A cousin bragged once that he'd snuck into the garden when no one was looking, and got away with a banana. A whole banana!

It was green, and made him sick, and when Grandad found out, he got a boot up the backside.

Growing bananas as far south of the equator as Auckland is no mean feat. But, if anyone was up for it, it was Hughie Douglas.

He was born in 1928 (Ngati Raukawa, Te Arawa and Ngati Tangata), and grew up in Opoutere. He was the potiki, the youngest of the whanau, and the only son.

On the 28th Maori Battalion website, where Grandad's service in the J Force is documented, his occupation is listed simply as "farmer". It seems such an inadequate word to describe the talent that lay within him.

In those days, everybody lived off the land. Potatoes, marrow, pumpkin, silverbeet, rhubarb — all of it came from your own garden. But, for Grandad, turning the soil and knowing how to read the seasons wasn't just about sustaining life.

It was about nurturing the beauty of nature for its own sake. He loved flowers. The more colourful and unusual the better. And cactus. He cultivated more varieties of cactus in his lifetime than you'd find in an encyclopedia.

Grandad inherited the green eyes of his Scottish grandfather. They were like a magnet, those eyes, but there was only one girl for him. That was Iritana Kairau, my nan.

She was one of 14 children from Dargaville, of Ngapuhi and Ngati Hine whakapapa. They met at a dance in Mangakino after the war. When she smiled, she lit up the whole room. Continue reading

• Nadine Millar writes for E-Tangata, a Maori and Pasifika Sunday magazine.

Nearly one quarter of all Maori live in the Auckland region, far away from their iwi.

Many have no connection to their whakapapa, and only about one-fifth can hold a conversation in Maori - with increasingly fewer young people among that number.

So where is home for them?

Mother-of-one Sarah Babbington, 20, is what people call "urban Maori". She has ties to Ngati Kahungunu, Ngai Tahu and Ngati Porou iwi, but lives in Auckland.

Like many urban Maori, she has two homes. The first is her mother's house in west Auckland. "Home is this house. We've been here the longest. It's the people who are here, so I think wherever my family, like my mum and my son Noah, is - that's home."

Home is where she shares good food and music with her family, but her turangawaewae is Masterton, where she was born. Continue reading.

Source: The Wireless

Photo: The Wireless