MAKARA FISHERMEN

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 172, 17 April 1937, Page 3 (Supplement)

MAKARA FISHERMEN

Willing Searchers Always UNOBTRUSIVE SERVICES

(By

N.P.)

Basil had a pair of binoculars but no teeth. He sat on a log and peered out to sea, his jaws munching the end of a sodden cigarette and his bushy eyebrows draped over the glasses. “Them are the jokers you want,” he said, and I saw a speck on the line of blue that marked the meeting of the sea and sky. It was a perfect day at Makaya. The waves crumbled whitely on the beach out of a blue sea and behind the hills rose steeply, stretching up the coast as far as the eye could see. There were a dozen or more one and two-roomed shacks made of corrugated iron, and before them, near the water’s edge, were racks for the drying of nets. Crayfish baskets were heaped on the sand, and several fishing launches were riding quietly a few yards from the shore. “How long will they be before they come in?” I asked. “Looks like they’re cornin’ now,” he said, peering hard through the glasses. “What were you wantin’ them for?” “I wanted to have a yarn to them. They’ve done a lot of good work looking for people lately, and in the past, too, I believe.” “Oh. I’m a bushman meself,” and Basil went on to tell me how to cure

“gripes” by eating certain leaves, how the Maoris can tell whether the summer is going to be wet or dry, how to get beer out of trees, how a man need not starve if there is a nikau fern handy, what good eating the tips of young punga fronds are, and finally bow to fell a hillside of bush by cutting down one tree. “Now, say you’ve got a tree here,” and he threw a wood chip down on the sand, “and another here, another here, and one at the top. You scarf the bottom one here.” He stood the bottom chip up and placed his finger on the lower side. “You scarf the one above here, and so on. Then you take your top tree and ” “Excuse me,” I said, "here are the fishermen;-” A dinghy rowed by one man with a man at each end wa.s approaching the beach as the oars slowly dipped and sank, flashing in the bright sunshine. It was piled high with boxes, lines and gear from the launch, and as it grounded the man in the bow stepped out in his waders- to pull the boat up on the sand. “Not much of a catch," I said to Basil.

“That’s not all they caught. The rest are on the launch waitin’ to be cleaner,” he said, as though to a small child.

I walked down to the boat and approached the small man who had been rowing. “Good-morning,” I said. “Good-day.”

“How are the fish to-day?” "Not bad. The wanna weather bring them in,” he said and wont on with his work. Unfortunately I was not sure whether he was Tony, Alberto or Angelo. Basil’s information had been very vague. He had not seemed very'interested in the Italians, although he had admitted that they were good fellows and capable fishermen. "Has your work been interrupted much by the search?” I said.

“No, not much; we look all the tima while we work.” . “But haven’t some or you been well down the coast?”

“Oh, yes. But that’s all right,” he said. He seemed unwilling to talk about the part he and his friends had taken in helping others. I was about to leave him when suddenly he said, “It’s the sea.” “The sea?”

“Yes. When we are on the land wo might spit in your face, but on the sea everyone belpa each other. Always we watch the other boats when we are fishing. So we are always pleased to help in o search.” He moved up toward his friends who were waiting for him further along the beach. I looked out to sea past the launches lightly riding on the .swell. “It’s the sea.” he bad said, and I suddenly appreciated his attitude, and that of his friends, to the willing work they had done. It was part of his code, the code of men working in common danger, men against, the sea. A wave came ahead of its fellows and ran up beneath the boat with a rippling caress and slithered back into

the surf. The three men were along the shore inspecting a net on the racks, going quietly about their work. The little community in the corrugat-ed-iron shacks seemed rather fine. Basil came up beside me. “Get anything out of him?” he said, and spat his blackened cigarette butt on to the sand.

“Nothing much,” I said. I did not think Basil would understand.