going to the Chats by Shila Natusch That was what somebody's kind Maori grandmother, said, when we were waiting at the Wellington Airport for our call to board the Bristol Freighter: ‘Going to the Chats?’ She was, too, but just for the weekend. ‘I wouldn't like to live there!—couple of good seas, it would wash away!’ But plenty of kai moana: and the weather, though inclined to be misty and blowy, nothing like as rough as we'd been having over the first weeks of spring about Cook Strait. As a Stewart Islander now living in Wellington, I didn't expect to feel out of place in the Chathams. My husband, like most of his generation, had been overseas, but for me this was the first time—well, I was at least going to get a foot half-out of New Zealand! What to take? We were allowed 44Ibs luggage. My brother had been over the year before, so I wrote to him. He couldn't think of anything to add to my suggestions—‘but I'm not commodity minded,’ he wrote. ‘If for instance ice cream was banned and I didn't hear the news I wouldn't notice its absence perhaps for several years’—nowadays such things are obtainable at the Chathams anyway. For our own use, he recommended short gumboots: ‘handy in bad weather as they can be kicked off at doorsteps as is custom to stop dragging mud in. Each house has a little row of little gumboots at back door. All the same brand—red tops—obviously sold at Chatham Store. No doubt sometimes the wrong boots go on the right feet. Gumboots without red tops and got in New Zealand would be easily identified.’ We also took tramping gear, a camera, a couple of sketchbooks, and a few things like oranges and bananas to fill the corners: no doubt there would be enough Chatham Island vegetation and rock samples to fill a couple of Bristol Freighters on the way home! I was pleased to note that we could see out: the Chathams plane has a passenger box that slides in and out, and its windows line up with those of the plane. What did we see?—we saw the sea; but the Pacific was terrific: just white-speckled blue from up there, but mighty crashing combers at boat-level. I shouldn't wonder. I'd like to have gone by sea, but the Holmdale is not a Women's Lib. ship. The freighter flew on, steady as a rock. We were given a tasty and substantial lunch.