“WORST MOMENT IN LIFE.”

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 390, 23 March 1937, Page 3

“WORST MOMENT IN LIFE.”

DISCOVERY OF ’PLANE. Incidents in Bush Epic. Sydney, March 10. A special reporter, who travelled on the train frqm Newcastle on Saturday with Mr Bernard O’Reilly, obtained from him a vivid account of some of the miost dramatic incidents in his finding and rescue of the survivors of the Stinson plane disaster. Mr O’Reilly paid a graceful tribute to the heroism of the survivors, who made him feel, he said, that his one objective must be to get them back to safety. “It was the worst moment of my life,” Mr O’Reilly said, when he was asked what came into his mind when he first saw the dark patch, which indicated the last landing-place of the

missing Stinson. “I had never experienced such a hopeless feeling,” Mr O’Reilly went on. “There seemed a terrible certainty about what had happened. I expected that, even if any of the people on the plane were not dead, there would be no chance of saving their lives after nine days in those mountains.

“And when I got to the plane and to Mr Proud and Mr Binstead, and found those chaps, in their state, sitting up and trying to crack jokes, well, I tell you, to live long enough to get, them back to safety was just about all I wanted.” Fears Persisted. That Mr O’Reilly fulfilled his aim is now part of the imperishable history of the real Australia, and the real Australian. But the fears of that first moment in which he thought that assistance he was bravely trying to bring to brave men must come too

late, have persisted in nightmare fashion in his mind through a week in which all Australia has been glamorous in his praise. “I haven’t got far away enough from the horror of the thing to have any definite feelings about what has happened,” Mr O’Reilly said as the train rushed through the Hawkesbury River country which, but for his inspired bushcraft, might have been for ever thought the custodian of the secret of the vanished Stinson. His strong hands —hands essentially” of a man of action —Trembled a little, and his face, already drawn by a week’s lack of adequate sleep, paled a shade under its mop of curly, pleasantly auburn hair, as his thoughts went back to the hopes and dreads of the previous Sunday.

“Of course I wasn't confident that the plane was ■in the Macpherson Range,” Mr O'Reilly added. “But it had been seen in the district on the Friday, and when the conflict of opinion developed whether or not it had been seen passing down the New South Wales coast, I thought I should make the search. I worked out my plan of campaign carefully. J knew from my friends in the bush that the plane had been seen following the ordinary route over the mountains to Lismore. I took the map, and made a line which ran directly over the mountains, touching the high heads of four ranges. I decided to explore the northern side of each range head. It was on the fourth of them that I found the plane. If I hadn't found It, I would have gone on exploring on Sunday night.

“I have told all , the rest before ” Mr O’Reilly sa{d , but he ad(Je{i a mark on the steepness of the range on which the Stinton came to grief. Mr Proud, he said. Was lying against a tree, which held him in position, but the incline 'alongside was such that a stone put on the ground there would have rolled down for mpre than a mile.

Strength Taxed. Mr O’Reilly admitted rather deprecatingly that that Sunday when, In addition to finding the plane and its survivors, he got through to settled country, carefully selected a relief party, restricted to men who could stand up to the work before them, and then led the party back towards the plane, threw a greater tax on his physical resources than any other experience of his life. Mrs O’Reilly, who was listening with the keenest interest as her husband: answered the questions put to him, intervened when he was asked whether he had considered taking anybody with him when he began his search. "I wanted to go with him, but I couldn’t,” she said. “The country was too bad. —absolutely trackless.” “Being used to that, type of country,” Mr O’Reilly went on. "I could go a fair bit faster than most of the chaps I know. Besides, where there are two on such a job, the second ch'ap is always likely to want to go another way. Even as it was, I was fortunate. It 'Would have been quite easy to cover the approximate time of search which T followed and miss' seeing the plane.” The man, who, by magnificent accomplishment of the apparently impossible, has awakened a realisation that bushcraft is still to be found in Australia, confessed that a couple of days in a city were enough for him, and that life in the hush gave him both the occupation 'and the amusements he desired.

“T am in the bush, and I am staying in the bush, because I like the bush,” Mr O’Reilly declared. “I like having to do With horses and cattle. Cattle mustering and drafting is the finest sport in the world—better even than polo.”

A note of pride that, was signally doings, came into his voice when he spoke of the bush traditions of his own family. He' was the second youngest, he said, of a family of 10. Hit' father, who 'Would rather have slept under stars than a roof any night, had cattle interests in Western Queensland in the d'ays of “bushrangers and blacks." ■ “Your bushcraft comes from your father?” Mr O’Reilly was asked.

*'l don’t know,” he said. “I think you pick that sort of thing up unconsciously. You get up against difficulties, and you learn to overcome them in your own way.”