N.Z. Catching Up As Tourist Country

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30977, 5 February 1966, Page 2

N.Z. Catching Up As Tourist Country

When a New Zealander comes home again after eight years, she sees her country in perspective. She can assess any criticism she may have heard from overseas tourists and appreciate progress.

A former Christchurch woman, Mrs Beatrice Moore, of Redwood City, California, is one who feels that New Zealand is catching up very rapidly as a tourist country, after making a late start.

After an extensive coach tour through the West Coast, Central Otago and back to Christchurch, Mrs Moore said yesterday that Americans who have complained about accommodation and food now have no grounds for criticism.

“My husband and I stayed in some excellent motels. The one in Queenstown was as good or better than any we have seen in the United States. We were also much impressed by the hotel-motel we had in Gore,” she said. Mrs Moore said, however, that anyone building motels should always remember to put in “the little things that count so much” such as plenty of coat-hangers and hooks for clothing, lighting over the beds, two comfortable armchairs, and luggage racks.

With the completion of the Paringa-Haast road, which provides the last link in the highway round the South Island, Mrs Moore believes that much more will be now heard of the South Island and its scenic beauty. “It used to be hard to get out of the North Island if you were planning a tour of New Zealand from the United States,” she said. “But now I am sure tourists will talk about South Westland, show slides of the area back home and encourage others to see it”

Born at Ross, the former Miss Beatrice Telford showed her husband the West Coast and the south of the South Island with much pride. At Its Best

“My husband loved every minute of our trip and could see why I rave about New

Zealand,” she said. “But for one day at Fox Glacier, when it poured with rain, we had the most glorious weather and every place looked its best.”

Mrs Moore has been in the United States for longer than she lived in New Zealand. She married Dr. Ferrall Moore in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1938. They have three grown children.

A nurse, who trained at Christchurch Hospital, did her Plunket training in Dunedin, maternity at Timaru, and worked as a nurse in several parts of the South Island as well as New Plymouth, Mrs Moore is meeting many old friends on her present visit. Her husband, who recently retired from private practice in Redwood City, will soon join the staff of a tubercular and geriatric hospital in the same town, some 25 miles from San Francisco.

Before he took up his new appointment. Dr. and Mrs Moore decided to come to New Zealand for a holiday to visit Mrs Moore’s father. Dr. T. Fletcher Telford, of Murray Aynsley terrace.