Miss Walker Has Hiked 20,000 Miles

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 645, 23 April 1929, Page 11

Miss Walker Has Hiked 20,000 Miles

(ITrom Ypstprdny’.'i I.ate FJditlon )

Searching for Health and a Husband An unconventional person is Miss Pansy A. Walker unconventional in ways, as well as in dress. She is at present in Auckland, after having travelled over 20,000 miles by foot in the course of a tour round the world. She arrived in Auckland on Sunday on the Aorangi. Three years ago site had resigned herself to the drudgery of office life in New York, but under it her health gave out. She was advised by her physician that if she wanted to live she must get away from the city and out into the open. It was on May 20, 1926, that she set off from Fifth Avenue, in the great metropolis, and she has been in the open with the world as her playground ever since. Her tour has taken her to the capitals of all the States of the American Union, through Canada, into Mexico, and thence to Honolulu, Suva, and now she has arrived in New Zealand. Miss Walker visited Washington, Ottawa, Sydney (Nova Scotia), Havana (Cuba), from whence she, went back through the States and toured Alaska. Travelling through the mountains of the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky she was suspected of being a revenue spy, and on another occasion she was overhauled by a lanky individual who informed her that he was a constable. She was taken before a judge and made to show her pack on suspicion of being a bootlegger. SEARCHING FOR A HUSBAND One day, while walking through a town in Georgia, she was stopped in the street by a big, gawky fellow. After sizing her up, he said: “Well, dag take it, if it aint the first woman hobo I’ve seed in 70 years.” When in the States, she carried a revolver exposed in her belt, but seldom had occasion to use it, even as a threat. She travels anything from five to 30 miles a day, and wears out a pair of boots in 30 days. Sometimes she accepts the offer of a lift in a car, but has done the greater part of the journey on foot. Miss Walker believes in carrying a light pack, of not more than 20 or 25 pounds. The remainder of her luggage she sends on by rail. She carries unprepared raw food with her—such as raisins, figs, bacon and rice. But there was a further object in her quest than merely seeing the world. She admitted that slie has been looking for a husband, but had not yet succeeded in finding the man. She still lives in hopes, and if she is successful will speed back to the States again. She has chased many coyotes over the plain and the desert and has camped in mountains abounding with bears. She has killed many rattlers and poisonous reptiles while hiking over California and the Southern States of the Union, and has been in close proximity to alligators in the swamps and everglades of Florida. After hiking down the Atlantic Coast to Havana, Miss Walker returned to Washington, and then made her trip through Canada, down again to Mexico City, and thence across the Continent to California. UNCONVENTIONAL DRESS “Yes, my uniform is somewnat unconventional,” admitted the traveller, whose grey tweeds worn in plus-four fashion have attracted many wondering eyes since she stepped off the Aorangi at Auckland. She had no time for a skirt when on the trail, so adopted a dress approaching the male fashion. On her head reposes a tropical helmet. Although out of the tropics here, she finds the weather much warmer than in the mountains of the American Continent, where she had to don leggings. She has made some money during the trip by giving talks and entertainments, and this helps her to pay her way. She likes what little she has seen of New Zealand immensely The people display a social and kindly spirit, she says. After seeing all that the Dominion has to show, including Rotorua and the National Park, Miss Walker will leave for Australia, and thence to India, Japan, China and Russia. And so, in two years, or it may be four, the wanderer will find her way hack to New York again, and then the world will learn from the book she hopes to write what it is like to walk round the world.