BUSH ACCIDENTS

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20272, 14 August 1937, Page 24 (Supplement)

BUSH ACCIDENTS

QUEER HAPPENINGS. TALCS OF AUSTRALIA. DEATH IN STRANGE PLACES. Death and disaster lurk in strange places in the bush, as men, women and even children have found to their sorrow, says a writer in the Adelaide Chronicle. The strangest accident I have ever known was one which ended in a young girl’s death. Just outside Nimmitabel (N.S.W.), a young girl went looking for a cow. There had been a heavy fall of snow and the girl became lost. Search parties combed the surrounding country for days, but. failed to find a trace of the girl. Years later her skeleton was found in a crevice in a big rock. Its position told the tale

of an awful death. In jumping over into the crevice, and become wedged the crevice she had slipped, fallen there. Trapper Embarrassed. An amusing accident occurred on the South Coasts of N.S.W. recently. A rabbit trapper accidentally sat on a trap and was caught by the seat of his pants, a little flesh being held in the jaws of the trap also. He had to walk through the town to reach his home and get the trap taken off. Also on the South Coast a man was ?n 3 danger of starving to death through 1 being caught in monkey ropes and r timber called “wait-a-whlle.” He had 2 fallen into a gully and CQuld not get out. Fortunately his calls for help r were heard by a farmer, i A bark stripper saved himself from a slow death in a novel manner. , In climbing a tree his feet slipped . and ho fell head first towards the / ground. In falling, however, one foot i caught* in the fork of a tree. He was r unable to release his foot, and as his 1 1 head was down lie would soon have r (fainted. Fortunately he still held his i tomahawk in his shand and was able j to cut the tree down. He fell with

r | the tree, and but for scratches and d i bruises was uninjured. Escaping the Bees. I Out shooting in the bush a young man stretched himself out in the P ! shade of a tree and dropped off to ’• 1 sleep. When he awoke he found a n : swarm of bees settled on his chest. ; In trying to brush them off he was “ 1 badly stung, and may have been stung “ j to death had he not acted promptly. s ! He jumped up and raced to a water--0 | hole about 20 yards away and dived fj 1 in. It was about the only place where “ | the bees could not follow, d | Another man was shoU by his dog. a I He was resting on a rock with his •t rifle beside him when his dog jumped P up and knocked the rifle over. It went off and the bullet lodged in the * calf of the man’s leg. >*• A selector once almosts burnt himd self to death through his own foole ishness. He was burning off rubbish •t and set fire to dozens of heaps, and 3 then found himself in the centre of s the blazing heaps. The fires had e spread until he was completely surs rounded. He had to race through the e fire and then jump into the creek, h He spent weeks in bed recovering from the burns. * Loose gravel almost caused a man’s death. He was walking along the top of a cliff about twenty feet from the edge when he slipped and fell. The ground sloped away to the edge of the cliff and he could not get a hold. He slid right to the edge of the cliff and would have dropped several hundred feet had he not managed to catch hold of a sapling that grew at the very edge. He had to hang to it until aid came. He was thrown a rope to assist him to climb back to safety. At Wyndham (N.S.W.), a youth diving in the Matagana creek managed to get his hands fast in a ledge of rock under the water. He was unable to call for help and unable to release his hands. Fortunately, there were others there who, becoming alarmed at his failures to reappear after his dive, dived to his rescue. He was in a bad way when brought to the bank, but recovered after treatment. Quicksands. In many parts of Australia quicksands are a source of great danger to both man and beast. Quicksand looks just like any other sand until you get into it, and then no matter how you struggle you sink deeper and deeper until it will swallow you unless you get assistance. Near Bombala (NjS.W.) there was a patch of quicksand in which many have almost lost their lives. On one occasion the brother of the writer had to be rescued from this quicksand with a long pole. Not far away a horse and cart completely disappeared from view. A party of men were sitting round a campfire waiting for the billy to boil one evening when there was an explosion which scattered the fire in all directions, and lifted the billy into the air. The heat of the fire had caused the i-ock on which the fire had been kindled to explode. Some rock has a habit of doing this. Something similar once happened to a party of telegraph linesmen. In this instance it was a log that exploded. They set alight to an old dry log to dry their clothes after being caught out in the rain. Suddenly the log was blown to pieces and though all the men suffered from shock, none was seriously injured. A powder tin discovered later told that someone had hidden a tin of gun powder in the hollow log. Many strange accidents happen in the bush, and when one adds those accidents caused by lightning, floods, fires, snakes and spiders you will see that the bush in Australia is not quite as safe a place as one might at first imagine.