60-FOOT FALL DOWN CLIFF-FACE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 198, 7 September 1937, Page 9

60-FOOT FALL DOWN CLIFF-FACE

-Press Association.)

Youth Was Able With Help To Walk Away TWO BONE FRACTURES

(By Telegraph-

WELLINGTON, Last Night. ' Thongh he fell 60 feet down a cliff face and, in falling, struck and rebounded from a ledgc, Edward Elgar, aged 17, a member of a rock-climbing party at Makara on Sunday, was able with assistance to walk a milo to a motor-car. The victim of the accident is a son of Mr A. E. Elgar, of Karori. With four or five other youths he was clambering down a steep part of the cliffs toward the beach. He proceeded safely fQr a little way, then trusted his weight to an apparently sound projecting piece of rock. It broke and the youth slipped and fell. He dropped 12 foet, struck the ledge and rebounded from it, turning a somesault in mid-air. He then fell a distanco estimated to bc more than 45 fcet and landed in a sitting position on scoria. Elgar was assisted by his companions to the motor road, whero a motorist picked him up and drove him home. To-day he was taken 'to 'hospital and found to have a brolten pelvi's, a broken bone in the hand and a shouldor injury. He is feeling tho effects of shock, but his condition is not serious. His escape frm death or serious injury was a miracle. Mr Elgar said to-day that the doctor who attended his son at his home said he could not understand how the hoy'c backbone was not shattered or driven into his skull.