440 MILES RIDE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20639, 20 August 1941, Page 9

440 MILES RIDE

TWO GIRLS ON HORSES After a journey of 440 miles made on horseback in the past month, two enterprising young women travellers who recently covered the Haast Pass track between Franz Josef and Queenstown have reached Dunedin full of enthusiasm for their travels. The riders, Miss Dorothy Woodroft'e, Cambridge, and Miss Mabel Edwards, Gippsland, Australia, said the only reason for their journey was “to see a bit of the country.” When the girls reached Queenstown three weeks ago their first inquiry was for work. They spent a week at the Walter Peak station and while there answered newspaper advertisements for work in Dunedin. Replies accepting them as household servants in two Maori Hill residences were received by telegram, and the girls immediately set out on the second stage of their journey to Dunedin, which took five days and a-half. The travellers spent nights at Cromwell, Shingle Creek, Rae’s Junction, Lawrence and Henley, and rode through a fierce snowstorm between Cromwell and Alexandra on the second day out from Queenstown. The girls bought their horses from farmers at Franz Josef, where they had been working. Miss Woodroffe's horse was an old animal which had been turned out and she bought it for £3. Since her arrival in Dunedin she has sold it, realising a profit of 100 per cent.