LONG HEALTH TRIP

Hokitika Guardian, 18 August 1933, Page 8

LONG HEALTH TRIP

THRILLS IN SOUTH AFRICA

HELP GIVEN BY CANNIBALS

A hundred-mile health trip' which became a. thrilling 6(100 miles drive is the experience recently achieved in South Africa by a 75-year-oid woman, Mrs J. G. King. Mrs King started out in her saloon 'car to drive down the plains from her home 6000 ft above sea level in the no-nvaiTs-land between Basutoland and Pondoland. But, when she'got there she just .carried on until she reached England. , A Accompanied by her daughter Celia, and a, 10-yegf-old native Hoy, Mrs King drove through Natal, the Transvaal, ..Rhodesia, nh<j, Tanganyika. For oyer 4000 miles'the journey was through jjungle trails, and r Mrs King carried a loaded gun by her side.

‘AVe had made no preparation whatever for the trip, because the doctor had just ordered mother to get down to the plains for a while for . the benefit of her health.” Miss Celia King said to an interviewer in London. “But somehow or .other,, once we got going, we just carried on. And on the whole 6000 miles mother didn’t ‘have ohe headache,’’ she added, “Once,we were, lost for three days near Mombasa; the car got stuck / in swapipy ground. We had been fighting with it for hours when some natives came rip,.and helped to get it out, It. was only when; we got to a , trading station that we discovered the natives were cannibals!”