Pumpkins.

Random memories take me back to Kerikeri, that beautiful little nook of the North, with its historic buildings in the sleepy hollow at the head of a Bay of Islands tidal river. Once two of us took motor-car from an inland township to Kerikeri, going by way of Waimate the old mission station, and that clay road which was the very first road made for wheels in New Zealand, and which is still almost the very worst. Our car-driver was a stalwart young Czecho-Slovakian, or Jugo-Slavian, as they call them now— I am not sure which—but in those days we called them all Austrians or else Dalmatians.

While we explored Kerikeri he did some shopping in the venerable bluestone store, built a century ago by the Church Mission people. Where Bishop Selwyn once kept his library, they now buy kauri gum, huge pumpkins and other produce, fruit and maize, and all mariner of garden stock for shipment by the Russell launch. Our chauffeur came away with the largest ironbark pumpkin I had ever seen; one of the kind that would last a good-sized family a week, served up in one way and another.

On our way home, the driver asked us if we would mind waiting for him a few minutes while he delivered the pumpkin at a farm house which stood near the roadside, not another house in sight for miles. We consented, and off he trotted, hugging his monster pumpkin. We waited page 23 twenty minutes, then he returned, beaming all over his good-humoured face. He told us, with frank delight, that it was a present to his sweetheart; she was the daughter of the house, and she was extremely fond of ironbark pumpkins. And he beamed and chuckled and sang to himself all the way home.

I hope they're raising big pumpkins together now, as becomes the backbone of the country. And, whether or not, I am glad to have done my little bit towards that idyll of the backblocks, to the extent of twenty minutes wait on the old clay road to Waimate in the North.