A PEN FRIENDSHIP

Evening Star, Issue 22191, 20 November 1935, Page 16

A PEN FRIENDSHIP

RESULTS That tile friendship of two schoolgirls, one in far-away Canada and the other in Broken Hill, New South Wales, known only to each other by correspondence, should result in one of them, through the knowledge and booklets exchanged, winning an essay competition that ivould make it possible for her to travel hundreds of miles across the sea to meet her pen friend for the first time, .seems more like romance than reality, says a writer in the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald ’ Yet, that is the story which lies behind the arrival on the Monowai at Sydney recently of Miss Grace Pattullo, the eighteen-year-old Canadian high school girl, whose essay on Australia won her a prize of a three months’ tour of the Commonwealth a? the guest of the Government. When the boat berthed at the wharf one of the first people to meet Miss Pattnllo was her young Australian correspondent, Miss Marion Johns, who is now an art student at the university. The pen friendship of these tw r o girls started four years ago, during tin. v,sit of Miss Johns’s aunt, Miss Constance Neville-Johns, on a lecture tom through Canada, when she met Miss Pattnllo and her mother. Through thh friendship Miss Pattnllo became very interested In Australian conditions, bird life, and native flowers. 'Shrread all the books about Australia that she could’find, as well as making thr acquaintance of another Australian. Mr V. D. Nalty, a former gold picspector, who is at present living in Edmonton, Alberta, close by Miss Paltullo’s home, and who is always pleased to talk to anyone about his homeland Miss Pattnllo, who came out on the boat in rhe care of Sir Frederick and Lady Stewart, will be their guest fur a fortnight, when her tour, which is being arranged by Government officials, will commence in earnest.