HIKING HOLIDAY

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 127, 25 November 1935, Page 12

HIKING HOLIDAY

A TOURIST'S PLANS

PUBLICITY PRAISED

Not in the cushioned ease of a limousine, nor in the safety and comfort of the New Zealand railways will a good deal of New Zealand be seen by an enthusiastic tourist who arrived from London, via Australia, on the Makura today. He is Mr. R. M. Millea, retired assistant collector of Customs in the Port of London, who is in the process of gratifying a long-standing desire to see the beauties of New Zealand, many of them by hiking. "I' expect to do quite a bit of hiking over here," he told a "Post" reporter. "The only way you can really see a country is by hiking through it, especially in the wilder parts."

Mr. Millea will spend four months in New Zealand, visiting the North and South and Stewart Islands. He was enthusiastic over the work of the New Zealand publicity officers in London, and paid a tribute to them for the help they had given him in planning his tour. Mr. Millea quoted the opinion of a London "Daily Telegraph" writer, who told the Sydney newspapers that the New Zealand Tourist Office in London was "making rings round the Australian office."

"If you ask me my first impression of New Zealand I say it is an extremely good one,": he said. ' '. ■'.''•

In the last two or . three, years, economic conditions had improved wonderfully in England, said Mr. Millea. "You can see it by the, number of new factories established around1 London," he said, and explained that since the placing of a tariff on foreign goods a great number of foreigners had established factories in 'England. The depression had not been felt so badly in England as in some other countries. -

Although he pei-sonally would benefit by New Zealand's 25 per cent, exchange rate, Mr. Millea did not think it a good thing. "The average Englishman would prefer the exchange at par because it is better for trade," he said.