Service to others motivates tireless volunteer

Lincoln Paul in the plant nursery at Bushy Park, Tarapuruhi. Photo / Supplied

Volunteer of the Month is tireless Bushy Park volunteer, Lincoln Paul.
In acknowledgement, Volunteer Whanganui manager, Sandra Rickey, presented Lincoln with a certificate, a metal lapel badge and a $40 voucher, courtesy of Mud Ducks cafe.

"Lincoln has volunteered with us 1-2 days a week for the past 7 years," says Mandy Brooke, Forest Sanctuary Manager, in her recommendation to Volunteer Whanganui. "He has done heaps of boots-on-the-ground work including rodent audits and trapping, fence and gate maintenance, vegetation and weed work, infrastructure mapping, maintenance and upgrades, education programme volunteering and guiding for large groups. He was very involved in the visitor centre development, and more recently, he led the plant nursery build. Lincoln sits on the Bushy Park Tarapuruhi Forest Committee as well as the Bushy Park Trust board. Hmmm... He has brought his energy, passion, knowledge and innovation to the job. We have been very fortunate to have him on our team. I could go on!"

Lincoln does other things in the community and he was Brain Injury Whanganui president for 14 years. It was after those years that he found Bushy Park.
"I had freed myself up, was sitting at home and I saw an article in the paper saying they had discovered they had rats in Bushy Park, and there was an appeal for people to come out and give them a hand to chase down rats," he says. "As I put it, I got bitten by the rats and I've been there ever since.
"It's such a wonderful team of people: we're all there for the same purpose, there's a great social interaction and you feel as if you're doing some good in the place. It's also such a beautiful place to be in and spend time out there."

Lincoln has become part of Bushy Park Tarapuruhi and is pleased that his "interests, rather than skills, have been tapped into".
He says they got rid of the rats fairly quickly but there is so much else to do.

Lincoln was a clergyman during his working life.
"I started off as a primary school teacher — I was in the second year intake at Palmerston North Teachers' College in 1957 — but I didn't stay long in teaching. I went to Canterbury College House to train for the ministry of the Anglican Church."
In 1975, on his way to a diocesan meeting in Wellington, Lincoln and his family were involved in a car crash with a drunk driver. Lincoln was seriously hurt.
"That's why I finished up having to leave the ministry and how I ended up running Brain Injury — I couldn't cope; I couldn't carry on working. At that time I was Vicar of Pahiatua ... they moved me across here to Whanganui East."
The position didn't suit, which is how he became Whanganui Hospital's first ecumenical chaplain.

"I've always been inclined to have an interest in serving the community around me ... right back to my early days in the ministry in Wellington I was involved with the local ratepayers association, and one thing and another, then got involved in the Wahine [storm] aftermath in1968. I was in Newlands."
That community involvement continues today, long after his retirement, and Bushy Park is one thing on a list of ways he serves the people and places around him. The work there is varied and necessary. Like biosecurity and maintaining the integrity of the place.
"The fence line around the outside has to be checked once a week ... make sure the stock outside didn't put a foot, or, as on one occasion, a cow put a horn through the fence. A 3mm hole is enough for a mouse to get through."

Lincoln goes out to Bushy Park at least once a week.
"Since the end of last year, I've been going out at least twice a week because I took on a project building a new shadehouse and potting area, a nursery. We're launching into reforesting areas that were previously in stock.
"We've got a lot of volunteers with tremendous specialist knowledge and they all make their contribution, so for me to be picked out ... I'm just one of many who are all tremendously important volunteers, and we work very much as a team."