TOURIST PARADISE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 55, 6 March 1935, Page 9

TOURIST PARADISE.

FOR AUSTRALIANS. SHIP SERVICES CRITICISED. " PRACTICAL EMBARGO." Enthusiastic in his praises of New Zealand scenery, Mr. E. 0. Erickson, of Melbourne, managing director of the Pepsodent Co. (Australia) Proprietary, Ltd., and the Pepsodent Co. (N.Z.) Ltd., stated this morning that after a tour of the Dominion as far south as Invercargill that it was only the lack of suitable publicity overseas and the high fares and poor service on ships coming here that prevented New Zealand from being the, playground of Australian holidaymakers. During his tour of the Dominion, Mr. Erickson travelled 4000 miles by motor car and took with his cinematograph camera 1500 feet of filai, which will run on the projector for about two hours. On his return to Melbourne he intends to show the film there, after which, through the "movie" camera clubs, of which he is a member, it will be shown in all the chief cities of Australia. Australians Keen to Come. "You have here a little paradise, where every Australian would spend his holidays if there were a more regular steamer service, and if the fares across the Tasman were lower," said Mr. Erickson. "You can blame only the shipping companies for the isolation of New Zealand from the rest of the world. Australians, who visit this country go back, as I shall do, praising it to the skies. They fire their friends with the desire to come here, too, for their holidays. But then the shipping companies want to charge them upwards of £4 a day on their steamers, and tell them that if they miss one they may have to wait eight days for another. The ordinary business man, in Melbourne, for instance, taking two or three weeks' holiday, refuses to pay their exorbitant fares, and is also chary of being stranded in New Zealand through missing his steamer. Therefore he goes to the Blue Mountains, instead, saying all the time, "How I would have liked to visit New Zealand.' He has road so much of this country and has heard so much of it from New Zealanders, who are intensely patriotic when they go abroad, that he would come here if he could."

Incomparable Scenery. There was nothing in Australia, Mr. Erickson said, that could compare with Rotorua, the Southern Alps, or lakes Te Anau and Manapouri, but in order to see them he had wasted much time, having had to come back over his tracks to Auckland to catch the Monowai for Australia on Friday. A steamer service from Bluff would, he thought, greatly increase the tourist traffic, as visitors could then land at Auckland, see the Dominion from north to south, and then join a ship at Bluff for Australia. This would enable them to spend an interesting fortnight in the country. "Even on the motor trip from Auckland, where I arrived on February !), to New Plymouth, I should have used hundreds of feet of film had not- Mr. A. E. Marshall, of Wellington, our manager in New Zealand, dissuaded me, with promises of better scenes to come," said Mr. Erickson. "On that trip alone we passed through scenery that has no equal in Australia, and I was sincerely sorry that so many Australians who would delight in such a trip could not take it because the shipping companies will not cater for them." Potato Embargo "Trifling." Mr. Erickson said it was Mr. Marshall, an Australian by birth, who has lived in New Zealand for many years, who had pointed out that the "potato embargo" which is exercising the minds of politicians on both sides of the Tasman was a trifling matter as compared witli the practical embargo on tourist traffic resulting from high fares and poor service.

"The quantity of potatoes imported into Australia from New Zealand is about half of 1 per cent of Australia's consumption," he remarked. "This Dominion could make more out of Australian tourists than the value of her whole potato exports."