LAY DOWN TO DIE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 193, 17 August 1939, Page 6

LAY DOWN TO DIE.

HAD GIVEN UP HOPE.

FOUND FENCE IN MORNING.

NEW ZEALAND ER'S ORDEAL. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 12. Sydney p&ople who know the Blue Mountains well, and know how cold it is up there at night at this time of the year, have marvelled at the endurance shown by Mr. Leon Levy, of Wellington, who survived four days without food in bitter winds and driving rain. A big force of police and civilians, assisted by police dogs from Sydney, had been searching for him and had practically given up hope that he could possibly have survived his ordeal. They were amazed when they heard that he had made his way to a lonely farm at the top of the Burragorang Valley. When he had recovered sufficiently in hospital, Mr. Levy told of his ordeal. He said that on his first two nights, after he had become lost in the thickly forested valley below Katoomba, he had lit fires, but on the Wednesday night he was drenched to the skin and his matches were then useless. He had tramped around hardly able to stand because his boots had been torn to pieces. At times he walked on his hands as well as his feet to try to deaden the pain.

"The most ghastly part was on Wednesday, when I decided to climb a cliff face to try to see where I was," he said. "I had climbed 50 feet when darkness came. I had no hope then of getting back into the valley in the dark. I just clutched ihe cliff's side, standing on a rock ledge until the morning. It seemed like years, and my hands were so paralysed in the morning that I could hardly let go. Soon afterwards I fell and broke my glasses. When that happened I knew there was little hope, because I could not then see any distance. I made for a creek that I had seen before, determined to follow it, and drank so much of the creek water that it made me weak and iIL

"Next day (Thursday) I lay down to die. When I awoke before dawn on the Friday morning I found that I was lying inside a fence. I felt my way along it until I came to the farmhouse, where I staggered on to the verandah and collapsed. If that fence had not been there when I woke I would have died, for I was too exhausted to search any more."

Mr. Levy was found lying on the verandah by the farmer's family when they got up. Realising that too much food would be dangerous for him after his time without any, they gave him a light meal and let him sleep for a few hours while they made arrangements for his transport to Katoomba Hospital.