TRAVEL AS HOBBY

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29713, 5 January 1962, Page 2

TRAVEL AS HOBBY

Caledonian Visitor

A much-travelled New Caledonian woman. Miss Josephe de Bechade. aged 22, recently arrived in New Zealand on a month’s holiday to “try something new, to write some verses, and to get away from the heat.”

Miss de Bechade is secretary to her father, who manages several small businesses. She has been able to indulge freely in her favourite hobby—-travelling. She has been to Fiji, Wallace Island. France, Africa, India. Hong Kong, and several other European and Asian countries, travelling always on her own. In Christchurch last evening she told of an amusing voyage she made last year on’ a small merchant vessel, owned by her father.

The captain would return inebriated from shore visits, and once threw some of Miss de Bechade's luggage overboard. The crew Anally mutinied against him, and a new captain was flown to take command. Unfortunately, he was unused to navigation in South Pacific seas, and managed to ground the ship on a reef, where she stayed for three days. On the return voyage from Fiji, a Fijian stowaway was found on board. Unconcerned, he would sit in the passengers’ deck chairs, and criticise the food if he considered it below standard. Miss de Bechade's interests include reading, mostly French novelists, poetry (she writes romantic verse) and painting portraits. She said yesterday that life in New Caledonia was much the same as in New Zealand, with the people playing much sport. “But there is too much social life at home,” she added.