COMFORTS FOR MAORI TROOPS

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 43, 14 November 1940, Page 8

COMFORTS FOR MAORI TROOPS

Two Cases Of Dried Crayfish Two smalt cases from near . Gisborne have arrived at tlie National Patriotic Fund Board’s goods store in WeHingtou for shipment overseas to the Maori Battalion of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. No advice arrived, with the eases as to w hat they contained nor had any word been received beforehand. The cases, weie .unpacked and it was found that inside were large tins which had an aroma about them that was unusual ami powerful. The adhesive tape used to keep the lids firm had become unstuck on one of the tins, and the storeman, a European with no real appreciation of .Maori delicacies, felt that it would be as well to open up this tin to see that till was well. Wheu tlie storeman had peeled off the adhesive tape and had raised the lid the aroma grew in intensity. Inside the tin he discovered what appeared at first glance to resemble dried prawns. But the contents were not prawns. A note inside the tin disclosed that what the tin contained was dried crayfish, sent from Wbangara, Gisborne. And so sometime in the future, with a proper appreciation of comforts of this kind, Maori members of the N.Z.E.F. are destined to have some dried crayfish to remind them of their native land and that those of their race at home have not forgotten them. Comforts already dispatched to the New Zealand . troops have included other special delicacies for the Maoris, but nothing of quite this nature. In the main they have been tinned mutton birds and tins of toheroa soup. One result of the receipt of the dried crayfish probably will be that any future supplies of special comforts for the Maoris with a distinctive aroma will be taken for granted. It is understood that among other articles to be sent in the future will be such delicacies as dried shark, smoked eels, pauas, ami edible seaweed.