WORLD WALK

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 152, 17 September 1927, Page 9

WORLD WALK

STEPHENSON’S JAUNT FIRST STAGE COMPLETED TRAMPER PREFERS CONCRETE THE dust of 450 miles of road clung to Frank Stephenson, formerly a Dunedin schoolmaster, when he plodded into Auckland ' yesterday. But he had completed the first stage of a tramp round the "world, so his weariness was mixed with , elation. ! Setting- out from Wellington on ; August 30, Mr. Stephenson was fired by a determination to keep on walking. For many years this globe-encircling tramp has been his cherished ambition, and now, at 30, he has set out toward its realisation. MAYORAL AUTOGRAPHS This morning the added the signature of Mr. G. Baildon, Mayor of Auckland, to the Mayoral autographs he has already collected. On the inside cover of his leather-backed diary is a benediction from Mr. Coates, and in his wallet is a card from Mr. G. A. Troup, Mayor of Wellington, to the Lord Mayor of London.

“I hope to help myself along bv delivering lectures on New Zealand,’’ said the ambitious tramper, who is carrying with him only a meagre reserve fund of money. During the war he served with the Australian Forces, and since then has been a master at the King Edward Technical College, Dunedin. He hopes to find an early opportunity of working his passage from Auckland to Canada, and on his present average of 25.9 miles a day expects to cross Canada in time to miss the worst of the winter. LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS Next voyaging to Gibraltar, he will traverse the Spanish Peninsula, by the historic military lines of Torres Vedras, and after visiting England will “do” Europe, Armenia, Persia, India, Burma and Siam before returning to Wellington by way of the East Indies, Australia, and the South Island.

The immensity of his undertaking does not worry the cheerful Southerner; nor does the loneliness of his long trek. “I had a companion,” he said, “but at the last minute he could not go, so I am doing the trip alone.” Already the nomadic pedestrian is an expert observer of roads. “The concrete outside Auckland,” he remarked, “was wonderful after the loose metal in the Franklin County. I came from Mercer yesterday, and the road for the first few miles is the worst I have so far struck.”