82-Year-Old Fanner Who Wants Passport To Russia

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27441, 30 August 1954, Page 9

82-Year-Old Fanner Who Wants Passport To Russia

(From the London Correspondent of "The Press”) '■ . . - . •_ ' .

LONDON, August 9. A retired New Zealand farmer, aged 82 who is determined to “gatecrash the Iron Curtain and visit Russia,” Mr Thomas Hetherington, of Whangarei, is at present making a non-stop assault on the Russian consulate in Kensington. Ever since he arrived by air from New Zealand in May, Mr Hetherington has been making constant visits to the consulate to secure a passport visa to visit Russia.

“Although various assistants treated me coolly at first and I was given some evasive answers, I have seen the consul and I have high hopes of getting a visa,” he said today. “I have written out my autobiography several times and filled in numerous questionnaires so maybe they are going to take the risk and let an old man take a peep at their country.” Why does he want to go Moscow? “For honour and renown” is how Mr Hetherington puts it, although he admits that he has told the consular officials that he wants to see the wonderful agricultural methods and machinery adopted in Russia before he dies.

Spry and alert for his 82 years, Mr Hetherington describes himself as a “born gatecrasher” and one who is “rather short on cautiofi.” “If I do not get a visa I am going to travel to Germany and cross over into Eastern Germany,” he says. “I have had this trip to Moscow in my mind for years and I am not going to

be put off at this stage.” He adds with a smile: “You never know. I may become an international incident.”

Mr Hetherington’s “belated gallivanting,” as he describes his trip, started on April 2 when he left Auckland by air for Sydney. At an overnight stop at Singapore, he was nearly killed when a drug-crazed Malayan ran wildly into traffic with the rickshaw in which he was sitting. His aircraft later had to make a forced landing at ,a desert airfield in Saudi Arabia.

In Cairo, Mr Hetherington managed to secure a four-day permit from the Egyptian Government to visit the Western Desert on a pilgrimage to the grave of his son who was killed in the fighting at Minqar Quaim in 1942. He was unable to find his son’s grave at the Alamein memorial, however, and hdd to return to Cairo. He flew on to London by way of Athens and Rome. What prompted his “gallivanting”? “I guess it was a bit of loneliness and the r fact that I felt I had to make a trip while the goihg was still good,” says Mr Hetherington. “I have had a lot of fun on the way.” In between visits to the Soviet consulate in London, Mr Hetherington has been visiting friends in Northamptonshire, where he was born, and in Cumberland and Scotland. He plans to return to New Zealand by ship in October. On the way home he hopes to visit a friend who has a cattle ranch in Texas.