Northland Maoris Go by Air

Chronicle (Levin), 20 September 1949, Page 7

Northland Maoris Go by Air

AUCKLAND, Sept. 18. Maoris of Northland have taken to air travel with a casual acceptanee that has surprised ofiicials of the National Airways Corporation. The Loekheed Electra aircraft that fly daily between Whenuapai, Onerahi, Kaikohe and Kaitaia have a substantial number of Maoris among their regular passengers, and these range from schoolchiidren to aged men and women, who sliow'every confidence in a means of transport that would probably have scared their parents into the bush. Kaikohe and Kaitaia, both large centres of Maori population, provide many of the Maori travellers on the airways. One group of young men training at the rehabilitation ' carpentry school at Kaikohe travels regularly to Kaitaia at weekends, and pupils oi Kaikohe 's Northland College also include some who fly to and frpm their homes in othar parts of the North each term. Maori Mormoms of the Nortn also exchange visits with fellowreligionists living in east coast districts, using the airways for convenience as a regular thing. Among the Northland Maoris who have abandoned bu£ ancl train in favour of aircraft is one elderly woman of rank whose example is believed to have vveighed heavily with other aged people. She flies oceasionally to Whangarei, anu her acceptance of twentieth-century travel is thought to have convinceu others of the older school that there is no loss of dignity involved in keeping abreast of the times. Maoris of the Whangarei and Kaitaia districts had plenty of opportunity during the war to become accustomed ai least to the sight and sound of aircraft, because the Royal New Zealand Air Force had busy stations near bota towns. However, Kaikohe's flne aerodrome, with one runway, nearly a mile, long, was not completed in time for war use and many of the Kaikohe Maorib who fly so easually today had scarcel}seen a plane until recently. That has not prevented many of them from making air line bookings with as little concern as thev buy picture theatre tickets, nor did it dissuade one enthusiast from including among his personal luggage a vast bag of kumaras fiDm his own garden. Air line officials believe that the virfual disappearance of toheroas from the Ninety Mile Beaca has automatically prevented the inelu sion of this delicacy in the baggage oi some travellers from the North.