Businesswoman

sells Norfolk to Australians

Norfolk Island Travel Service, Australia’s only travel agency which can claim to specialise in Norfolk, and Norfolk alone, got off to a shaky start in a tiny, first-floor office above a Sydney milkbar just three years ago.

Today, with a smart, ground-floor office in another part of Sydney, the agency proudly claims that it books one in every five Australian travellers to Norfolk.

The agency’s owner, Mrs. Aileen Dickson, has done remarkably well in the tough travel agency world, but her ? success is not really surprising.

She’s a good businesswoman.

Besides being a housewife and mother of four children, she operates three other businesses—Rock-A-Bye, Baby Sitters (one of New South Wales biggest baby-sitting companies), Jan

Practising what she preaches about a fisherman's paradise, Mrs. Dickson with a 9 lb trumpeter she caught recently on Norfolk.

ar Telephone Answering Service and ydney Information Services.

Her interest in Norfolk started dien she bought the information ser ice firm in December, 1963, and, r ith a staff of two, started answering eneral inquiries by telephone. This ampany handled, by contract, in uiries from firms for trade statistics ad general information.

Many of the inquiries were from eople who were thinking of taking holiday on Norfolk Island.

Mrs. Dickson saw that there was a opening for a travel agency which aew Norfolk, and in July, 1965, with ithor Rob Nicholson {The Pit rimers) as an original partner, she >rmed Norfolk Island Travel Service.

Plenty of business

The volume of work handled by ie agency grew rapidly, and it soon scame obvious that the agency needed rger premises.

In August, 1967, Mrs. Dickson ased her present headquarters in a nail arcade, for a period of three :ars.

Mrs. Dickson feels that Norfolk the one place in the South Seas here travellers like to plan their own >lidays, and she does not promote lackage tours” to the island Ithough she will sell them if people k for them.) Mrs. Dickson is not worried by e predictions that Norfolk will lose i its New Zealand tourists to the x>k Islands by the early 1970’s— arfolk, she feels, can more than ake up for the loss of New Zea iders by extra Australian visitors, ovided the island is promoted more Australia.

Coming from a businesswoman of rs. Dickson’s calibre, it’s a point )rth considering. ? granted 51 acres on Buka Island, opposite Sohano on Bougainville, the New Guinea Land Board, a ;-man syndicate plan to build a 70,000 Melanesian-style hotel re rt on the land by mid-1969.

The syndicate, consisting of two nericans, New Guineans and New alanders, planned to form a com ny, New Britain-Solomon Hotels y. Ltd., and build 10 independent ing units housing 40 people at ika.