Many Cripples Among Touring Girl Guides

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30640, 5 January 1965, Page 10

Many Cripples Among Touring Girl Guides

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, Jan. 4. Forty Australian girl guides, rangers and guiders landed at Whenuapai this evening for a three-week visit to meet their New Zealand counterparts. More than half were from the special Australian guide section for handicapped and crippled girls. Three cannot walk at all, and six others are confined to wheelchairs for most of their activities.

With their party of volunteer helpers, including three nurses and a physiotherapist, they have come from Victoria. New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia to see New Zealand and attend a special New Zealand camp for handicapped guides at Arahina, near Marton. They will spend a week in Auckland at the Una Carter hostel for crippled children in Remuera.

From Auckland they will visit Rotorua and Taupo before attending the camp at Arahina.

“We have been planning this for three years and now it’s like a dream come true,” said the leader of the party, Miss Mary Lainbe, who is in charge of the Australian section for handicapped guides. Most of the girls had never been out of Australia before,

she said, and many of them had not flown before their Tasman flight. Included in the group are three 14-year-olds, and the remainder range in age from 16 to 25. '