DEATH OF FORMER CHAMPION AXEMAN

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28766, 11 December 1958, Page 15

DEATH OF FORMER CHAMPION AXEMAN

IITANY sports meetings throughout New Zealand today include on their programmes events for wood choppers, and so spectacular is this sport that there is a general revival of interest in what was once a flourishing pastime in the logging districts. The death of Mr Charles O’Rourke recently, will revive for many older residents of the West Coast in particular, memories of the days when O’Rourke was the

champion of champions with an axe and with the lazy stick. O’Rourke was a Tasmanian who settled in New Zealand about 1903. He was a big man, more than 6ft and weighing a very hard .and lean 15st when he took up employment as a bushman in the Moana area. He soon made a name for himself in the wood chopping sport as he had in Tasmania before emigrating pnd before very long found himself on the back mark in contests. Unbeaten He specialised in events for two-foot logs and there wgs nobody in the country to match him in this event. He could •chop through a two foot log in ;under four minutes, which was feat that few other axemen could equal For 20 years he competed in wood chopping contests, winning events throughout New Zealand. He was not beaten off the scratch mark. At the time of the Dunedin exhibition he was anchor man for

a tug-o-war team and in this he suffered an injury which was to cripple him for the rest of his life. Before he was forced to take to crutches, however, he also made his name as a lazy stick puller and in this sport also he made his mark. Old timers still talk of the contest he had with Con Warren, the only survivor of the tug-o-war team, and a former resident of Barrytown. Up to the time that these two big, strong men met, Warren was the supreme .champion in this sport on the West Coast. It is reported that in the match, a pick handle was broken so great was the pulling, but this cannot be verified. O’Rourke won the match after a great struggle.

About 40 years ago, O’Rourke, and two other well-known sporting personalities, Phil O'Shea and Tom O’Callaghan, celebrated St. Patrick’s Day at the Greymouth