FORTY YEARS AGO

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3274, 11 June 1943, Page 3

FORTY YEARS AGO

WAGGON GOES OVER BANK TURNER’S HILL ACCIDENT DRIVER’S LUCKY ESCAPE (From the Ohinemuri Gazette of June 9, 1903.) Yesterday afternoon as Mr J. Weston, driver* of a team of five horses, in the employ of Mr Berridge of Waihi, was proceeding from Paeroa, he met with a serious accident. He had reached a very dangerous part of the road known as Turner’s Hill, not far from Mackaytown, when in turning his team at a sharp point on the road, one of the leaders got his leg over the swingletrees and became restive and uncontrollable. The result was that the brute fell over an embankment and drew the other horses and the waggon after him. The driver stuck to his post, doing his best to right his team, and was dragged over the embankment. The fall was fully 40 feet to the river bank. Weston was taken from under the waggon and brought to Paeroa, and attended to by Dr. Buckby. He has three ribs broken and is severely cut about the head. The wonder is that he was not killed outright. The horses were much knocked about, one, we learn, having a leg broken.

The place is nearly the same spot as where the brewer’s cart tumbled over some little time back, and is feared by all drivers as being the most dangerous on the Paeroa-Waihi road.