LOST ON MOUNTAINS

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 246, 17 October 1929, Page 24

LOST ON MOUNTAINS

TWO GIRL STUDENTS. A TERRIFYING ORDEAL, ' . DAYS WITHOUT FOOD. EXHAUSTED WHEN FOUND. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 11. After a nightmare experience on the Barring ton • Tops, a bleak tablelands region near Dungog.. Joyce Vickery aud Lilian Eraser, two 17-years-old University students, who had been missing for two days from theri camp, were found on Thursday. Searchers found them starving and worn out, their clothing torn, and almost frozen with cold, huddled beneath a mass of undergrowth at one of the most exposed spots in the whole of the district. Their •story, told when they had been taken back to Dtingog, showed their, sufferings and ordeals. They had left their camp on Monday morning, intending to go only a short way up the mountain gully near their camp. They had not taken any food with them, as they d*d not intend setting out on their major quest, that of looking for a particular fern, until the next day. All hour after they had left their camp, having collected a number of" fern specimens, they decided to turn back, luit after a few minutes' wandering they discovered that they were lost. From then until Tuesday afternoon, they wandered aimlessly about the rugged slopes of the mountains, following up creeks, heading toward breaks in the trees and searching for traces of their camp. On Saturday niglit they slept in a cave and ate a few biscuits which they had in their pockets. To light a fire they used nearly half their stock of matches. On Sunday they continued their wandering and spent the night in a rough bush .shelter which they erected from fallen tree tops. Monday came and still they were unable to locate their camp or any sign of the rough bush track leading to Carey's Peak, 5500 feet above sea-level, which they knew was the only evidence of civilisation on the mountains. Late on Monday they made the discovery that their stock of matches had run out and left them without the means of making a fire. By good fortune they managed to retrace their steps to the shelter which they had built of bushes the night before and on Monday night they slept in it. A fall of snow made matters worse and the cold was intense. Their only food for the last two days were berries and wild clover, which, from their own knowledge, they knew to be. to a certain extent, nourishing. When the searchers found them on Tuesday, they had given up hope of regaining civilisation and they told their parents later they were preparing to die. They had become too exhausted to walk' any further. The girls hailed their rescuers with shouts of joy and fell in a faint into the arms of their fathers, who<had accompanied the search parties.

Later, at Dnngog. after they had food and rest, they-confessed that it" was a terrifying experience. It had one comforting compensation, however, they said, and that was that they had found the rare specimen of fern which they sought.