“Don’t come; just send your money"

Press, 4 October 1977, Page 41

“Don’t come; just send your money"

Tourists visittag Australia and New Zealand were sometimes made to fell like unwanted aliens, Mr Harry M. Miller, a director of Qantas, told delegates at the annual conference of travel agents in Queenstown last month.

To emphasise the point, he recalled that he met once a rather intolerant woman who lived in the Sydney suburb of Vauciuse “a part of Australia which Ute statisticians are inclined to categorise as an upper socio-econ-omic suburb.”

The woman, he said lived quite close to a mansion known as Vaucluse House, one of Sydney’s fine buildings from the colonial days.

“She was complaining to me about the number of tourists who invaded her neighbourhood every day to visit the house. She complained about the traffic congestion they caused, and the noise they made, and was obviously outraged by the whole business.

“I didn’t quite know how to react to her barrage of complaints so I simply reminded her how important the tourist industry' is and how it attracted millions of dollars every year to Sydney.

“She stood there silently for a moment and then said: ‘Oh yes, that’s all very well . . . but couldn’t they just send the money*?"