INTERESTING VISITOR PREFERS NORTH ISLAND.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 12 July 1938, Page 6

INTERESTING VISITOR PREFERS NORTH ISLAND.

TRAVELLER OF MANY ADVENTURES (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Last Night. A lecturer in geography at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Dr. Sophie Peterson, who landed at Wellington to-day from .the Awatea, believes in the theory chat it is necessary to visit a country before one is qualifier] to teach other people about it; so she spends her vacations travelling the world by air, because that is the quick est wa,y.

She had met many adventures in the course of her wanderings ami she intends to spend a fortnight in New Zealand, she said to-day. She is devoting the whole of that time to the North Island. “The South Island with its mountains, glaciers and fiords is too much like Norway. 1 am more interested in your geysers, thermal regions, vol canoes and Maoris,” she said.

Less than a month ago, Dr. Petersen embarked on the flying boat Challenger at Southampton and travelled by air to Brisbane. It was no new experience tn her, for in the course of 12 years, she had flown over Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Alaska and Greenland Indeed the Antipodes were practically the only part of the world she had not previously visited. Last year Dr. Petersen was travelling off the Liberian coast when the Dutch steamer Maaskerk ran on to a sunken reef in thick weather and a heavy sea. The sharp teeth of the rocks bit through her plates and held her fast and immediate danger of sink ing was averted. In the breaking waves, however, it was impossible to launch the boats without their being instantly dashed to pieces. The passengers were rescued by natives who put off from the shore in surfboats. For some days the travellers, most of whom were English, lived in a primitive native village on the shore, eating such provisions as could be saved from the stranded steamer and enjoying the hospitality or the natives until a steamer could be sent to take them off. Dr. Petersen afterwards felt herself well qualified to lecture on the conditions of the Liberian natives.

When she arrives back in Copenhagen, barely three ninths after leaving for the southern Unisphere, she will lecture to her clalj* of 400 students belonging to a cp-educational college attached to theMmiversity on what she will have see# on her present trip to Australia audrNew Zealand. She speaks English fluentfy and is a most interesting and unusual visitor.