NEW OPPORTUNITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27058, 18 April 1949, Page 4

NEW OPPORTUNITY

SCOTTISH SETTLERS’ QUEST LARGE GROUP ON MATAROA DUE AT PORT CHALMERS TO-MORROW Special Correspondent WELLINGTON, Apl. 17. Gay tartans and soft Scottish accents greeted New Zealanders who boarded the Mataroa when she arrived yesterday for a brief stay on her way to Port Chalmers from Southampton. The ship carried 367 passengers, many of them Scottish folk come to settle in both the North and South Islands. Forty-three will disembark at Port Chalmers.

The ship’s complement included 82 children, many of them in tartans and most of them aged from four to seven years, coming to New Zealand with their parents to begin a new life 12.000 miles from their Scottish homeland.

“ Why do you choose New Zealand? ” their parents, were asked, and almost invariably the reply was, “We have always wanted to come to this little country so far away from the Old World. There is a far better opportunity here for our children.”

David Duncan Kidd and his wife and boy aged nine are a typcial family of new settlers. Kidd is a joiner by trade and is going to settle in Dunedin where his uncle and aunt, Mr and Mrs Peter Hay, live. “While I was in the forces I heard a lecture about New Zealand," said Kidd, “and ever since then I have wanted to come here. Apart from that, we were fed up with conditions at home.” He comes from Kirkcaldy, in Fife. The Mataroa left Southampton on March 11. She berthed at Wellington at 6 p.m. and is due to sail for Port Chalmers at 6 a.m. on Monday. She should reach Port Chalmers early on Tuesday. She carries about 4000 tons of general cargo, for which her first port of discharge is Port Chalmers, v . Travelling in the care of the ship’s butcher is Queenie, a Welsh sheepdog, who gave birth to six pups'three days after leaving England. They are bound for Port Chalmers.