Intrepid globet rotter OUR WEEKLY TRAVELS WITH ANN

The Kiwi adventurer kept readers rapt with her tales from foreign lands

- Fleur Guthrie

Former Weekly contributor and travel writer Ann Gluckman has more than a few strings to her bow. Born in 1927, she's written several books and was the first woman in New Zealand to be appointed principal of a state co-ed secondary school and on the Medical Ethical Committee at Auckland's Middlemore Hospital. We caught up with Ann, 95, over a cuppa at her Remuera retirement village apartment.

Did your mum buy the Weekly?

Yes, every week she bought it - probably from the first-ever issue and we got Time magazine early on too. She passed on the magazines to her friends as she belonged to a reading circle. They were particularly interested in the household hints and the recipes because just before the war, most people in Remuera still had maids.

Tell us about when you were first published in the Weekly.

I remember as seven-year-old writing stories and sending them in for the children's pages. And my own four sons went on to do that too. Then, later on, I was involved in the setting up of play centres in Auckland - it was a predecessor of the kindergarten movement. So I wrote a piece for the Weekly in 1951 telling how a group of us mothers would hire a church hall two days a week and take turns supervising the children playing. Funnily enough, I also went on to have a recipe published in the Weekly. It was an easy-to-make dessert, which my grandmother used to make me, called Prune Whip. I was paid $25. During the early '80s, I travelled to places like South Africa and Egypt and enjoyed writing travel stories for the magazine when Jean Wishart was editor.