BOY ADVENTURER.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 November 1925, Page 1

BOY ADVENTURER.

SYDNEY, Oct. 30. In the blood of Bernard Augustine McCartin, a 13-year old Alalvern (Alelbourne) hoy, there is a flaming spark of adventure. A few weeks ago lie left Ins home and hoarded the express from Melbourne to Sydney, not by the orthodox method of entering by a carriage door, but by swinging himself on to the bars beneath the carriages. In that position he rode all the 576 miles to Sydney in a fashion that would give a backache to people who find even the carriage cushions too hard, at the though of it. The police had been warned of his disappearance from home, and Bernard’s liberty in this city was short-lived. Ho was sent back to Alelbourne, but last Sunday week lie repeated his experiments in train travelling by “riding the bars” from Afelbourno to Adelaide. He was again soon laid by the heels, and friends put him on the steamer Zealandia. loi J return to Melbourne. But Bernard's love of freedom from home control was not so easily eurlied. His father, mother, and brother went down to the wharf to meet tho Zealandia last Saturday morning, hut they lound that the steamer had already been berthed ail hour, and in that time the boy had disappeared. Quite a few days passed before he was once again under the parental roof. TRAINS FASCINATE THAI.

The boy is not wayward. His mother says that lie is intelligent beyond his years and is imbued with a love ol adventure. Trains fascinate him. They always have, for when ho was two vears of ago, lie used to stand tor hours on a railway bridge near his home, peering through the pickets at the trains going by.’ He had dipped deeply into romantic literature, and is seized with one desire—to see the world. When a reporter visited his home lie found on a table in the box s bedroom “The Count of Alonte Cristo.” "The Swiss Family Robinson,” a romantic sidelight on the War ot the Boses, “The Sea Hawk,’* “Robinson C'rusoe,” “Around the AVorld in Eighty Days”—all well-thumbed. He lived in a world of his own—the atmosphere of his hooks—without resorting to the company of other boys. He looks a frad little chap, and no one would guess that lie has the stamina to undergo the nerve-racking experience of riding under a train.