TRAVELLER’S TRIALS

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 183, 5 May 1925, Page 8

TRAVELLER’S TRIALS

FIRST IMPRESSIONS NOT GOOD ONES

ENGLISHMAN’S CRITICISM “Aly first impressions of New Zealand were not very - happy ones,” remarked an Englishman yesterday, in conversation with a representative of The Dominion. “I arrived from England in Auckland in the afternoon, and desired to get a berth on the “Limited” for Wellington the same evening. 1 tried to get my luggage ashore, but was told that the stevedores were not yet ready. I went to the railway station, but they would not book me 'a sleeping berth unless I got a ticket. I was directed somewhere else for a ticket, and on arrival there was told that the ticket clerk was at his lea, and would not return for an hour. 1 went back to the. ship, and got mv luggage off. I gave a porter a shilling for handling it at the wharf; he demanded Is. 6d. I paid it. _ A earlier charged me 10s. to take it to the railway station, where they charged me £2 Bs. excess on it—nearly the amount of the fare to Wellingtou. No, I didn’t get a sleeper.” After reiterating the usual comment of visitors iji regard to Wellington’s railway station, he remarked that a taxi-driver charged him ss. for himself, without luggage, from Thorndon station to an' hotel in the centre of the city. “Is there no law by which the fares chargeable bv a taxi-driver should be inspected by the passenger?” he asked. “Being an auditor by profession, I am accustomed to inquiring into the details of expenditure, and I certainly commend to vou the practice in London, where the fares arc visibly posted up in the taxi, and the machine is registering the amount of the fare, in full view of the passenger.”