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Maori life on Motiti

18 November 1957

Monday 18 November 1957
I slept well in my dingy forward cabin with no engine noise, few fumes and little roll, and the successful fishermen did not call me to breakfast till ¼ to 7. After food we fished our way along the coast … we hurried through an early lunch and then put in for the muttonbirders …

About 8 miles from the island, half an hour out, there was an ominous clanking in the works department, Fred cut the engine out with alacrity, and disappeared into the bowels of the ship. And there he was for quite some time, emerging at intervals with a worried expression. Eventually he emerged, switched on the radio and sent out an SOS addressed to “any trawler working in the Bay of Plenty” … Within five minutes of getting on air, the welcome voice of Capt Mark of the trawler ‘Sea Ranger’ came booming into the cabin from a point somewhere between Whale Is and Tauranga, beyond Motiti but making in our direction. He said he would come to the rescue and would tow us in but it would take him about five hours to reach us … two muttonbirders and I hoped to get off at Motiti, a difficult business under tow, so the radio buzzed to and fro trying to lay on a powered dinghy to come and meet us …

About 11.30pm, three hrs after I had retired to my forward cabin, there came a voice “Ahoy there shipmate, land sighted” and I tumbled out and rolled my sleeping bag up. I went outside a little before midnight to find a dinghy alongside with three Motiti Maoris, Peter and Ira, Motiti muttonbirders and much gear aboard. Fred introduced me to my new host, George Aukaha, and I shook hands over the side with someone I couldn’t see in the dark, then tumbled in. I landed on something soft and shall never know whether it was a Maori tummy or a sack of muttonbirds, but it didn’t squeak. We were well out from the island, it took nearly ¼ hour to get in, during which George – who proved to be the chief of this Patuwai sub-tribe of the Whakatane-based Ngati Awa tribe – expressed surprise that I had the nerve to launch myself thus into the unknown at that time of night and said “I bet you’ve never done this before.” 

Eventually we ran in on a sandy beach, guided through the rocky reefs by two ‘headlights’ shining backwards from a couple of tractors. Shoes in hand and trousers rolled up, as usual not high enough, I stepped out into the sea, and loitered on the sand, while the swag was loaded on to the trailer of one tractor and the other backed down to the sea with a trolley on which the dinghy was loaded. I clambered on to the trailer and there followed a long bumpy ride over rutted sandy tracks round corners of paddocks and beside a dark belt of cliff-side pohutukawas. 

We stopped outside a neat modern villa, the only one on the island, and I was informed that this was where I was to stay. Aukaha assured me earnestly that I should be well looked after, nobody lived here – adding almost as an afterthought “only my two aunts, Charlotte Riritahi and Louise Pahu” and the adopted children, Ira Tomo, the junior 17-year-old muttonbirder and 6-year-old Philip. George especially asked me if I would make conversation as the aunts spoke very little English, saw few whites and were very shy. I gathered after that this community was a very conservative one, seldom allowing pakehas within its walls and that I had been very favoured …

I retired to bed delighted with these friendly hospitable folk and overjoyed that Ken Fraser’s plan for me to stay with the Paterson’s had gone awry.

Tuesday 19 November 1957
My Maori hosts were up bright and early, their usual hours being bedtime about 8pm and rising time about 5am, extraordinarily sensible as their hours of repose coincided with those of darkness instead of necessitating the use of hours of artificial light as did the pakeha organisation of day and night. My breakfast was scheduled for 8am, however, so I rose at the appointed hour and was presented with a huge plate of porridge followed by a large dinner plate covered with cold roast pork, upon the top of which resided three fried eggs. Bread and butter, scones, marmalade, sponge cake and tea followed! At a future meal, when presented with food in equivalent quantity, I complained that I only had one tummy. George rolled his eyes, patted his enormous corporation affectionately and remarked “Maori only one belly too – but what a belly!” …

A manned tractor had been chugging patiently outside while I did my chores and when ready I boarded it for a ride to George’s. Tractors here fitted with two padded drivers’ seats because a Maori never walked when he could ride and there was usually a passenger …

[Chief George Aukaha’s wife] The nearly round smiling little Matty  … was to guide me round the island to the bird colonies … We hoped and did catch the low tide which enabled us to descend the cliffs, walk what seemed an interminable distance along a shingle spit and gain the ‘Knoll’, a fairly large ungrazed tidal island about 100 ft high … I scrambled up the steep grassy overgrown cliff to the flat top and listed the vegetation in the entrances of 50 northern muttonbird burrows, grey-faced petrels, not sooties here as on White Island … Mostly flax here with long grass and bracken between and one large patch of Euphorbia glauca ...  

Wednesday 20 November 1957
… George and Matty came to lunch and at ¼ to 1 we all set off on the tractor trailer for the school … The young Maori schoolmaster expected me but was very shy and I found myself having to take the initiative. There were only 34 children in the school at present, all related and many adopted … 

They were all herded indoors and made to stand and say “Good afternoon, Doctor Gillham”, whereupon I said a few words and hoped they would sing for me. And sing they did (not in Maori as all school was in English, though they spoke Maori in the homes) beautifully – rich deep voices with far more body and rhythm to them than with pakeha children. Then outside into the sunshine for some action songs, and then we all squatted on the grass under the tree for them to ask me questions about anything they liked. The biggest pakeha boy started off with “How did you get here from England?” and they gradually warmed up to it … 

The schoolmaster eventually rescued me, sent the children off to play and the rest of us over to the schoolhouse for a swift afternoon tea … then we were away on a somewhat hair-raising tractor ride to the far end of the island, leaving the little girls kneeling on the grass playing Maori stick games in pairs.

… We arrived among the 100 or Angus steers in the airfield (after a few cheery words with young Paterson) eight minutes late but fortunately the plan was ten minutes late. A 2- seater tiger moth biplane, open unto the sea and to the sky …

I was garbed in a sheepskin jacket, fur-lined helmet, goggles, speaking tube and life-jacket, in case we came down in the sea, and strapped securely into the front cockpit with instructions to keep my feet off the rudder bar. I was too securely trussed to wave goodbye to my late hosts (who had, with true Maori hospitality, refused to accept any money for my stay, so that I had to leave some behind). The tractor and trailer got smaller and smaller as we circled over the diminishing island and headed away over the turbulent sea on which no boat had ventured. A very scenic trip with the mixed land and water system of Tauranga Bay becoming progressively clearer behind the line of white-fringed dunes leading out to Mt Maunganui and Rabbit Island. We circled to earth and taxied almost into the hangar …