FOUR IN A CAR

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 93, 21 April 1931, Page 7

FOUR IN A CAR

A TOUE WITH FATHEK

(Written by H.N.V.) We three and father did the Napier-Taupo-National Park motor trip and camped out. The camping was father's idea. '"When day is dying in the west," said father, "we'll pick a spot for our camp. While you pitch the tents I'll get the stove going. You girls can make up the beds, by which time tha billy will be boiling, and whila tha blue smoke curls lazily. upwards we'll eat our evening meal. A read, a walk, perhaps a sing, and so to bed with the night winds blowing cool on our faces. Come morning, a dip in the creek before breakfast, and 'we'll fold up our tents like the Arabs . and as silently steal away.'" Father always had a romantic streak in him.. The first night's camp was at Eketahuna. The guide-book said that one of Eketahuna's varied attractions was a free golf course. That settled father, so, although it was blowing half a gale, we camped near Eketahuna's "free golf course." The tent leaked a little and flapped a lot, so that sleep was broken. Bain poured at breakfast time, and our cooking wa« done in the camp cookhouse. Then, father and Harold wrestled with tha flapping, slapping, sodden tent. When the last peg was drawn the wet tent fell on them, wrapping itself around father, and from its clamnr« folds wa could hear. him fervently "dashing" and "busting" tents and. camping and motoring! Harold untangled father, and although we remembered about the silent Arabs we thought it wiser not to mention these nomads to father'just then. But this was the only really bad time in our ten days of warm, windles3 holiday bliss. Crossing the Kaingaroa Plains we had halted at the Opepe Memorial Board, where on the night of sth June, 1869, nine of this outpost's fourteen soldiers fell fighting for their lives. Their graves are fenced and free from weeds, while painted headboards telling you the sleepers'1 names and ranks. The well they used is fenced about, the horse trough they hollowed from a log stands alongside empty and splitting in the sun, the descendants of their, horses roam wild on the desert, but these nine "soldiers of the Queen" sleep soundly where only the winds sigh, the lupins crack, and stray birds sing at Opepe on the Kaingaroa Plains. A block of land recently acquired by; the Government for closer settlement perpetuates the name of Fort Galatea, of which this Opepe Kedoubt was an outpost. Here a: detachment of Ta Kooti's warriors surprised the little garrison, only five escaping. The man who found the mutilated bodies still resides in the district, a living link with that bloody night of 1869. Such an old, old Maori woman met us on one of the Taupo paths. Her face, a network of fine lines, with tattooed chin and lips,, grey wavy hair, and a bent back, made her so intriguing a subject for the camera that father greeted her with a "Tenakoe." When asked her, age she answered.with many smiles and shakes of the head "Kanui," which, father interpreted to us as "Too much!" After giving her a coin he produced the camera, but shepromptly tried to return the money, vigorously protesting against the indignity of being snapped! "And me in.me old skirt," you could imagine her indignantly saying to herself, "and no shoes or stockings on, indeed! Me having:me picture taken like that! Him and his sixpence." She shuffled off along the track, her mongrel dog close at her heels, and the "tikapenny" still in her hand. Another ancient dame, all fascinating wrinkles and tattoo, had a wall eye, and she also objected to the camera, until father asked a young Maori to'explain to her that he wanted her side face only, the bad eye to be unseen. So great-grandmother Erenora' Katane in profile, with wrinkles, mokoshawl, and,jpipe, is the beat Maori study; Katane in profile, with, wrinkles, moko, We fished on the lake. The fishing1 is good, as at thousands of other holiday resorts,'according to the "guile* books, boarding-house . folders, Cham? bers of Commerce booklets, advertisements, and other unreliable sources of information. Our Maori boatman did his.best-for us, but the Taupotrout disdained the'Taupo wasps we trolled in our wake, and Hon'gi subsequently (and surreptitiously) sold ■us a five-pound rainbow he. had caught the night before. : Hongi's wahine came down for a bathe, and. before plunging in transferred her butt to her husband's mouth. We had been told that only two occupations made smoking impossible for a. Maori, and as sleeping is one, we assumed, that. diving. must be the other. Handsome Boita had the deep chest and short thick limbs evolved by many, generations of burden-bearing ancestresses. How many centuries had they carried the kits of sand for tlie kumera gardens, the back-loads of fire» wood, the bundles of raupo thatch, and the piccaninny as well to- bequeath to Boita the rather thick. figure of tba Maori woman of to-day? With powerful • strokes this Hinemoa' of 1931 led the other brown bathers around the boat and under the boat and, rising, flung the Taupo diamonds from her thick curls, only returning to her Hongi and' her cigarettes after an hour of splashing. ' . Turning aside to Tokaanu, we found the hot springs in the. back yards. A' box and some "wet sacks covered one spring, and inside the box a dinner wa3 cooking by thermal heat within twenty; feet of a Maori home. Twenty feet further away a small geyser played to a.height of twgijty-five feet every fitteen minutest Vents hissed and bubbled by the roadside, boys innocent of bathing togs; swam in. the warm pools, women washed clothes in the hot springs, while ; among the watercresses ducks thrust their heads down and turned their other ends up in duck fashion,1 a hen busied herself, with her brood, and a young Maori mother held her pioaaninny in her arms with that smile on her face that every woman has when she looks down to a baby on her breast. Tokaanu, and the adjacent Waihi, where none but the Maori lives,call for a day or two to themselves. At Waihi a dairy factory and a sawmill are owned and operated by th« Maori. . Near Kaetihi we spent an evening visiting a friend's farm at Ore Ore, returning fearfully through the glowing pillars and blazing logs of a King Country bush, fire to our camp among tha pines, but laden, with jam, bread, milk, and cream. Another1 detour at Mataroa took us by. the world's record road to Tiririraukawa—one hour to cover thirteen miles of-bends, twists, hills, and-hollows on a one-car track without one stretch of a hundred yards straight or level! But it was worth the trip to greet such kind friends again and to camp under their wide-spread walnut tree for the last night of our happiest holiday. The small sum of £9 Us 6d covered all expenses; guide, camp, and fishing fees, benzine, and, one minor repair on this 1200-mile tour of ten delightful days. A primus-proved handy for wayside cooking, but on our stove fashioned from a benzine tin we managed some memorable meals—tomato soup, fried chops with peas and potatoes, folio-wed by stewed fruit,, constituting our best dinner when we three toured with father.