”
The second phase of the operation will involve spreading gravel on the repaired road surfaces, and grading and rolling it.
William said the company’s operators enjoy the work, despite the remoteness.
“They stay in the Trust’s accommodation at Maungataniwha, an old logging camp with a fully functional kitchen and comfortable, heated living area, and they’re pretty much their own boss for the time they’re down there.
“Some of the boys are hunters and Pete has told them that they’re welcome to shoot a deer or two if it’s not near the accommodation and they don’t take any stags.
“So after work they’re off into the bush. They don’t need to go that far, there are so many deer down there. We’ve got some pretty well-fed fellas who come back to Whakatane after a week working at Maungataniwha.”
While the isolation might not be too much of a worry for the hunter-gatherer excavator operators from the Bay, it’s certainly an issue when it comes to equipment repair and down-time. A repair that can’t be made on site means some serious downtime while a replacement, or an engineer, is driven to Maungataniwha from either Napier or Whakatane.
“A repair to a hydraulic hose might normally take half an hour to fix. But for this job it might mean down-time of up to a full day,” William said. “So the guys are well aware that they need to be efficient but careful.”
The Maungataniwha infrastructure repair project is not a cheap exercise. They’re only part-way into the project but the McDonald Fencing and Construction crew have already notched up nearly 500 machine-hours. There are dozens of blown-out culverts across the block and with one second-hand culvert costing in the region of $10,000, and concreting, machinery and labour costs on top of that, replacement costs for a single culvert can easily come in at $30,000.
The Trust estimates that basic repair work, just to get the access infrastructure back to what it was before Gabrielle struck, will cost several hundred thousand dollars.
None of this is insurable, so the considerable expense involved is being met personally by the Trust’s chairman and land-owner Simon Hall. Much of the money is being spent locally, with local or provincial suppliers and contractors like McDonald Fencing and Construction.
The construction side of the McDonald business focuses predominantly on bulk earthworks and forestry infrastructure. Most of their work comes through the main forest management organisation such as, Timberlands, PF Olsen and Manulife, formerly Hancocks.
It’s a typical Kiwi family business; Bain and Shorty still work in it but now they’re supported by William and their son-in-law Eru, who runs the fencing side of things, and they employ about 10 other people, including other family members.
The family whakapapas back to Tainui and the business is classified as a Māori business, registered with Amotai, the supplier diversity intermediary tasked with connecting Māori and Pasifika-owned businesses with buyers wanting to purchase goods and services.
The family has no plans to grow the business beyond anything that it already is, a good, stable, solid business employing local people to meet the needs of local customers.
“Survival is our number one goal,” William says. “It’s a tough market out there, with heaps of competition. We have always and will continue to differentiate by the approach we have to customer service and the attitude that we bring to our work.
“That’s where having a small crew, all of whom are connected through family, social circles or other ties, helps. There’s a feeling that we’re all in it together, all looking out for each other.”
If something seems a little bit difficult, or out of the ordinary, the McDonald crew will always be keen to “give it a nudge”.
It’s that attitude that prompted Pete Shaw to pick up the phone to Bain McDonald once the extent of the damage from Storm Gabrielle became clear. The very same attitude that led to Bain’s response:
“Yep – we’re up for that. How soon do you need us?”
