Still Has Wanderlust After 86,000 Miles

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30264, 17 October 1963, Page 2

Still Has Wanderlust After 86,000 Miles

Although she has travelled 86,000 miles (10,000 of them by car) through more than 60 countries in the last three years, Mrs. Jeanne Bicheno, at present living at Diamond Harbour, still does not feel like settling down.

“Travel is a bug—it really gets you,” she said yesterday in Lyttelton, where she is working in a chemist’s shop.

She and her South African-born husband hope to buy an ocean-going yacht, small enough for the two of them to handle, and set off to sail around the world. “We have books on navigation already, and my husband, a former Navy man, has sailing in liis blood,” Mrs Bicheno said.

O>e of the reasons for their feeling unsettled, she said, might be that they spent much of their time recalling their travels, as her husband was writing a book. “Our bodies are here, you understand, but our minds ..." and her face lit up as she described some of the places they had visited. She recalled visiting the ruins of the ancient Inca city of Machupicchu on a mountain top in Peru; watching the wild animals of the African bush, and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro; driving through Berlin and behind the Iron Curtain in 1961; tramping in the Himalayas and meeting Sherpa Tensing; and driving for days across the barren desert of the Sudan.

“We do not just drive. We stop and see everything we can, and how people live,” she said. Born in Eindhoven, in the south of Holland, Mrs Bicheno emigrated to South Africa with her parents when she was 21. “They decided to return to Holland, but I stayed on—and met my husband." Changes in Outlook Looking back over the six years and a half since her marriage, she spoke of the changes in outlook that travelling, and a developing wander-lust, had wrought in her.

“In those days material things meant very much to me. Now they mean nothing,” she said. 'Then I thought Bert

was wasting his money when he spent any on travel In fact, he nearly did not marry me because he thought he would have to settle down.” Many persons were burdened by the material things they had collected, and spent most of their time looking after what they owned, she said. “I would not like to live like that We feel we have more by having a sense of freedom and adventure."

Eighteen months’ living in a station-waggon and a small tent had taught her what were the necessary and important things in life, she said.

But though she hates cooking and housekeeping, because they keep her away from the outdoors, and gets out of the kitchen as soon as possible, she would like a home.

“We have collected so many things in our travels that we need somewhere to keep them," she said. That was why a boat would be ideal. It could be a home and base, but they could still travel, she said.

So far only one thing about their future is decided: that with them, wherever they go, will travel Zulu, a black Labrador puppy they bought during a visit to Invercargill. Travels Begin After their marriage in Holland, Mr and Mrs Bicheno went to Vancouver, and lived there for three years. “We thought then we had settled down—our furniture is still stored there,’’ she said. Deciding then to visit their parents, in their respective homelands, they set off by car in July, 1960.

They drove through the United States and Mexico to Panama, where they took a ship to Colombia, and drove as far south as they could in Chile. After visiting Santiago and Buenos Aires, they sailed from Rio de Janiero for Cape Town, and spent

some time, including Christmas, with Mr Bicheno’* parents.

In the February they began their trip through Tanganyika and Kenya to the Sudan desert This stretch is vivid in their memory. In five days’ drive across the roadless wasteland, with only the railway line to guide them, they go* stuck 39 times. "It was not allowed to drive along the railway, but we often did. The going would start to become soft, and we would make a beelane for it.” Across the desert and through Egypt and Turkey they travelled with a New Zealand couple from Hastings, whom they met in Nairobi. “It was amazing luck. They had the same make of car, so our spare parts were interchangeable.” After crossing Europe and staying with Mrs Bicheno’s parents In Holland, they set out once more—through Berlin, in the midst of the crisis of its division by the wall, and on to Moscow. Their travels then took them through the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Nepal, to Calcutta, where they left their car for shipment, and travelled on to P/.rma and Thailand, and finally Singapore by plane and train.

After a year in Australia, they arrived in New Zealand —“where w* had always wanted to come”—with their original station waggon.