Book for Amazon’s hungry

Press, 28 May 1983, Page 1

Book for Amazon’s hungry

Tigers in India, tarantulas and jaguars in the Amazon jungle, bears in Canada — you name it, Louise Sutherland has seen it.

Miss Sutherland, who will celebrate her fifty-seventh birthday in two weeks, has been cycling her way around the world for 33 years. On her list of achievements are such countries as Iceland, Peru, North America and Europe. Her most recent trip, four years ago, took her straight through the heart of the Amazon jungle. On the ride she was so concerned by the undernourishment of the jungle’s Indians, that she has written a book about her journey, with proceeds from sales, going towards a mobile clinic to help the Amazonians with medical supplies. “The malnutrition is quite horrifying, especially among the children,” she said. “The jungle is not fertile at all. There is an extremely delicate balance between lush forest and desert.” This was because minerals, timber and other resources were taken from the jungle without being replaced, she said. “On a much smaller scale the same thing is happening here. The bush is being destroyed for the economy of, the country, without anyone thinking of what is

going to happen tomorrow,” she said. The Amazon journey took Miss Sutherland six months to complete, and in total she covered 4500 km of “jeeptrack road.” Food consisted of porridge for breakfast and a bowl of rice for dinner, and at nights she would stop in native villages and string up a hammock. Because of the rough roads, Miss Sutherland said she was always falling off her cycle, and suffered two broken ribs on the journey. Her only other injury was a septic ulcer on her ankle, where an insect had laid its eggs under her skin. After the Amazon ride, she concentrated on writing the book, which she named “The Impossible Ride,” — “because that’s what people told me it would be.” She is in New Zealand at present to promote the book. The bicycle that carried Miss Sutherland across Brazil was “a perfectly normal, ordinary three-quarter size lady's three-speed bike.. No new-fangled gears dr super-sweat down-covered handle bars. “As far as I’m concerned, I just use the bike as a means of transport, and if the going gets a bit tough I get off and walk,” she said. . Miss Sutherland has paid for her journeys by working in London and Dunedin, as a nurse. When she leaves New

Zealand next Friday she will travel to London to raise money for the mobile clinic, which she hopes to get under way soon. But it will not be long

before she is back on her bicycle: “I am married to my bicycle. It doesn’t keep your feet warm at night, but it doesn’t argue either,” Miss Sutherland said.