In 2002 I became aware of the fascinating Captain Antonio Zetto through the posthumously published  Globe Trotting: A Ten Years Walk which was ghost written by Roy L. Marshall in 1937. What makes it more confusing about this worldly traveller is that in "his" book he states that he departed Trieste on 23rd November 1922 nearly 4 years after the Cairns Post journalist claims! 

Here is an extract from the Cairns Post (QLD) Wednesday 6 June 1928:

Captain Antony Zetto, who arrived in Cairns on Monday evening after having walked round the world, taking in all the principal cities, gave an interesting account of his travels to a "Post" representative yesterday.

The Captain left Trieste, in Italy, in December 1918, and on Christmas Eve 1928, his engagement to encircle the globe on foot will have been accomplished. The terms of the peregrination arose from a debate amongst the students of the Trieste College, wherein he was doubted that every capital city in the world could be reached by a pedestrian within ten years.

THE TASK.

Captain Zetto, who served for two years in the war was studying geography and for a military career at the college and undertook to put it to the test. A sum of one million lire (about £11,000) was voted to him if he should accomplish the feat, and the conditions drawn and included the provisions that he should carry no fire arms or weapons of any sort and no water. When it was necessary to cross water the adventurer was bound in honor to work his passage - travelling as a passenger was not permitted under the terms of the agreement. The terms seemed at first to be very stringent but, speaking yesterday the Captain claimed to have vindicated the principal of “peaceable means” although several times he was at the portals of death.

Captain Zetto is a splendid physical specimen of young manhood, gifted with keen perception and intelligence and with a sense of the educational value of such a remarkable feat. He expressed no particular gratification that he was nearing his homeland again, because he had made such friendships in a thousand places round the world that he has become a cosmopolitan in the finest sense of the word. His memoirs will he intensely interesting when published, as they undoubtedly will be in his own country.

Captain Zetto expressed pleasure with his brief sojourn in Queensland. It was the finest State in the Commonwealth and had scenic and climatic features that lifted it to the level of just comparison with most places in the world. Its beauty was impressive. Again, he was moved to express his emotion at natural beauty when on the edge of the Nullarbor Plain to Fowler's Bay in South Australia. En route were numerous Government water tanks which were the only water provisions of that region. When he awoke in the morning while camping along that line, thousands of many coloured birds were flitting, chirping, singing overhead. Apparently they had made the water' tanks their rendezvous in the nights, and with the breath of dawn had stirred, preparatory to their daily migrations. He said that it was a sight to be remembered for ever.

The people in Australia were very hospitable, and he referred specially to the fine spirit of the Australian girls. They were at once the most open hearted, friendly and comradely that he had met.