RISSINGTON CAMP EXCITEMENT

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 28, 17 February 1937, Page 13

RISSINGTON CAMP EXCITEMENT

The. morning after the excitement of raising the bridge out of the way of the rising river at Rissington wo decided tp see what wp could do to put & new rbpe on the flag staff. If you remember, I told you how the old halliards broke off and left us with a flag staff, but with no means of getting our flag up to the top. It was a pretty good height up to the top and we did not want to go to the trouble of digging the pole up if we could help it; so we thought that we would try and build a tower with some long gum polote that were there on the ground. We built one, or ratber part of one, but it was too heavy for ua to handle even with the help of Mr. Cooksey and a visitor. So we had to resort to the work of dropping the flag pole and then putting on new ropes. It was rather a good thing that we did fetch the pole down, for vte found it pretty TOtten both at the top and also below the ground. So we chopped off some few feet and raitsed it up again by means of a kind of derrick made of gums lashed together.^ It was Useful pioneering, anyhow, especially as noue of the boys there had ever seen that method of raising up a tall staff. The nest day we thought that we would build a tower that we could put up and finish, so, lo aud beholdl up went a tower that was a few iuches taller than tho flag staff was by that time. Some of the chaps thought they would have a try and see who could get down the edifice the quickest. One chap managed to do it xn about two seconds by jumping about fifteen feet down the centre of the tower; that was the record as there Wero no other monkeys present. Our troubles were not all past even then, for when we started to get our gear up top the nest day the wire rope decided to come unhooked from the winding-up wiuch. Luckily one chap managed to climb down aud fetch the wandering end Up again, After all said and done everyone ( thoroughly enjoyed himself, and even with the hindrance from the weather we did a good bit of work on the eamping ground, and that was what we went up to do, sinee out main camp had had to be put off.