taunga. There were karaka berries, kaeo, karengo, paua, kuku, and all the delectable varieties of sea foods, inanga tuarenga, ngaore, tuna, heke and fish of all sorts. So Freddy pitched camp on this beach, happy in the knowledge that the cost of living would be at a minimum, and rent, free. ‘After all, the old folk lived this way, and I'm not afraid to turn the clock backwards to make another start,’ he said. Freddy seemed doomed to a life of misfortune, as calamity struck again. One warm balmy night at 11.00 p.m. the god of the sea, Tangaroa, expressed his wrath, maybe because Freddy was attempting to turn back the hands of time. No, it might have been the god of earthquakes, Ruaumoko, or did they both combine to show their displeasure at the impertinence of this human? Across the ocean of Kiwa many miles away in Hawaii, tidal waves lashed the shores of the Polynesian Islands, arousing a terrific oceanic upheaval that lashed with an unwinding spume of angry water twenty feet in height to completely engulf the truck, Freddy and Martha and all their worldy possessions and whisk them away in the receding wash. The story could have ended here with a coroner's note of ‘loss by misadventure’. but the ancestral home of Te Hauke where Freddy first received a welcome was too the birth place of Te Hapuku, the paramount chief of Heretaunga, signatory to the Treaty of Waitangi for the Heretaunga tribes, philanthropist to the early European settlers of Hawke's Bay, and he, like the great fish that gave him his name, once more, in spirit fashion, came to the rescue of his hapless relative, and steered him safely back to the sands of Papatuanuku, devoid of all belongings except the yellow truck, and after such a battering it too was a liability and might just as well have gone the same way and been declared lost at sea like the other possessions. Penniless, homeless, sadder and wiser, Freddy and Martha began again in the spirit so aptly described by Kipling in his poem ‘IF’. Not dreaming any longer, they realised that the rainbow was aeons awav. Experience had prepared them for realities, and made them aware of the need to look carefully at the future. No longer interested in the elusive speculative return from unclothing animals, nor in the doubtful realm of the successful contractor. Freddy sought for himself a job in a factory, and Martha found happiness in a home provided by the state. With their new but more stable outlook in life, again with the use of their hands they began to rebuild their place in the community. Freddy's natural ability with things mechanical soon won for himself a position as driver of a lovely new yellow truck; not his, but it gave him joy and pride wherever he was required to go. Back to twenty stone, he began to reduce weight by taking a course of gymnastics, and one of those ‘diet fads’ for he was keen to get those beautiful muscles back in trim again, if not by shearing then in his spare time at the YMCA. He was successful in his endeavour, because in twelve months he managed to reduce to twelve stone, his normal working weight. Fit and active once more he was persuaded to accept an invitation to invest in an insurance scheme. Although he had no knowledge of its purpose or its value, like thousands of other Maoris, he accepted because, as he said, ‘If those Pakeha blokes take out insurance, it must be all right.’ Duly examined medically fit, he assigned ten shillings per week from his wages to look after the premium payments. Meanwhile, Martha found herself sufficiently strong despite the one eye handicap to work to supplement the family income, and so life moved along quietly, but more securely. They learned too how much better life could be with less bustle and worry, and without the hard grind of the shearing shed. Freddy no longer had white spots before his eyes, or suffered the mad rush from shed to shed, the worry of the rain that caused delays in work programmes and raised the costs of feeding the gang — ‘No work, no pay, but we still have to eat’. He no more worked by the sweat of his brow for money that seemed to pour through the fingers like sand, with an aching back and sore muscles, chasing that elusive season's tally — 10,000, 12,000, 15,000 — and no better off at the close. Philosophically, Freddy still agreed that hard work never killed any man, and maybe he'd have another go later on. He didn't tell Martha about the insurance policy either, because she would have laughed at him, especially since he had