my essays personal.’ Rowley remembers Sam Dwyer with gratitude; not only as a teacher but as a human being. It was a little later, when he was 20 and in his first year at Ardmore Teachers' College, that Rowley suddenly decided that he wanted to be a writer—‘It hit me like a torando. I couldn't think of anything else.’

Wandered Restlessly, Wrote Furiously He left Ardmore, worked for a year in a bookshop in Auckland, then spent three years wandering around the North and South Islands—working in freezing works, timber-mills, woolstores, hydro works, on the wharfs, digging ditches and ‘a dozen and one’ other jobs for short spells. All this time he was writing furiously. He sees this period as being a kind of apprenticeship as a writer—‘My only regret now is that I didn't take more notice of what went on around me and the people I met. I didn't start out drifting entirely because I was after experience—although it has worked out that way. In much of my writing now I am drawing on those restless years—at the time it was a hand-to-mouth way of living, as far as I was concerned.’ At this time his writing ‘just poured out. It was pretty shapeless at first—I had practically no control over it. All I knew was I had to get it down on paper.’ Like so many other writers, he is concerned chiefly with the people and places which he knew as a child: with his own experience and with the experience of all the people, especially working people, whom he has known. ‘By “working people”, I mean manual workers. They have more vitality and warmth than white-collar workers, and this seems to rub off on to me and into my writing.’

Five Years Down South Later, Rowley spent five years down south; for much of this time he was associated with the Maori Club in Dunedin. ‘It was there in Dunedin that I found myself being pulled back strongly to my Maori side. I think it might be because I got such a fright how much Maori-tanga had died out down there. I realised that if we weren't careful the same thing could happen in the North Island. But make no mistake about the quality of the Maori in the South Island, even though there are only a few of them. I count some of my best friends amongst them. And I know that in recent years there has been a drive to get back what they have lost.’ But whatever the reason was, he says, the outcome is that he has become ‘a bit of a fanatic’ on anything Maori. He regrets that he cannot speak the language too well (probably because his father was Pakeha, and the language was not spoken in his home), but he says he is picking it up fast. For the last four years he has been a public servant, first with the Ministry of Works and now, at Bulls, with the Agriculture Department.

‘Te Ao Hou’ and Elsewhere Rowley's first published work was a prize-winning story which appeared in the Ardmore Teachers' College annual magazine. Since then most of his work—short stories, poetry and articles—has appeared in ‘Te Ao Hou’, starting in 1956. ‘It was “Te Ao Hou” which gave me my first real break.’ He has also had short stories and verse published in most of the literary magazines in New Zealand, including ‘Landfall’, ‘Arena’ and ‘Mate’, and two of his poems are to be broadcast later this year by the Broadcasting Corporation. At present he is working on a novel which will have as the setting the district in which he lived as a child. He has also recently finished a collection of verse and prose, ‘While the Rain Tapped on My Roof’. It is from this collection, not yet published, that his poem ‘The Raw Men’ has been taken.

Two-Way Cultural Integration Rowley feels strongly that Maori culture should become part of the heritage of all New Zealanders: that there must be a two-way cultural integration. It was partly for this reason that he was so interested in the operetta performed recently by Turakina Maori Girls' College, which he reviews on page 43 of this issue of ‘Te Ao Hou’. ? A memorial stone to the late Henare Te Paehu Tuhakaraina was unveiled at Rukumoana Pa last February, on the first anniversary of his death. The ceremony was performed by a member of the Maori royal family, Tumate Mahuta. The Rev. Canon Wi Huata conducted the service, assisted by the Rev. S. Kemara and the Rev. C. Shortland. The late Mr Tuhakaraina was a leader of the Ngati Haua tribe, being secretary of the Morrinsville tribal committee and of the Te-Ao-o-Waikato tribal executive. He was also a member of the Tainui Trust Board.