
3 minute read
Pipiwharauroa
I was born in 1947 at Waipiro Bay to Sam (Hamiora) Moeke and Wahinengaroroamatekitewhenua (Hine) Moeke, nee Houia of Reporua. In my early years we lived on Moeke whānau land just out of Ruatōria.

Advertisement
I’m the oldest in the family, my siblings are Kessie, the late Tau Korea and my two beautiful whangai sisters.

My mother and father were hard workers and frequently camped out to take on jobs like scrub cutting while our Nan, my mother’s mother Keriana nee Gerrard looked after us. Once a year she caught the Road Services bus to Gisborne and on arrival immediately headed off to the Barwick’s auction where she bought clothes and cut them down to fit us tamariki. She also cut down and refitted my father’s trousers for me and my brother. I usually only had two pairs, one for swimming and the other for wearing everywhere else, if the second pair got dirty playing rugby I was in real trouble.
I was the only one in my whānau to have a bicycle and we rode horses or walked to school some four kilometres away. I never once got boils even though we always rode bareback. I went to Manutahi and Huriharama Schools but schooling just didn’t interest me as I got the strap for speaking Māori, imagine the public outcry with the most creative ones being, “I lost my pencil” or “My family cannot afford one.”
For entertainment we had the local picture theatre, we could catch the bus for a shilling or ride one of the horses, that was if Edward Keelan had not taken off with it. When we hit town we took off its bridle and it turned around and trotted off back home. Once there it grazed along the fenceline until we returned to let it back into the paddock. Going to the beach was a favourite pastime. We were taught by the old people to mimi on the collection kete and, once in the sea, easily collected kaimoana from its abundant storehouse of kina, kutai, paua, koura and octopus.
From the shore we gathered pipi and bubu. We always only took enough kaimoana for our needs. When we arrived home Nan shelled the paua then dropped them into a bucket of rendered mutton fat to be preserved before being cooked and eaten up to three months later. Fishing was always an adventure catching herrings, kahawai and shark that we stripped, salted and hung out to dry to also be eaten at leisure.
We made our own hinaki to catch eels, Mum gathered worms for bait shredding each one into long strips that we attached to six lengths of flax tied to a Mānuka pole before dipping them into the water. As soon as we felt the slightest of tugs we flicked the lines to the side while the helpers ran around excitedly yelling they had caught it in the bag. Quite often though we heard a plopping sound as they fell to the ground, boy did Dad get mad with them.
We had a house cow, a pretty wild thing that had to be chased into the corner of the paddock and baled up by tying a rope from one fence to the other before she could be milked. We also had a horse called Rising Fast that Mum broke in. It too was a wild thing that reared up and pranced from side to side whenever anyone tried to mount her. She was from an ambler we had and a stallion owned by the local headmaster.
When he was away one time Dad popped the ambler into the stallion’s paddock and couple of days late told me to sneak down and see if it had any markings on her back. I duly reported that her back was covered in mud and was left wondering why he immediately took off to retrieve her. Perhaps, I thought to myself, it just needed a wash.
The paddocks around us were leased to local pākehā farmers and were an occasional source of mutton and my parents swapped firewood for a mutton with a Chinese man when he was in the district. We also enjoyed a reasonably regular supply of mutton during shearing time when my parents worked for a local pākehā by the name of McCosh, Mum was a fleeso and Dad a presser. Dad had been hit in the leg during World War 2 with machine gun fire as he dived for cover into a foxhole.
This is probably why he never became a shearer and refused to consider taking up the offer of having it amputated and replaced with a prosthetic leg despite the pain he suffered. From his war experiences Dad was pretty good at sneaking through the bush surrounding Ruatōria successfully hunting for wild game including wild pigs. He was a master at skinning and preparing carcasses for the dinner table.
My parents had a connection to the Ringatū haahi on my mother’s father’s side. I have a vague memory of him baptising