FROM Dutch travel agents touching down at Southend airport in 1971 to flare- wearing German school girls on an exchange trip, bargain-hunting Belgians or snap-happy Japanese businessmen, South Essex has hosted visitors from all over the world.

Echo photographers have been there to capture these special moments, such as in 1982 when a group of Japanese visitors came to Basildon to see the newly- opened £1.5 million Pitsea Leisure Centre, when American schoolgirls dropped into a Southend pub to enjoy a pint and even when some Fijian visitors, in traditional dress, came in Southend in the seventies.

So take a trip down memory lane with these nostalgic photographs of visitors to the Echo patch over the years.