MORE PUBLICITY NEEDED

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21085, 9 February 1934, Page 8

MORE PUBLICITY NEEDED

♦ ATTRACTIONS OF THE DOMINION AN ENTHUSIASTIC TOURIST'S VIEWS "What I cannot understand is why Englishmen with sufficient time and money should spend their winters on the Riviera when the British dominions such as New Zealand offer incomparably finer attractions and far greater certainty in weather conditions. It seems to me that judicious advertising of New Zealand's charms should divert a great deal of this tourist traffic from the Mediterranean," remarked Dr. A. E. Porter, of Reigate, England, a retired medical officer of health, who with his wife is spending three months in New Zealand, in conversation with a representative of "The Press" last evening.

Both Dr. Porter and Mrs Porter are enthusiasts concerning New Zealand, and they have many friends here. They visited the Dominion six years ago, but their connexion with New Zealanders commenced during the Great War, when Mrs Porter, who was trained as a singer before her marriage—she is, incidentally a sister of H. M. Bateman, the famous cartoonist—organised many entertainments for Anzacs in England. She made a great number of friends from Auckland to Invercargill, and it has been a great pleasure to her to renew these acquaintances during her two visits to the country.

"A Glorious Country"

"New Zealand is a glorious country; I like its scenery and its mode of life, and I like its people very much," Dr. Porter said. On his previous visit he saw most of the attractions of the country, but did not visit the West Coast glaciers. He has just returned from Franz Josef and (the Fox, and found them all that he had been led to expect. "As a member of the Alpine Club since 1906, I did not expect to be thrilled by the glaciers themselves, although it is wonderful to find them coming down to within 500 feet of sea level, while in Switzerland they are seldom below 5000 feet. What I was intensely interested in was the bush, which I can only describe as magnificent. I was very keen, too, to see the ranges topped by Mount Cook and Mount Tasman from the west, but the view from the glaciers was obscured by rain." Dr. Porter has been very much terested to learn of the great increase in interest in mountaineering, and he said that New Zealanders had a wonderful field for this fine sport. Climbjng in the Dominion was frequently more difficult than in Switzerland; for while the peaks were lower the starting points for clim were much below the level of those in Switzerland, and the actual climbing height was greater. The weather in the Southern Alps was much more uncertain than in Switzerland, but here, owing to the lower altitude, the risks attending a night out on a mountain were less" serious. Interest in Nursing Services One of the features of New Zealand life that have impressed Dr. Porter is the nursing service of the St. John Ambulance organisations. He himself is a keen enthusiast in the St. John work in England, being an acting assistant commissioner in charge of the Surrey division of the brigade as well as an officer of the I Order of St. John. The St. John nursing services in New Zealand, particularly those known as the bush nursing services, he said, were doing a wonderful work. This work was largely in the hands of the local authorities in England, but the St. John services had reached a high state of development, and were particularly valuable in accident cases and invalid transport. Dr. Porter said he was not visiting New Zealand professionally. He had retired from the position of medical officer of health in a large district in Surrey some years ago on account of ill-health. He said that on his previous visit to Christchurch he had met Colonel F. W. W. Dawson and Dr. R. B. Phillipps, who had enabled him to inspect the openair schools in Christchurch. He had been so impressed with these that when he returned to England he persuaded his own municipal authority to affirm the principle. A new school which was being built by the council was designed on openair lines. A Healthy People "New Zealand, with its abundance of fresh air and sunlight, should be a healthy country, and good health appears to be general throughout the population. But, more than that, I think New Zealanders are developing into a magnificent race. "I remember, seeing a summer school of young people at the Waitaki High School on my last visit here, and their physique put me in mind of the surf teams of the New South Wales beaches. They were not so well developed, of course, for the latter are picked men who give up a very great deal of time to this healthy sport. I think they were teachers or university students, and I could not help thinking that they were ideal examples of manhood and womanhood." Attracting the Tourist Asked by the reporter whether lie considered New Zealand's publicity in England was extensive enough and sufficiently effective to attract tourists. Dr. Porter said that he thought much more could be done on these lines. He said that South Africa had set about advertising its attractions very systematically, and it had undoubtedly built up a very large and profitable tourist traffic. There were many well-to-do Englishmen who were anxious to get away from the English winter each year, and extraordinarily enough they went, as a rule, to the Riviera, where the weather was frequently little better than that of England, and certainly did not offer the attractions that the Dominion offered, although possibly its casinos, cocktails, and aperitifs were attractive to some.

The New Zealand Government office in London was a splendid organisation. said Dr. Porter, but its work could not be fully effective while the attractions of the country were not kept before the notice of the public, PivPortep believed that

the mountains and lakes of New Zealand were unrivalled for their scenery, but a large section of the travelling population of England was profoundly ignorant of this and also of the great sporting facilities of the country. Dr. and Mrs Porter will spend about two months in the North Island before they sail for Sydney on April 13. They inl? nd ., to T , hire a motor-car in the Worth Island and visit most of the scenic resorts, including Tongariro National Park, which neither has yet seen.