PUKEKO SWAMP.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 290, 8 December 1931, Page 6

PUKEKO SWAMP.

In the old township—it is a quite important town now, with a Chamber of Commerce and a commendablv strong civic senses —there was a bit of a swamp within a. hundred and fifty yards or so of the school and not much more than that from the principal publichouse. There was a brewery there, a tall wooden structure alongside the little shallow stream or ditch that drained the swamp. It was not every Waikato town that was blessed with a brewery, and this one conferred an air and aroma of distinction on the place; it was a small affair, but it loomed large in the eyes of the populace as the leading local industry. The old brewer —it is many a year ago and the place of fragrant odours has long ceased operations —was a man beloved by all the countryside, and 1 am sure no one esteemed his establishment and its product more highly than the little tribe of pukeko; that inhabited the raupo.

Eiding to school in those long-ago years, we knew pretty well every family of the redlegged, blue-coated swamp hen£ in the marshes and lagoons that the road skirted; at any rate, we were quick to observe any temporary desertion of the favourite foraging pools and wondered, where the old birds had got to and when they would return. The pukeko i≤ given to occasional migrations, but that hapu in the brewery swamp was an exception. It seemed permanently attached to the place, and particularly to the streamlet that carried off the marsh waters and the brewery drainage to the near-by river. What with the sustenance obtained in the eel swamp, and the garden patches here and there, and the watercourse of piquant, malty flavour, it was perfectly satisfied with its lot, and even a charge of shot now and again from one of the village sports was not regarded as a serious drawback to the enjoyment of life in the raupo.

Sometimes there was an unusual commotion in the swamp, the raucous row of a pukeko fight. Some other hapu, sniffing that delightful brewery aroma, and maybe sampling the drainings, had attempted to jump the old settlers' claim. The interlopers were ejected every time; our clan determinedly held its sedgy domain against all invaders.

The schoolmasters garden and the paddock in which we kept our horses sloped down to the swamp. The master raised all manner of -vegetables and he had a fine little patch of maize. Naturally, that garden was regarded by NgatiPukeko as one of their legitimate foraging grounds. When the young crops were coming along the owner kept a vigilant eye on them from the windows. Every now and again those fine days he would give us a task to keep us busy for the next half-hour, and stroll out of the one-room school. A few minutes later there would be the double bang of his gun. "Missed again!"' we said, with one voice. I think we youngsters came to accept it as part of the regular school routine. I think also that the pukekos became expert in the art of dodging the gunner's shots; at any rate, we never heard that he had hit any of the marauders. He'd have told us all about it if he had.

But I think even the schoolmaster would have been sorry to see that little tribe exterminated. They really did not do his garden much harm, and, as he said himself, he did not grudge them a few cobs of young corn or a cabbage here and there in return for their war on the grubs and caterpillars and other plagues of the vegetableraisers life. The blue-plumaged hapu, the brewer, the schoolmaster, have gone; the swamp is grass and gardens now. In that brisk provincial town I do not suppose there are many who have ever seen a pukeko family in its native haunts. Perhaps one lone, law-protected survivor of the old township days will flap his way down from the up-country swamp?, dimly remembering the convivial malty feasticgs of his youth. "Well, I'm hanged," says the sportsman who pots him, "if it isn't an old boogekker! What the deuce is he doing here? No good, anyhow; tough as old boots. The town'clerk can have him for the museum." —J.C.