Hinemoana Baker was recently one of four writers and storytellers on Toi Maori Aotearoa's 'On The Bus 2006' tour (front: Mere Boynton, Hera Taute, Kuri. Back: James George, Apirana Taylor, Hinemoana Baker, Ralph Walker, Keri Kaa. Photo taken by Jasmine Kaa, outside Keri Kaa's home in Rangitukia). The 'bus' visited schools and venues on the North Island's East Coast.

LeafSalon is pleased and proud to have had access to Hinemoana's tour diary. (Note: she sent it with all the right te reo accents, which our programme can't quite cope with - it's on the fix-it pile). A big shout out to Hinemoana taking the time to pass this on, I've been badgering the poor girl something shocking for a 'Words on Wheels' roundup. I'd just like to say how very glad I am that we got this quietly gleaming gem instead – it sat, perhaps, a little closer to her soul:

“By the time I was 14 most of my friends' parents had split up, and so had mine. My mother and I moved away from Dad to Nelson. For the first time, most of my friends' parents were still together.

I remember one conversation with a fellow student who was effusing about how much she loved her dad.

'He's so fantastic,' she said. 'Really easy to talk to, easy to be around. He lets me do most things. I really love him.'

'Cool,' I said. 'Where does he live?'

There was a short silence. She looked at me funny.

'At home.' she said. 'With my mother.'

Today's workshop was a bit like this. I don't write or read music - when I write songs, I do it on a guitar. During the workshop, one of the students told me he was a musician, wrote songs, really loved it, and played the clarinet, too.

'Great!' I said. 'What do you compose on?'

Another one of those silences, another look.

'On stave paper,' he said.

*

Hard to think of a nicer place to spend a week - Te Tairawhiti, the East Cape. On a tour, of course, you don't get to spend much time soaking up the vibe. But you can't beat a beach view, whatever else you're distracted by. When we arrived here at the Whispering Sands Motel on Waikanae Beach, Gisborne, I walked right through my room, out the sliding doors and onto the sand.

At dinner we had a meeting - over spicy Thai food and glasses of local wine - about the business of the tour. Four gigs a day mostly, sometimes five, Mere tells us. Mainly schools, with the odd evening performance for grown-ups. I think about the Words On Wheels tour I've just been on - how we all agreed that four school classes a day plus an evening gig was too many. The audience said we looked tired that night. We were.

I tell Mere what I think of the timetable, to the delight of Apirana Taylor, seated and drinking beside me. It spices up the conversation. I must admit I like having a good, straight up discussion, especially with other women who aren't afraid of it. Mere isn't. She gives it straight back. Makes me smile, wonder if we don't have some Ngati Porou in us.

Very glad I've bought my laptop with me - for music's sake, really, rather than writing. Patti Smith's gorgeous, raucous 'Jubilee' is the perfect soundtrack to the whispering sands outside the Whispering Sands. Realising I need noise to concentrate - like my father, whose seven radios always seem to be tuned to a different but equally as obnoxious talkback station. He seems frightened of silence.

*

In the van, wondering if there are any shock absorbers. I'm feeling panicked about writing down my family's Ngai Tahu genealogy and sending it to the tribe's whakapapa unit. It's something I've avoided because I get freaked out about not being the right person to do it. Something about being in Ngati country is making it feel more urgent.

Yesterday at Gisborne Girls' High, James George told the students: 'Starting at the beginning doesn't necessarily mean starting at the beginning of the story. It means starting at the first place that makes you want to keep writing, that moves you to carry on.' He read a piece where he described two teenagers having sex for the first time - 'playing the piano wearing boxing gloves'.

Apirana did his Te Rauparaha and Kapiti Island poems, declaring every line in his extraordinary rumbling bass. Maybe it's those Ngati Toa whakaaro that are pushing me to think about the South Island stuff. I stood up after him and spoke about my generation of Ngati Toa Rangatira - how nowadays, you seldom find any of us who don't whakapapa to both tribes because of the marriages our old people arranged. They were trying to stop the bad feeling from being passed down.

I finished my set by singing Hana O'Regan's song 'E Hine' - such a beautiful waiata, composed in the old style, like a chant, minimum melody, maximum emotion. Mere and I were both a bit tearful over our cups of tea.

I'm having a time of feeling in awe of novelists. The length of the thing! How they hold it all. At dinner tonight, cooked by the lovely Ralph Walker in his home-cum-art-gallery, I told James the quote I love from Mau Piailug, a tohunga, a master navigator from Satawal in the Caroline Islands: 'Point the canoe, and bring the island to it.'

Yes, James agreed, writing a novel can be like that. Bringing the book to you.

*

For this tour, I am wearing my new tiki brooch - a gift from my jeweller friend, Arana. The tiki's made of felt - orange, brown and Air New Zealand blue. His puku is slightly padded, a small dent at the little brown stitch of his belly-button.

Today at Manutuke School, after I explained about my book and the famous guy who'd helped me publish it, and showed all the pictures, and after I sang a song, and opened the floor … the first question was 'What's your tiki's name?'

I passed him around. The children all twiddled his mussel-shell eyes and his big safety pin.

*

Swimming at Anaura Bay this morning. The water was so cold and calm and the morning sun so hot it felt like bathing in electricity.

We're staying at Aunty Keri Kaa's place in Rangitukia tonight. When we pulled into her driveway, she and two of her ginger cats were on the roro, on the verandah, ready to greet us. Gratitiude and weariness washed over me. It felt just like arriving in Okaiawa in Taranaki, to my Uncle Tutua and Aunty Kath's farmhouse. Aunty Kath would let me play with the puppies all day if I wanted, even though they gave me fleas.

I walked into Keri's home in a daze and immediately went to sleep in a corner of her couch. Later she told me that all the performers who come to visit her seem to end up asleep in that spot. She and her whånau made us the most incredible spread, and Uncle Ralph did his Special Mussels. He told me what was in the marinade, but I shall not share it here.

'Ralph's out the back doing delectable things to mussels,' Aunty Keri kept saying.

We ate deluxe boil-up. Aunty Keri's delicious egg-plant concoction - she told me the name several times and I still can't remember it. She put her favourite Demis Roussos album on to get us in the mood. Then later, ambrosia for dessert: marshmallows, yoghurt, cream, perfectly sweet and sour.

Hera Taute and I are sharing a room tonight. She just did a karakia for us before sleep. Her reo is so beautiful - she grew up with her grandmother. Instead of storytelling at every gig, she sometimes reads poems about her Nanny, the way her karanga sounded. One is about the little green house they lived in, the stories in the rafters, the kiss from a boy on the verandah.

*

Hera and I walked this morning.

We walked past a field where George Nepia used to train. There was a big sign, with a picture of him. Was he kicking the ball or running with it? Mental note: pay more attention to Rugby Landmarks.

There was mist in the hills - I teased Hera, our Tuhoe princess, that it must be making her feel at home. She teased me about pretty much everything else. We laughed loudly and talked about children and the van's shock absorbers and her singing work with Jack Body.

'Those girls are out scaring the local cows,' Aunty Keri told Mere when she got up.

Later, as we're climbing into the van, she's telling Mere the name of the tour's not quite right.

'Next year,' she says, 'call it 'On The Waka'.'

She's right, of course. The double-meaning's perfect.

*

On the last day, I'm rushing - I'm last out the door (we all seem to have had turns) and they're waiting on me in the 'bus'. I throw my laptop cord in some pocket of some bag, drag my shoes in a plastic shopping bag out through the heavy door-drapes, wrench my wrist when my suitcase pirouettes on its wheels over a bump.

When I'm finally still, in the airport queue, I can feel myself coming down, end-of-tour-sinking, settling into my usual post-gig mixture of sadness and relief. Anxiety about future income.

Api and Hera are at two airport tables, an energy drink in front of each of them. Mere's asking for half a latte so she can get it made before we have to board.

The announcement comes, and even though I'm present and accounted for, I still get a surge of adrenalin as our flight number is pronounced, its particular letters and numbers. I realise I didn't do a last rekky of the motel room. My hand goes to my pocket for my cellphone, to my bag for my wallet, then up to the front of my jacket and finds my tiki, the texture of a toy. I say his new name under my breath.

Manutuke and I walk up the frail steps into the small plane. I see Mere already in her seat, pinning her woven cowboy hat to her hair with a heru. Oh yes, we'll be landing in Wellington soon. She and Hera are talking, laughing, slapping each other across the aisle. Their voices mix with the engines starting, the phonetalk sound of the pilot's welcome, the hissing fresh-air vents.

Manutuke and I stow our hand-luggage under the seat in front of us. We switch off our cellphone. Our seatbelt makes its click.'