Swimmer Who Set Forth To Swim

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 34, 3 February 1939, Page 22

Swimmer Who Set Forth To Swim

nse TATION 4ZB went to trouble to keep Dunedin listeners inform. ed of an attempt by Tom Muthearn of Gamart, to swim from Dunedin to Port Chalmers. Originally the station intended to accompany the swimmer in a launch, relay a shortwave description of the event. However, the equipment refused to function, and the plan had to be abandoned. Other arrangements were made: @ microphone was installed on the wharf from which Muthearn was to start, and Lionel Sceats was to be in a motor car running along the road. His duties were to phone repeated progress reports to the station, so that Tlisteners could be kept up to the minute. Time for the race to start. 4ZB, microphone, and thousaads of the public rolled along to the starting point. Mr. Mulhearn didn’t. Nothing seemed to be happening, 42ZB returned to the studio. Some, not many, of the crowds returned home, Eventually Mulhearn arrived, but there was no launch to accompany him. Oae volunteered to do so, and Multhearn had no alternative but to go ahead. "I'll come out of the water ct Port Chalmers," he said, as he plunged into the steamer basin. Good deal of the "Sez me-sez you" type of badinage followed. Hundreds of ears sped down the Port Chalmers road, locking in Lionel and his party. Thousands of people flocked the wharves. It was a great occasion; a unique event for a Sunday afternoon. The swimmer went well until he reached the end of the wharves, Port Chalmers was still seven miles distant. Amid ironic cheerg the swimmer signalled the volun-

teer launch, said he had an internal pain, climbed aboard, The great swim was over! Other volunteers, knowing 4ZB was interested, kept phoning reports through that the swimmer had passed certain points! But Bernie McConnell had fiuked seeing what had happened, prevented the public from being fooled further by announcing the true details. He summed up the situation: "Best thing is to treat the matter as a good joke."