WEEK’S JOURNEY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 February 1940, Page 6

WEEK’S JOURNEY

NOW COVERED IN EIGHTY MINUTES. AUSTRALIAN WOMAN'S NOTABLE EXPERIENCE. Nearly 70 years ago Mrs Margaret Craig set out from Melbourne to Deniliquin by bullock waggon. The distance is just over 200 miles and the journey took nearly a week. In the waggons were packed all the household belonging, and the nights were spent camped out in the uninhabited bush, the members of this adventurous party trusting to tiny creeks for water, their hearts and ambitions set. on the distant country in which they were to open up the land and make their living. In the more remote parts of the bush the Aborigines still roamed and held their corroborees. Now Mi's Margaret Craig, who is 74. has made the same journey in an aeroplane. and accomplished the journey in 80 minutes. Tile mountains she had toiled through so slowly long ago passed underneath her in a few minutes; the plains that, had meant so many hot. weary days of travel wore spread out like a child's picture, anil the River Murray, across which the bullock waggons had to bo floated, wound its interminable way beneath her like a tiny blue ribbon. In a lifelime the adventure and hard work of days has become a comfortable ride in an armchair.