TOURIST POSSIBILITIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 April 1938, Page 8

TOURIST POSSIBILITIES

OPENING UP OF MILFORD SOUND. ANTICIPATIONS OF BIG RETURNS. A vision of luxury liners disembarking 5000 tourists at Milford Sound in seasons following the opening of the Homer tunnel and Eglinton Valley route, and of those tourists spending in the aggregate a-quarter of a million pounds each season in Southland, was outlined by Mr. H. J. Farrant, when speaking of the scenic possibilities of Southland at the meeting of the committee set up to organise a Southland court at the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition in Wellington, “During the present season five luxury liners have arrived at Auckland, carrying tourists who have much money to spend. They have spent it in the North Island, and reembarked at Wellington,” stated Mr. Farrant. “By 1942 the Homer tunnel will be through, by which time we will be ready to take luxury liners in-, to Milford Sound where the passengers will disembark, gravel through the Eglinton Valley to Lake Te Anau, then on to Queenstown, across to Monowai, then through the Eastern district to re-embark at Bluff, after a couple of days in Invercargill. If we get each season 5000 tourists, who will spend an average of £5O each, that will mean a quarter of a million pounds to Southland. These people are loaded with money and only want a means of getting rid of it. The traffic is worth catering for. It is better than wool.”