a Maori's very inquisitive, very nosey, and he comes round and looks at my machine. He says, ‘I'd like to drive; will you teach me?’ There's something in him that's urging him to get on to that machine. There may be a lot more work on the bigger machine, but it makes him one step higher than the smaller one. “Another thing is the maintenance. It doesn't matter how dirty a machine is, the Maori just wallows in grease and mud. He's got commonsense, too. You read in the papers about a lot of accidents. Me, I think it's that person's own fault. If you've got a flash car you'd think twice about driving it into salt water. It's the same with a bulldozer or a tractor; you can go anywhere with it, but you've got to use your head. You wouldn't go up a hill after a downpour.” Another driver gave his first reason for taking up the work as money. “At one time it was better than in other jobs, though it's not now. But it's an outside job, which is definitely better, and after a while you can't seem to get away from it. You get that urge—you must get back to that dirty old machine. The Maori is better with his hands, I think; it's been handed down to him from earlier generations.” In the relaxed, masculine world of a works project, where amenities like teapots and telephones take on the appearance of posies in a wrestler's hand, relations between the races seem unconstrained. A burly pakeha took time off from his mileage returns to consider his colleagues. “I wouldn't go so far as to say the Maori is better,” he said, “but he certainly prefers the machines to other kinds of work. A Maori with a pick and shovel and a Maori with a bulldozer are just two extremes. They're very adaptable and a lesson or two will teach them. When they see these things in action they're so keen on wanting to work them. There seems to be a natural inclination to want to get the better of the machines. With one or two you have to be constantly on their hammer to do their maintenance, but the majority are quite good at that too.” Another observed that the noise and trying conditions on earth-moving jobs seemed to affect the Maoris less. “They'll take a lot more without complaint,” he said. “They seem more placid, less highly strung. Europeans have a longer association with mechanical things, but it doesn't seem to matter; the Maori is at least as good with George Mohi, a winch-man at the Hauhungaroa Timber Co. (N.P.S. Photo)