TRAVEL CLUB

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25871, 15 June 1945, Page 7

TRAVEL CLUB

A vivid description of London in wartime was given to members of the Travel Club on Wednesday morning by Miss iui Hanlon, who returned recently after 20 years in the High Commissioner s Office in London. Most English people wanted to visit the Dominion, said Hanlon, and New Zealand soldiers in Engiand had been wonderful ambassadors. She hoped, she said, that tourists would be induced to come to the South Island. At the beeinring of the war it was planned to move New Zealand House into the country, but, after consultation with the Imperial Government, it was agreed to stay in London. Although the building had escaped demolition, it had been badly damaged on three occasions. The organisation to deal with bomb damage in London had been remarkable. Immediately an area was blasted, a complete organisation was available. Carts collected the debris, mobile canteens and baths arrived, as the gas and water supplies were usually cut off, tarpaulins stacked at every other' street corner were stretched over roofless houses, and the people carried on. Clothes were sent to the dry cleaners at the expense of the Government, for the dirt was indescribable when blasting occurred. A very successful device tor preserving life in the bombed areas had been the Morrison shelter. In one street which had been devastated by a convoy of ammunition lorries being blown up not one person had been injured, although the houses had been razed to the ground. The occupants were all dug out safely from their Morrison shelters. Visitors welcomed to the club by Mrs Richard Hudson included Miss W. Halliday (Wellington), Miss A. E. Buggy (Great Barrier Island), Miss K. Miller (Balclutha), Mrs C. White (Hamilton), Mrs K. M. Caves (Hastings), Mrs T. C. Newton, Mrs Friedlander (Auckland), Miss I. E. Paterson (Waikaia), Mrs Frank Bell (Shag Valley), Mrs Winnie Fraser (Oamaru), and Miss Jean Stevenson (Dunedin).