Miss Kia Riwai, the Maori Welfare Officer at Motueka for many years, manages to know by name an amazing number of the seasonal workers, and always has time for a chat. People of Motueka photography by Ans Westra Motueka, near Nelson, is where most of our beer and cigarettes come from: it is here that most of the hops and tobacco grown in New Zealand are to be found. Hops and tobacco are very fussy about their soil and climate, but the wide, sunny valleys of Nelson suit them perfectly. The district is also famous for its apples, and for small fruits such as raspberries. All these crops need a great deal of attention, and most of this work is done by seasonal workers, about 60 per cent of whom are Maori. Each year about two thousand of them come. Most of them work on tobacco farms, helping with the planting, weeding, hoeing, and harvesting of these expensive plants. Miss Kia Riwai, who has been the Maori Affairs Department's Welfare Officer at Motueka for five years now, told ‘Te Ao Hou’ that the growers prefer to employ Maori workers when they can, because their fingers are so adaptable; they do not break so much of the leaf. Quite a number of workers come down from six to nine months of the year, and there are many regulars who come back year after year, often to the same farm. Many of the people in our photograph of the Sandy Bay Maori Club, for instance, have been coming down for a number of years now, and they have built up a strong group spirit which is very apparent in their Maori items. For many people, the friendly company of the other workers is one of the main things bringing them back each year to these sunny farms. One aspect of this, Miss Riwai told us, is that ‘a lot of the Maori girls who come down here often say, just look at this, the Maoris and Pakehas working together and playing together — you never see this back home’. One reason for the friendly atmosphere is that the whole of the boss's family works in the fields with the other workers. There is no snobbery about work in Motueka; all that matters is looking after that precious tobacco leaf. Most of the tobacco farms are fairly small (the crop is so valuable that they can afford to be), and a large number of the bosses were once seasonal workers themselves. Quite a few of the bosses are Maori; Miss Riwai thought there must be 40 or 50 Maori bosses at least. Seventy-five per cent of the workers are girls, and though they are not allowed to work at Motueka if they are under 17, many of them