The Story Of Oruanui

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 220, 17 September 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Story Of Oruanui

AWAY back in the hills, where the forest loomed close as a foreground and with the eternal ■now of Ruapehu a far background across range after range of bushclad hills, a baby was born. So remote were the amenities of civilisation that any assistance which a doctor or nurse could have given in this important event were only vaguely remembered or realised; and the baby's first home was a sack and timber slab whare.

The place where this birth occurred was a camp established by a party of 17 Waikato Maoris who are building in the forest in the foreground four mere war canoe* for the fleet of'*even for the pakcha Centenary. The nearest placename on the map is that of a little native hamlet which, by accident, as it were, has found itaelf On the maii> highway, some 10 miles south of Taupo. It* name is Oruanui. And that is the name the parcnte gave to the new baby.

It is t>y no means intended that the remoteness of this camp or the absence of doctor and nurse should be in the nattire of a lament. Far from it. Neither mother nor child miesed such "killed

By F.C.J.

Attention. Tha mother Is about her daily business, and the baby is two healthy months old. The last that two visitors saw of little Oruanui was a little black head and a tiny beating hand barely protruding from a chrysalis of blankets as she lay in her home-made cradle in front of a Are which occupied the entire end of the camp kitchen. The Name Oruanui Every now and again the mother would pause in her task of preparing food to cast a glance at her child who was doing a feeble bfeft to wriggle from the blankets, and a mighty best to cry the kitchen clown. No. Oruanui is decidedly healthy. Would tfv.it all babies born in the hospitals were as lusty. The name Oruanui will ever have a pleasant ring for the two strangers to whom the Maoris/ at the camp, with their fine innate courtesy and hoepitnlity, jrave a royal welcome. Here, the strangers thought, wae a lesson for cottage and manaion alike in dignified good breeding. All that the Maoris hacT they shared —good measure, pressed down and running over. Food? They gave us special food because they

thought theirs wu not good enough. Shelter? They put at our disposal a separate little whare specially prepared with a bed and pillow-shams—and we,

tired after a long trip, would have been grateful for any corner. Fellowship? They made us feci that we were doing them a favour by being with them.

The camp, set in a little secluded fold in i lie liills, was a pleasant spot. True, it was by no means ornate in its amenities. Only the kitchen, which was dining room as well, and another largish room, which was bed-sitting room, so to speak, had a timbered floor. The other little whares had mother earth for a floor and rough-liewn totara slabs for walls and sacking and more slabs for roofs.

These little separate houses were the quarters for the married men, their wives and children. The kitchen-dining room was common to all. The other largish room, the be'd-sitting room, was the single men's quarters. Of furniture theie was practically none—a few benches, a few rough stools and the floor. It Was a Cold Place It was a place where snow fell in feather that was really cold; and when it did fall it remained round the camp all day. Each morning, even at best, there was a white frost, freezing any shallow water and crisping the top of the ground. Still, with typical Maori ingenuity, they had met the position. They had made a stove-heater, wood burning, from an oil drum, with a chimney tlirouph the roof, which they put in the single men's hut.

And when at night the pnow wind whistled outside, and the heater glowed red hot. the hut was a cosy place, not to be left unless dire necessity demanded. The heater effectively warmed the hut all night, making it a desirable place to sleep.

Tn the other houses, where there was no heater, they had used an ancient custom. On the earthern floor they would set a pile of glowing charcoal embers, which would glow all night, and crave out more heat than the pakeha who has ne\ er tried it would imagine. This method had a certain disadvantage, howex er. when the weather was windv.

Round this charcoal fire, or round the heater, groups of men would gather in the e-\ ening. There would be mild and

peaceful argument among two or three. Several others would play Maori games, while often out of the tranquillity of that little valley would steal an" unaccustomed sound—the modern love son" through the medium of the gramophone record. A cry nice it sounded, too, if by chance one had to leave the immediate vicinity of the camp. But in that room it was all very homely and drowsily warm. Morning and Evening Prayer It was typical of the atmosphere of that little hamlet where etrangers were "an hungered and were fed," that each night and morning there should be a church service. On the first evening we wondered why they were beating that tuneless old broken circular paw bung up outside, but soon figures besan to come quietly in through the door and take an unobtrusive seat. Men. women and children all without exception came —even little Oruanui. .

The service was ?oon over. Tt tonk no more than 10 minutes at the outside. It- watt in Maori: hut whatever the service, it gave a benediction.

Eventually it was time for bed: and after a Ion? uneasy period of iiido. isi, n we decided that we would have to leave that nice warm room. The wind outside was bleak: but over the erests of the hill' s the Southern Cross blinked clicerilv! and <;o near it seemed that it might almost have been possible to reach out and pluck it down as a plaything. Yee, the camp was a friendlv place.'and a. place of poarp aT ,d quiet*. We felt that little Oruanui had made a "ood start