DRIVER’S LUCKY ESCAPE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4902, 13 November 1925, Page 4

DRIVER’S LUCKY ESCAPE

H IT WASN’T THE FALL !” BUT THE SUDDEN STOP. A well-known resident of Otorohanga who was motoring home from Te Kuiti about 8.30 on Thursday night got (something of a shock when, about four miles out, he saw two brilliant shafts of light staring up at him through tlie scrub at the bottom of a deep gully. Stopping .the car he got out, and soon discoveiled that the lights were the head-lamps? of a motor-vehicle which was overturned at the foot of the cliff. He left his party on the road and made quick’ time back to Te Kuiti, summoning the police and a doctor. With visions of a heap of dead and dying at the bottom of this lOtLfoot drop the rescuers made a careful descent. On approaching the vehicle it was found to be a lorry which was lying with its cab in the mud and its wheels in the air. No corpses or mangled sufferers were to be seen, but a most peculiar sound came from under the middle of the lorry, which, being supported by hummocks at either end, lay high off the ground in the centre. Investigation revealed the driver and sole occupant of the lorry fast asleep and snoring heartily, oblivious of the fact that had his novel bedchamber landed in any other way lie would have been crushed flat, Beyond a sprained ankle and a few bruises he was unhurt. A search in the scrub wap rewarded by the discovery of a 10-gal-]on keg of beer, which has evidently been aboard tlie vehicle when it made itis abrupt descent from the road. The .keg was full.—King Country Chronicle.