Mrs Corbett Found By Deer Cullers

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31082, 10 June 1966, Page 1

Mrs Corbett Found By Deer Cullers

(New Zealand Press Association* AUCKLAND, June 9.

Tired and hungry, Mrs Christine Lucilla Corbett, aged 26, the mother of two children, is tonight resting in Whakatane Hospital after being missing in the Ureweras since Sunday.

She was found shortly after midday today by a.party of six deer cullers about four hours’ walk up a tributary of the Whakatane river.

She was assisted to the river by three of the cullers while the other three ran ahead and alerted the searchers.

She was then taken to the search base, south of Ruatoki by jet boat. Most of the

trip was made in the dark and a spotlight was used to navigate the boat A utility vehicle and then a car were used for the last laps of the trip to the hospital, where she was admitted for observation and rest. While Mrs Corbett was being assisted from the bush, the police were dragging the swollen Whakatane river in the hope of finding some due to her disappearance. Mrs Corbett, who comes from Rotorua, said she had evidently taken the wrong track on her way to the Ohora hut, but it was not until Monday that she realised she was lost She spent the first night in her sleeping bag and on Monday gathered wood for a fire. She kept the fire going until she was found by the deer cullers. She said that on Wednesday afternoon, she heard the sound of a helicopter overhead and immediately threw more wood on the fire in hope of attracting attention. “I was terribly depressed when the helicopter flew off," she said.

“I had ’chocolate, chewing

gum, matches and cigarettes and 1 came out of the bush with some of each,” she said. “I was budgetting for a week, because I knew that after a week I would be dead at any rate.”

Mrs Corbett said that she had moved away from the river to make camp under a fernleaf shelter because she thought that the roar of the water would drown the noise of any aircraft which may have been engaged in the search.

She said she spent the three days gathering wood to keep the fire going throughout the night. To get water she squeezed, moss and strained it through her clothing. From her hospital bed at Whakatane, Mrs Corbett said tonight, “I feel terrific.” The hospital described her condition as “very satisfactory."

Her disappearance on a tramp—which normally would take only three hours—from Ruatoki, 15 miles south of Whakatane, to the Ohora trampers’ hut on Sunday afternoon started the biggest search and rescue operation in the Whakatane district for many years.