100-MILE RUN BY BOYS

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29077, 14 December 1959, Page 17

100-MILE RUN BY BOYS

Attempt To Elude Police (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) ALICE SPRINGS, Dec. 12. Two aboriginal boys, aged 19 and 15, escaped from police yesterday, and ran 100 miles in 23 hours before they were overtaken , by utility vehicle. The police arrested the boys after a store had been broken into at Curtain Springs, 230 miles south of here. They were members of the wild Pitjantjarra tribe.’ The boys broke away at night and 'vanished into some of the worst country in the heart of Z.ustralia, police said. They ran all the time, and also endeavoured to cover their tracks. When they had to cross a plain of spinifex and sand dampened by light rain they left not one track. Blacktrackers showed police where the fleeing boys had travelled in huge leaps from spinifex clump to spinifex clump, never letting their feet touch the tell-tale sand. One of these leaps spanned a gap of 11 feet. The boys had a start of a few hours when the police started after them in utility vehicles. They were so successful in masking their tracks that before the day was half over they had the vehicles nearly 40 miles behind them. The police finally cornered the boys against a cliff. But they climbed straight up it, and the police vehicles had to skirt a bluff before they found the boys lying exhausted by a water hole.