664A Mt Eden Rd Monday Mar 3rd (1958)

Dear Donald,

First of all we all send our love & very best wishes for today. A bit late, but they are coming to you by the air as well. We thoroughly enjoyed your newsy letter with the description of your holiday doings. You certainly made the most of your time & managed to see some interesting spots. Now you will be settling down to some grind. We picture you among the crowd welcoming the Queen Mother. Canberra is a nice setting for that sort of thing. Sydney seems to have excelled itself in rude behaviour or else our N.Z. papers are very unkind – which they are apt to be where the Aussies are concerned. I hope you will be able to make contact with the Adelaide relations when you can do so. Am sure they are very nice people & are most anxious to meet you. One of them, Kathleen – (Andrew’s sister) spent a day with us 8 or 9 months ago when she was on her way to America. We liked her immensely, such a bright happy woman with a keen sense of humour. Am sure you would like her. She is a widow of about 60 with a turned up nose, or shall we say retrousse nose. We didn’t see anything of Ian on his way to the Capital City. For N.Z. All the roads are clear of floods except the Great South Rd between Rangiriri & Huntly & a bit between Te Kuiti& Taumaranui. The latter bit won’t matter to him as the desert Rd opened again yesterday. It was a terrific flood, but could have been far far worse if Taupo had been full instead of nearly empty when it started. What do you think of Freddy Jones as High Commissioner for N.Z. in Australia. I suppose the Govt will dig up a couple more old dead beats for U.K. & Canada. Even if the NationalParty had gone back they would have had to find new men for these postsas thy were all retiring anyway, but they could have done better than that – at least one hopes so. Since the flood we have had the most glorious spell of weather without such intense heat as we had before it.

We expect to go North (Taurikura) at the end of next week – the start of Elizabeth’s Annual holiday. Later in her holiday she plans to fly to Dunedin for 10 days or so, quite a quick trip in the new Viscounts.

Again wishing you all the best for your birthday & hoping that all is going very well for you.

Ever yours

Aunt Fanny