IMPRESSIONS ABROAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 16

IMPRESSIONS ABROAD.

TALK AT TRAVEL CLUB. The ladies' committee of the Auckland Travel Club entertained visitors at morning tea on Friday, in the clubrooms ill the Queen's Arcade. Miss Violet Roche, secretary of the Australian National Travel Association, in Sydney, and publicity agent for the Hotel Australia, gave an interesting account of her recent world tour. It was worth while being a colonial to get the thrill of seeing London for the first time, said Miss Roche Amongst other interesting events Miss Roche witnessed the launching of the Queen Mary (Cunard liner), the largest ship in the world. Then the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Kent to Scotland, when Miss Roche had the opportunity of observing the beauty of Princess Marina at close range. The princess, shs said, was just as beautiful as her portraits, tall and slim, with bine eyes and bronze-brown hair, and exceedingly smart in appearance.

The flight to Paria by night, the visit to Switzerland, and 10 days spent with -Mr. and Mrs. VV. Backhaus, and then on to the Riviera to etay with Mrs. Cora Brown .Potter, a famous actrese of the "nineties," were incidents spoken of by Mi.ss RocitC.

New York rose like a fairy city of enchantment out of the blue sea, with the tall skyscrapers of varying heights marking the horizon, in the speaker's opinion New York was the most stimulating city in the world, and was not the anticlimax to London which she expected. Washington was decribcd as the must classically beautiful city in the new or old world.

The women of New York were the smartest in the world, from the shop girl to the millionaire's wife. Next in style i«me the women of Montreal, and then San Francisco. Across Canada to Vancouver and then down by the Greyhound Bus Line to San Francisco, Miss Roche travelled, going on to Hollywood and Santa Barbara.

Before closing her address, Miss Roche gave a short description of the attractions Australia had to offer to visitors. Speaking of the koala bears, she said they were nocturnal animals, but Xoei Barnett, the proprietor of the Kaoi.i Hear Park, 20 miles out of Sydney, had trained them to keep awake in the afternoon by fending them at a certain hour, so that visitors could sec them at close range. Clue American tour director cabled Mr. Barnett as follows: "Wake up the hears at 10 a.m., 400 Americans to see them!"

Mrs. Macky, director, presented Miss Roche with a bouquet of roses and dahlias, and thanked the speaker on behalf of the club. Amongst the visitors present were: Airs. Roche, Mrs. Kerry (Sydney), Mrs. and Miss Greening (Suva), Mrs. Mazengarb and Mrs. Bridger (Wellington), Miss Murphy and Mr. Murphy (Dawson Falls).