The New Zealand visit lasts a couple of hours and embraces the delights of the immigration counter and insipid coffee at Auckland airport before grabbing a plane to knock off Fiji before dinner time.
What wimps. Give me the intrepid Joseph Mikulec any time.
Joseph was a Croatian who walked the world. Born in 1878 on a farm, he set off in 1901 and over the next 30 years walked more than 300,000km through 33 countries.
He spent June 1911 in New Zealand, arriving in Whanganui after working his passage on a ship from Australia and then walking from town to town carrying a swag and an autograph book, selling postcards and giving lectures to pay his way.
He was his own PR man and visited every newspaper office on the journey. At the Wanganui Chronicle he displayed his autograph book which held letters by president Taft, vice-president Sherman, Theodore Roosevelt and the mayor and town clerk of each of the capital cities. The next days he added the signature of a rather more illustrious man, the town clerk of Wanganui.
The Patea paper provided a fine thumbnail sketch of the walker: "A short, lithe figure, with a strong, keen face, in jersey and knickers, with a bag slung over his shoulders, he swung at a fast, easy gait on to the terrace where a speech was being made and, in a few seconds, took a ‘snap’ of the troops drawn up in square formation. His jersey was thickly hung with what appeared to be medals. On the whole he looked an unusual and particularly interesting personage."
Joseph’s "snaps" were planned for a book which "will be printed in five languages and will be obtainable in 1915".
That book seems never to have been published but, as we shall see, another of his books became a collector’s item.
Thus, Joseph covered Taranaki, Auckland and Rotorua, sometimes getting a mention in the papers, but more often ignored as his visit was overshadowed by the coronation celebrations.
In Christchurch, Mikulec took to the stage at the Empire picture theatre in Sydenham and gave the audience an account of his adventures. The ads read: "This man has encountered fearful hardships — was lost for nine days crossing bush-land in Brazil, received barbarous treatment by natives in Arizona, had narrow escape from being burnt alive, has been bitten by a snake.
Mr Mikulec will relate his thrilling experiences which will astonish everyone who hears him."
Further south, Mikulec passed through unreported until at Gore the Mataura Ensign ran a piece which hinted that the Sydenham picture-goers may have been taken for a bit of a ride: "Mr Mikulec was the centre of sundry groups of curious and doubtless awe-struck boys, who listened with intense interest to his many tales of adventure. Mr Mikulec refused to be interviewed in the orthodox way, but in real
American style told the interviewer that he ‘could make up some spicy yarns from his imagination’."
At Invercargill, before leaving for Hobart from Bluff, Mikulec stayed at the Southland Club Hotel, a luxury suggesting a steady income from postcard selling, and sent a telegram to his original New Zealand contact, the Wanganui Chronicle, "Gentlemen, I will take a boat to Hobart on Monday, August 1st. My best greetings to all. I have very many friends in New Zealand by this time. It is the best country I ever was in. Good-bye to all. Yours truly, Joe Mikulec, globe-trotter."
No doubt 32 other countries were honoured to be "the best country I was ever in" but Joe Mikulec’s travels are worth commemorating and, indeed, there’s a statue of him in his home patch.
Mikulec’s entrepreneurial spirit is still alive and well and Mayor Simunic has announced the museum will have a replica of the book, but with the pages blank, to be filled by the people who travel to Oroslavje.
"Mikulec went to see the world, and now the world can come to Oroslavje to see his story."
Maybe you could walk there?
— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
