Dangerous dangers in the bush

Fear - For anyone faced with a wilderness emergency survival situation, fear is a normal reaction. Unless an emergency situation has been anticipated, fear is generally followed by panic then pain, cold, thirst, hunger, fatigue, boredom and loneliness. It is extremely important to calmly assess the situation and not allow these seven enemies to interfere with your survival.

Pain - Pain may often be ignored in a panic situation. Remember to deal with injuries immediately before they become even more serious.

Cold - Cold lowers the ability to think, numbing the body and reducing the will to survive. Never allow yourself to stop moving or to fall asleep unless adequately sheltered.

Thirst - Dehydration is a common enemy in an emergency situation and must not be ignored. It can dull your mind, causing you to overlook important survival information.

Hunger - Hunger is dangerous but seldom deadly. It may reduce your ability to think logically and increase your susceptibility to the effects of cold, pain and fear.

Fatigue - Fatigue is unavoidable in any situation so it is best to keep in mind that it can and will lower your mental ability. Remember that in an emergency situation this is often the bodies way of escaping a difficult situation.

Boredom & Loneliness - These enemies are quite often unanticipated and may lower the mind's ability to deal with the situation.

How to build a fire in the bush

Here are some tips:
1. Waterproof, strike-anywhere matches are your best bet. Matches may be water-proofed by dipping them in nail polish. Store your matches in a waterproof container.

2. A cigarette lighter is also a good way to produce a spark, with or without fuel.

3. The flint and steel method is one of the oldest and most reliable methods in fire starting. Aim the sparks at a pile of dry tinder to produce a fire.

4. The electric spark produced from a battery will ignite a gasoline dampened rag.
5. Remove half of the powder from a bullet and pour it into the tinder. Next place a rag in the cartridge case of the gun and fire. The rag should ignite and then may be placed into the tinder.
6. Allow the suns rays to pass through a magnifying glass onto the tinder.
Dry grass, paper or cloth lint, gasoline-soaked rags and dry bark are all forms of tinder. Place your tinder in a small pile resembling a tepee with the driest pieces at the bottom. Use a fire starter or strip of pitch if it is available.
It is important to keep in mind that smaller pieces of kindling such as, twigs, bark, shavings and gasoline, are necessary when trying to ignite larger pieces of fuel. Gather fuel before attempting to start your fire. Obviously dry wood burns better and wet or pitchy wood will create more smoke. Dense, dry wood will burn slow and hot. A well ventilated fire will burn best.

Native woods on our island

On our island we have the following trees:

• Kahikatea (also known by the misleading name "white pine")
• Matai (also known by the misleading name "black pine")
• Rimu (also known by the misleading name "red pine")
• Kauri (one of the most ancient species of trees in NZ)
• And possibly a few other types of trees, and also undergrowth.

On the scale of how threatened a species is, all of the above trees are "least concern", except for the kauri tree. The kauri is classified "conservation dependant" and often grows to at least 600 years old, though many seem to have reached the 1000 mark.

Uses:

[Kauri] In the past the size and strength of kauri timber made it a popular wood for construction and ship building, particularly for masts of sailing ships due to the absence of branches extending for much of its height. Kauri is also a great timber for building the hulls and decks of boats because of its resistance to rot. Kauri stump wood was much appreciated for its beauty, and was wanted for ornamental wood panelling and fancy furniture.

[Rimu] Historically, rimu and other native trees such as kauri and totara were the main sources of wood for New Zealand, including house construction. But, many of New Zealand's original stands of rimu have been destroyed, and new laws forbid the cutting down of rimu in public forests, though allowing limited logging on private land. There is also limited recovery of stump and root wood, for use in making bowls and other wood turned objects. The inner bark can also be used to treat burns and cuts.

[Kahikatea] Since the wood does not impart an odour, and is clean and lightweight, Kahikatea was used to make boxes for the exporting of butter when the refrigerated export got better between Australia and New Zealand in the 1880s. For Māori, the kahikatea had many uses. The fleshy aril or koroi was an important food resource, and was served at feasts in great amounts. The wood was also favoured for making bird spears. Soot obtained from burning the heartwood supplied a pigment for traditional tattooing. Kahikatea, along with other trees in privately owned forests, can only be harvested under a permit system and if sustainable harvesting techniques are used.

[Matai] The timber of this tree was used extensively in New Zealand for flooring during the mid-20th century. Mataī is not threatened, although as a forest-type it has been greatly reduced through widespread logging. Very few intact examples of Matai-dominated forest remain.

To read more about them, visit the following websites:

Dacrydium cupressinum (Rimu)

Agathis australis (Kauri)

Dacrycarpus dacrydiodes (Kahikatea)

Prumnopitys taxifolia (Matai)

I'm an architect

My primary job on the island is architect. I share this occupation with Sprint Gas Racing, and so far business is booming. Because we are starting from scratch on the island, we are needed a lot. The plans for the wharf are complete, the eco-housing design is finished except for the furnishings, and the blueprints for the community centre/town hall are still in the first stage.
On my other blog (no pun intended), I have done a post about architecture throughout the ages. To see it, click here.
Soon I will upload some pictures of the Google Sketchup model of our wharf, and hopefully the finished versions of our other buildings.

1st contender for the Eco Building Material

This is likely to be one of the building materials used in the building of our civilisation on the Matai islands:
EcoFaeBrick
Under the brand of EcoFaeBrick, we are providing a breakthrough wall material to you. We offer you a brick that 20% lighter compared to the clay brick but 20% stronger in terms of compressive strength. By using EcoFaeBrick, you will get benefit not only in the higher quality of bricks but also in the lower structural cost. Please do not worry that such high quality of bricks will cost you extra, as we sell EcoFaeBrick at the same price as you pay for ordinary clay brick.We use 75% of processed cattle waste as our material. EcoFaeBrick is a safe product in terms of technical as well as health concern. Laboratory tests for the product have been conducted.
This was sourced from ecofaebrick.com

The Plans

As you may have noticed on the post before this, there was a large clearing by the bay on the island, and that is where we plan to build our civilisation. There is a whole list of things that we need on our island, and we have a plan.

Order of things we need to do:

1) We require boats to get to the island

2) We need a dock or port for our boating needs

3) We must to establish our vegetable gardens and livestock

4) We need to get the clearing ready to be built on and get the materials.

5) We must build our Town Hall, for a meeting place and an operations centre

6) Build the housing

7) Establish all our businesses and trades, plus the classroom and recreational ground (rec ground)

8) Let our community flourish and grow

I shall soon post our building needs, and describe our all of our plans in more detail, plus provide a map of all the additions to our community. Here is a close-up of the clearing as it is now, and I shall update it every time something happens or is built:

To the right is the sea, and the stream feeding into it, at the top is the deep forest, the bottom is the light woodland, and to the left is the river. I hope to publish my plans soon, but there is only so much you can do in a day.

Matai Islands Map

There are four (non-existent) islands in the Matai Islands, and we are pretending that we are going to inhabit one of them (Three other classes are going to have the other ones). Our island has a bay facing the North Island, and our settlement will be near the bay. I drew a picture of the island, and I will be posting the updated version every time we (supposedly) build a new bit. Here is the image (Click on it for enlargement):

It is 45 by 22 kilometres, which makes it 9902 kilometres. There is a key to go with it:

Orange: Beaches.

Light Green: Light Woodland.

Dark Green: Thick Forest.

Blue: Water.

Purple: Higher Ground e.g. a mountain or large hill.

Our island has some Uranium deposits and also limestone.

The other islands all contain different materials

One of them has Oil and Diamonds,

Another one has Natural Gas and Ironsand,

And the last one has Coal and Gold.

The other three islands contain more valuable materials, which is good because then we won't be digging up our island and ruining it's ecosystem.

We have a plan for what we need and are going to put on our island, but more about that later.

Matai Island Jobs

Here is a list of available jobs for the Matai Islands:
I am one of the Architect Designer-type people, in conjunction with my friend, Sprint Gas Racing.
There needs to be one or two people to farm our crops and tend to the livestock and chickens.
Also someone to provide the manpower (or womanpower) to build our community and earn their living as a builder.
We would, of course need an explorer so we could use the island to it's full potential.
And a navigator to help the explorer map the island.
Another person we need would be a technician to fix all our technical problems.
A Boatman or two would be needed for getting across to the mainland and taking care of the boats.
The position of Mayor would have to be debated over,
And a City Council would be an addition to another job, a night job perhaps.
Electricians would be required to install and maintain all our technology.
I would also like to be a Politician, and debate treaties and stuff with the other islands over resources and political stuff.
That's about all the jobs I can name right now, but I'm sure that there's more needed. If you can think of any, please leave a note in comment form :).

Sustainability

This is a blog for school work and my own environmental endeavors. This term (term two) we are studying sustainability, environmental sustainability, and (I think) the global-economy-type-social-studies-environment thing.
In case you were wondering, the Matai Islands are our class's (supposedly) non-existant land. We have to design ways to live on these four newly-discovered islands off the coast of Raglan (The west coast of the North Island, NZ). They are totally uninhabited and forested, with a mountain on two or three of them (I might try to upload a drawing of one of them some time). They all have either a river or a lake, and most of them have a highest vantage point, where you can see most of the island.
I hope to post a lot of interesting stuff, about all the aspects of sustainability, and a bunch of other stuff too.
SUSTAINABILITY