LIFE IN THE BACKBLOCKS.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 December 1921, Page 4 (Supplement)

LIFE IN THE BACKBLOCKS.

SOME INTERESTING INCIDENTS. (By C.S.L.) A very big river winds for miles near and through the valley, and along its banks there was once a considerable Maori settlement. It was a place of refuge for remnants of King Country tribes left from the fierce Waikato onslaughts, and here -for sixty years the Maoris waned and grew strong on the pigs and fern of the bush, and the big eels of the river, and then again sallied forth to meet their foes. A few only drifted back, and the last of these has recently died. He was a garrulous and friendly old chap, deeply tatooed and had a story to fit everything. Pointing to a heap of stones far away from the river bank the boss said one day to Old Sol: “Maori fire there once, eh? Why so far from pah?” “Ah,” said the old man, “what you call ‘long pork’ there once. Meta, he very lazy, very lazy fellow indeed, eat a lot but do no work. So Maori they let him get very fat, very fat indeed, then one day ask him to go in canoe to get wild pig, but he ‘pig’ instead. Oh! very, very good, very tender, very nice, ah, ah!” Very regretfully he was evidently thinking of the good old days, when cold missionary on the sideboard graced the feast, and Maori meat was every day dinner. A good many Maori drift occasionally into the valley, and cherry, merry fellows they are too. At the shearing shed a Maori is more often than “not the ringer of the board. One big fellow had a great way of putting his shears up to his ear and working the blades to see if they ran smoothly, at the same time whistling between his teeth: “Wee, wee!” One day, however, he was racing. Up went the blades, but “wee, wee!” changed very suddenly into an agonised “woo, woo!” as the shears snipped his ear. How the men all roared!

Another half-caste was a very fastidious fellow, and always hated to get out of his clean clothes into his shearing togs, which were always left in the shed. Very distastefully he would pick up the greasy singlet, and with an “onch” of disgust, thrust his head through: “Good money, boys, good money,” he would say, and then wriggling aboit t a lot to prevent the clothes touching him too much. “Yah! Yah! Good money, though, good money.”

Bird lip is very plentiful in the bush. Just at the break of day a great chorus of bell birds bursts forth, and tlie sound is absolutely enthralling. At night one hears 'the kiwis calling to and answering each other, and every year on or about October 22, at 9 p.m.. almost exactly, one hears the cry of the flying cuckoo overhead. Thence onward for a week or more the cry is repeated at the same time every night.

The native rat is still the one to worry the bush camps. It doesn’t gnaw its way in; it climbs, and the bush mice are peculiar, too. They make a singing noise instead of the usual squeak, squeak. Wekas are not plentiful, but some very tall stories are told of them. One is very funny. A settler living by himself, made a pet of a tame weka (woodhen), and it used to run in and out of his hut. One day he shut the door and went out all day. When he opened his door in the late afternoon a very sick and bedraggled looking weka staggered out, and flopped into the scrub. Investigating, he found that the weka had hopped on to a shelf, where he kept his store of patent medicines, and had well and truly sampled the contents of a box* of anti-bilious pills. But never again did the weka, when he recovered from his orgy, trust a human creature. He had done with them for good! The women of the valley are all V'ery active, but the stairs in the towns when they go there bother them not a little. One such lady, whist visiting the capital city, was assisted up the steps of a double decker tram-car by the guard, who waggishly remarked, “.Should try some yeast, madam; you’d rise better.” “So should you,” went back the quick retort, “and you'd be better bred!” Mustering near the homestead is not a job hankered after by any of the men. “Blooming” is thought the only proper epithet, and after working over unfamiliar ground with refractory dogs and “bloominged well knocked their blooming heads off.” until well and truly hoarse, a man is just naturally glad to pass it on to the next fellow. Christmas Eve is the great time of the year. One and all and neighbors gather at the homestead, where a Christmas tree with gifts for all, and the Annual Station Chronicle, with contributions from each one of them, awaits their perusal and attention. And there’s “Jolly fun in the valley!”