"LOST IN LONDON"

Evening Post, Issue 20, 23 July 1935, Page 15

"LOST IN LONDON"

LIFE-TIME FRIENDSHIPS ,

"I shall never forget the wonderful feeling of being lost in London at the age" of twelve. With my parents £ had been taken to the Crystal Palace and, being interested in other things than they, wandered off. I forgot I existed as a person, that I had parents, that I was lost, and that they, would be worried. I only felt that glorious sense of adventure and discovery. That feeling has stayed with me all my life, and made me so interested in the educational develop* ment by travel of all young things." Mrs. A. Lodewyckx, of Melbourne, honorary chaperon for the party of girls to leave in August for a tour of the East under the auspices of the Young Australia League, spoke thus when seen on July 4 at. the Hotel Australia, where she was staying a few: days for the purpose of meeting those intending charges who will join the contingent of Sydney girls making the tour, states the "Sydney Morning Herald." The party of 50 from all States will embark on the Taiping in August, and will return early in December, the trip occupying three and a half months. Strangely enough, though she has lived in or travelled in almost every, country in the world, this is Mrs. Lodewyckx's first trip to the East, and apart from the great interest of shepherding a party of young girls eager for educational enlightenment on such a trip, is herself eager to see China and Japan, two countries of which she has as yet only guidebook knowledge. INTERESTING PERSONALITY. Mrs. Lodewyckx is an interesting personality. The wife of a professor of Germanic languages, at present in Melbourne, she is also the daughter of a Norwegian sea captain, whose roving disposition seems to have been inherited by her. Circumstances arranged that she should be born in the Great Karroo, Africa, and that, at the age.of twelve, she should traVel with her parents on, a trip home to Norway and Sweden to see relatives. Years later, after living some time in Scandinavia, she returned to the Belgian Congo as a bride, her husband having been sent out to establish schools and libraries in that, as yet, primitive area. Life there, says Mrs. Lodewyckx, was interesting but hot very comfortable. Tropic diseases attacked them and for the first three months they lived iri.-a mud hut, this being the only available habitation. ' Since then she has lived in, or visited, Germany, Belgium, Italy, France, Austria, and Australia,, paying her first; visit to Australia twenty years ago. Mrs. Lodewyckx says that the early, gratification of her desire for travel has given her a deep understanding of the voracious appetite and the intense desire J:or new impressions, especially, in girls, whom she describes as being more keenly interested in the more romantic side of life,. which includes new experiences, adventure, tray.el* than boys. ■ ■ <. "I do. feel, too," she said, "that siicr* interchange of friendships betweert people of different races does more.taj engender happy relations and to pre« vent war than all the diplomatic com ferences in the world." : < ■ This voluntary chaperon, has under* taken other trips, for the Young Auw tralia League. • In .1930 Vshe chapert oned a Christmas holiday tour of the! west, which is the headquarters of thfl( league, and the following year chaper* oned a party of-girlsHo^he Barnes Reef and Northern Queensland. - "Some of the friendships establisb.e<| by the girls on those trips," she said* "will go through life with them.'' ;. f