ate committee he organised the All Aotearoa Hui Topu at Ngaruawahia. Under his chairmanship the pastorate has set its sights on the erection of a new Maori vicarage in the centre of its area, Te Kuiti.

Early Memories of Gum-Digging Born in 1895 at Waahi Pa, Bill is the second son of Kohi Takaro of Ngati Te Ata of Waikato, and Erana Kershaw of Ngati Ruanui of Taranaki. He has early memories of the fun, and the hard work, of the periodical gum-digging expeditions on which his parents took him and his six brothers and sisters. He well remembers the two packhorses on which his parents used to transport all their equipment and camping gear. They would pitch their camp in the marshy gumlands at the back of Puketapu below Waahi Pa, and often, as an added comfort for their week's stay, they would put up a nikau parau (shelter). This done, Takoro and Erana would leave the older children to cook the family meal in a camp oven while they speared and dug around in the vicinity for the kauri gum nuggets that added to their livelihood. ‘At night,’ Bill recalls, ‘we used to help Mum and Dad to clean, scrape and sort the gum, which was sold later to the storekeeper at Huntly, who was also the gum buyer.’ He added, laughing, ‘I remember one particular night when we kids made a big thick bed of fern beside a hole full of hot embers. We had two blankets, one for under us and one on top. After playing around for a while we drifted off to sleep under the starry sky. Somehow during the night we rolled, bed and all, over our open-air heater. We woke up with a start, stampeding out of bed — our prized blankets were scorched and burning!

First Down the Mines ‘After this my father secured a permanent job with the Mines Department and our lot greatly improved. He sent us to the Maori school and later to the Huntly school. For a number of reasons, mostly lack of finance, this was all the formal education I received, much as I desired more. ‘I remember that my father was the first Maori to go underground on that mining job. No self-respecting Waikato then would venture into the bowels of Hine Nui i te Po. Father did, and apart from improving our family's situation, he bought himself a coveted pair of duck trousers. This blew up his chest in joyous conceit and set his bare feet underneath them prancing, as he showed off the cut of his fancy pants to his gaping mates. After this the old tapu was laid aside as other Maoris increasingly ventured into the mines to seek their livelihood. ‘From school I went to work till World War One intervened with my period of overseas service. After my discharge from the army in 1919 I worked as a fitter at Rotowaro. My earnest desire was to save enough money to buy a piece of land and this wish I cherished deep within me.’ From Rotowaro Bill went to Wairoa to skipper the Wairoa harbour board's tug; later he worked on the Waikokopu breakwater. ‘It was at this time,’ Bill said, his eyes softening, ‘that I married my wife, who was Ngaurupa Paki of Huntly.’ He and his wife decided to take on one of the cook-houses for the construction workers on the Napier-Gisborne railway line, which was then being built. This proved most successful. Later he gained valuable experience managing a cattle farm at Drury. Then they moved to Taranaki where Bill leased two properties. Bill recalls, ‘My wife milked the cows on one farm while I contracted for harvesting and drain digging. Our children were coming along. This made us work all the harder.

Many Years of Hard Work ‘In 1929 I left Taranaki and bought a property of 360 acres at Honikiwi near Otorohanga. It almost broke our backs let alone our hearts, what with the ragwort infestation and cobalt sickness. We near starved to hold on … but we did it! Then World War II broke out and I left my wife and family to hold the home fort while I went to Auckland as a musketry instructor. When war eventually turned again to peace, I sold that farm. We bought a gorse and blackberry infested place in historic Kopua, the fount of Christianity for Ngati Maniapoto on the banks of the Waipa river. The house into which we moved was rat-infested and without power. My family declared I was mad. The land was flat and good. Our roadway in at first was across a lagoon on a rickety canoe, which went down one night with all my family in their finery returning from a dance. ‘It was a pleasure to demolish that house later, when the land was cleared, and build my family an all-electric one with every convenience. For all the gorse and blackberry,’ Bill