A Digger’s Yarn

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 2, 8 April 1893, Page 3

A Digger’s Yarn

AN ALPINE EXPERIENCE. (Specially Written for the Southern Cross.) “Yes,” said Bill Contts, a West Coast pioneer of several years standing, and still to the fore somewhere on Wilson’s River, “ I did make a slip once, or rather the rock did, and I don’t think I shall ever forget it. My shooting has never been so good since, although I can still manage to keep the larder supplied when there are any birds about.” “ How was it ?” “ Well, you see I was a sort of guide to an exploring party at Sutherland’s Falls. We’d got up about 3000 feet on Mount Nicholas and had before us a ledge overhanging a sheer precipice of 2000 feet. I didn’t half like the look of it, and said to the chief ‘ We’ll go back a bit and round it.’ He, jeeringly, as I thought, said * Why, man, you’re afraid.’ Well, says I to myself, if you don’t mind, I don’t see why I should. So I went along the ledge a bit and £ whip,’ it gave way and I felt myself and swag flying’ through the air. What happened next I don’t know, but when I came to my senses —the breath was clean knocked out of me —I was lying among a regular coil of ‘ lawyers ’ with little left on me but my boots and part of my skin, cut and bleeding from head to foot. Pulling myself together locality pretty strong—l saw that I could make my way to the camp, about a couple of miles off. This I did, scrambling along sometimes in and sometimes out of the bed of the creek as best I mig'ht. Meanwhile, as I afterwards learned, the party whom I had left without notice, looked at one another, shook their heads, and, supposing that I had g'one to ‘ kingdom come,’ made their way back to the camp. This they would have had to do anyhow to look for my remains.