Girl Returns After Trip For Treatment

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29998, 6 December 1962, Page 26

Girl Returns After Trip For Treatment

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, December 4. Proudly clutching a new white bonnet against the stiff breeze, a girl encased in a plaster cast from her hips to her shoulders, climbed down a gangway at Whenuapai airport, Auckland, today, after a 12,000-mile flight from England. She is Sue Robertson, aged seven, daughter of the former Rugby League Kiwi skipper, M. Robertson, returning after 10 months of treatment and two major operations for severe curvature of the spine.

The trip was made possible by the generosity of League players and other wellwishers who raised the £2OOO needed to send her to the specialist Oswestry Hospital, Shropshire. For several minutes after her arrival, Sue was speechless with pleasure as she was greeted by her father, her younger sister and brother, Kim (aged five) and Marcus (aged three), and other friends and relatives.

Soon she began to talk excitedly, startling some who had not heard the tape recordings she had sent back with a newly-acquired Shropshire accent. Sue was accompanied on her journey by her mother, Mrs Eileen Robertson, who took a part-time clerical job at the hospital to be near her. Sue will remain in the plaster cast, which stretches up her left forearm, at least until April. X-ray pictures will be sent back to Oswestry and the hospital will decide when the plaster can be removed.