TROPIC LIFE

Otaki Mail, 25 January 1943, Page 1

TROPIC LIFE

(Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) An advanced Pacific Base, Dec. 16.

When semi-tropical rain pattered down to-day through the tinder-dry bush in which a unit of the Royal New Zealand Air Force at this Pacific base lias built its camp, men looked at one another with a gleam of satisfaction in their eyes. “This will be good for the garden,” they said. And they were thinking not of home, but of the neat, carefully tended little vegetable plots that are bursting into healthy green growth alongside almost every tent m the camp. Here, where boredom in leisure, hours can be the biggest enemy of all and where almost tho only diversions are i those that the men make for themselves, gardening! has become a hinjiversnl hobby. And so now, when it rains, tne gloomy prospect of sticky red mud and wet boots is tempered by the certainty of fresh life among tho beans and tomato plants. Packets of seed were specially ordered from Now Zealand, plots of earth were dug and sifted and watered and screened from the hot sun and the birds. Air crews in from their long patrols and the ground staff back from another day’s work on the dusty airfield nursed their young shoots with absorbing care. Quickly-growing vegetables like beans and peas, which will bring freshness to meals now almost completely prepared from tinned and preserved rations, taxing the cooks’ ingenuity, arc in highest favour. There aro more ambitious experiments, too, in the form of tomato and onion plants raised from seed in boxes of fine soil.

Gardening is at least a partial answer to tho problem, faced everywhere New Zealanders are serving in the Pacific, of what to do in their spare time. Recreation huts have been established here where officers and men may read, write letters and play indoor games in tho evenings. Occasionally they see motion pictures at a neighbouring American station or stage their own “camp-fire concerts,” and it has been possible to send small leave parties away for a three-day break in a greener and more pleasant part of the island. The facilities for leave and recreation, however, are inevitably limited. Cricket teams arc to be organised, and the unit has set up its own canteen. Mail from home is probably the biggest factor in morale, and a great deal depends on the regular arrival of letters and parcels. There is a frequent service by air to New Zealand. At this station the New Zealanders have devoted a great deal of their leisure time to improving their living conditions and, considering the difficulties they faced, they have reached a remarkable degree of comfort. Officers and men alike —there are no batmen here —are making tlie best of tent life by building “bush furniture” out of packing cases and odd scraps of timber, wooden flooring and walls, trellis fences and shingle paths.