Jacinda Ardern has missed the opening day of New Zealand's parliament to assist with the clean-up from Cyclone Gabrielle, making a surprise appearance in Hawke's Bay.
The former prime minister helped make up food parcels in Waipatu Marae, near Hastings, on Tuesday.
One local told the NZ Herald she spent time listening to personal stories in between cutting watermelons.
"It was a bit of a shock because you know, not being prime minister, you then go, well what is she doing here?" Derek, the local, said.
"It was such a surprise but then at the same time not a surprise because it was like Aunty came back to help out."
Ms Ardern announced her exit from politics last month and made it official on Tuesday.
Parliament's Speaker Adrian Rurawhe announced he had received her resignation letter as the MP for Mt Albert, which will take effect April 15.
The cyclone clean-up continues apace across much of New Zealand's North Island, with teams facing the almighty problem of where to put much of the waste, including huge amounts of potentially toxic silt.
There is also a race to account for the many Kiwis who have been reported uncontactable.
In the communications vacuum created by power outages and mobile phone towers being knocked out, friends and family tabled more than 5000 missing persons reports with police.
More than 100 police have been tasked with establishing the whereabouts of those people, and as of Wednesday morning, about 800 remain unresolved.
Where phone-based inquiries don't track those people down, that's where search and rescue teams on the ground come in, including the Australian team in Napier.
Graeme Hall, a search and rescue specialist with Queensland Fire and Emergency Services, says his team have hit the ground running.
"We're used to working in arduous conditions and a deployment like this is what we train for," he told AAP.
Mr Hall is a veteran of several Queensland cyclones dating back to Larry in 2006 and, like many Australian rescue experts, was also deployed to the 2011 Christchurch earthquake - which occurred exactly 12 years ago on Wednesday.
He said conditions were most like those in 2011 Grantham floods, which then-premier Anna Bligh called "an inland tsunami".
The Australians are combing the Esk Valley, one of the hardest hit areas, chalking off hard-to-reach properties.
"On work sites in the field we have to dig, relieve debris and clear an area," Mr Hall said.
"We're all trying to put together a big jigsaw puzzle, checking where they last lived ... we look downstream, see where the water may have flowed, to a fence or trees."
They are yet to find any additional bodies. Despite the potentially morbid nature of the work, Mr Hall describes it as uplifting.
"Our teams train for this, to get out in the field, and when you do a search and you don't find something, it's really quite good," he said.
The team has deployed for an initial 10-14 days, and Mr Hall says they have been put up in relative luxury.
The teams are used to staying in tents in the field. Instead, they are bunking down after their 12-hour days with the Kiwi rescue teams under a grandstand at a sports field.
"And we've got nice hot showers, so it's happy days," Mr Hall said.
New Zealanders are also reaching into their pockets to support those doing it tough after Gabrielle.
Appeals from news companies Stuff and NZME have raised a combined $NZ9 million ($A8.2 million) and rising.
Stuff also reports that Maori iwi (tribes) across the country are quietly donating huge sums to affected communities, with South Island iwi Ngai Tahu alone giving $NZ1 million ($A906,000).
