LONG WALKING TOUR

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 716, 16 July 1929, Page 7

LONG WALKING TOUR

VISITING DOCTOR PLANS TRIP LECTURER AND PHILOSOPHER Burdened with a formidable collection of haversacks, parcels and the general paraphernalia of the walking tourist, Dr. Oscar Blanc of Sydney made his appearance on the deck of the Marama this morning and gazed for the first time at Auckland. Dr. Blanc, graduate in Philosophy, lecturer, physical culturist, economist, teacher, natural scientist and traveller, intended, when he planned his tour, to do a walking marathon through both islands. “But now that I am limited to two months I cannot walk all the time,” he explained. Of French parentage, Dr. Blanc was horn in Switzerland, and became a British subject in South Africa ill 1904. For the past 21 years he has lived in Sydney, teaching and lecturing on the various subjects he has at his fingertips. “No. I have never before been to New Zealand,” he said. "I tried to come during the war hut could not secure a permit. Yet I secured a permit to travel to America —a far more difficult one to obtain.” Among other occupations Dr. Blanc has acted as foreign correspondent for various Continental newspapers. This post, however, was lost as a result of the war. which so crippled the various journals that they dispensed with their foreign correspondents. In October Dr. Blanc will visit America to begin a lecture tour. He has not decided whether he will lecture in New Zealand.