ARRIVAL AT AUCKLAND

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 253, 25 October 1937, Page 8

ARRIVAL AT AUCKLAND

TINY TOTS’ LONG VOYAGE TRAVELLED ALONE FROM LONDON MOTHER'S WARM GREETING [ Por Press Association. 1 AUCKLAND, Oct. 23. Two little girls, Barbara and Sonia Allen, one aged six and the other live, travelled alone from London to Auckland and arrived here yesterday by the Rangitiki to meet their mother, Mrs. W. Allen, of Napier, who was waiting for them at Queen'.*Wharf when the ship berthed. They laughed and shouted ecstatically when they caught sight of their mother as she climbed a companionway leading to the deck on which they stood in charge of a stewardess. Barbara and Sonia came from Penzance, Cornwall. On board ship nearly everyone seemed intent upon caring for them, giving them fruit and the multifarious things which attract children, providing them with playmates and things to do in their waking hours. They seemed to be the guests of everybody who caught sight of them on the deck.

They were the responsibility of Miss M. O. Bennett, one of the stewardesses, and when the time came to bid them good-bye, she seemed reluctant to let them go. She spoke of them as being two of the most delightful little children she had known, and said her chief anxiety during the voyage was to dissuade kindly people from giving them too many good things to eat.

They were dressed and ready to meet their mother long before the Rangitiki berthed at Queen’s Wharf, and every few minutes they clambered on the rail, or ran to some vantage point to catch sight of Mrs. Allen. When she went on board thoyrushed up and warmcly embraced her.