Lost her card! Makes you wonder, doesn't it?” I said it did, and would she like to sell me a stamp booklet for cold cash? “Not a booklet. There's no sale for them here. A dozen threepennies if you like? Yes,” she went on, tearing out the stamps, “the family asks me why I keep the job on, but the truth is I love it, just love it. I wouldn't give it up for anything. They're a great crowd round here, Maori and Pakeha. Know what I had given me only this morning?” She dived under the counter and brought up three immense beetroots; one was like a winecoloured squash. “You might think they're too big to be edible, but they're not. Nearly every day I get something like this: you've no idea. Generous isn't the word. Sometimes it's tomatoes, or corn on the cob, or kumaras. The kumaras I've had! And they found I've given up fowls, just got a couple of old biddies left, and last week someone brought me a dozen eggs. “And it's not only things, it's deeds too. We had a flood a year or two back, a real he-man of a flood. Well, our place is down the road a bit, near the river flats, and the flood left logs and what would you across the dip where our drive runs in. The house was high enough but we couldn't use the car for the logs and stuff. “Did we have to ask for help? The nearest Maori with a tractor was there before we knew it. Amazing. Simply amazing.” She put her notebook away under the counter. “All that rather balances the post office ‘tick’, doesn't it?” I said. The postmistress slowly rose to face me. “Good grief!” she said. “So it does! so it does!” There was a shout of “Bus coming!” from the children outside. “And now you'd better go and finish your tea,” I said, “before it's cold.” “Cold!” she said. “In this heat. The milk'll be curdled by now.” As I picked up my bag a Maori came in. “Mrs Marshall,” he said, “I want to ring through to Paritai.” “That's toll, Matthew,” she said. “Cost you eightpence for three minutes.” “I know, Mrs Marshall,” said the man. “I got no money with me, but I write you the cheque.” “Good grief, Matthew Marima!” shouted the postmistress. “The post office can't accept cheques!” I got on the bus, smiling. From my seat I saw the postmistress reach under the counter and bring up the battered notebook.

MAORI ART LOST When a vast lake builds up behind the huge earth dam at Benmore. Otago, in a few years, a number of old faded Maori or “Moa-Hunter” drawings in cave shelters in the Waitaki Gorge will disappear beneath the water. Since 1957, the National Historic Places Trust has been concerned about the fate of the drawings. It initiated a survey of all the drawings in the area to be flooded—exploration for further sites, minute record of drawings found, and archaeological research. After three seasons of field work the task is now completed and a summary was recently given to the Royal Society Science Congress in Wellington, results pointing to widely differing, primitive artistic styles in the drawings, perhaps reflecting the different occupations of the inhabitants of the gorge. Mr John Pascoe, secretary of the Trust, has stated that an attempt will be made to remove some of the more striking drawings by cutting out sections of the rock, but the rock may crumble. If drawings are successfully obtained, they will be offered either to the Otago or Canterbury Museums, according to which side of the river they come from.

MAORI ADZES FOUND Five Maori stone adzes were an accidental find made while prisoners were digging in the New Plymouth prison's gardens. They are to be given to the Taranaki Museum. Speculation on how the adzes came to be grouped in this one place recalls that Marsland Hill in earlier times was a noted terraced Maori pa, taken by siege and assault about 1760 and not afterwards occupied. It is therefore possible that workers from this pa, were using the adzes on the site where they have been discovered, particularly as this is fairly close to a bend in the Huatoki Stream. The site was also, however, the scene of a noted Maori ambush when a marauding party from Oakura was caught there while returning from storming the Rewarewa Pa, at the mouth of the Waiwakaiho River. This venture is estimated to have taken place between 1805 and 1810. The slaughter was very great, with the Oakura Maori routed. It is therefore also possible that the adzes were loot from Rewarewa dropped by the fleeing Maoris. ⋆ ⋆ ⋆