Life-Savers Rescue Badly Injured Man From Rocks

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29089, 29 December 1959, Page 8

Life-Savers Rescue Badly Injured Man From Rocks

(New Zealand Press Association)

DUNEDIN, December 28. Kaka Point surf life-savers today battled against heavy seas to save a man who fell 50ft down a sheer cliff at the Nugget Point lighthouse. The man who dragged himself, severely injured, from the sea to a rock, is Howard Clements, aged 23, of Renfrew street, Balclutha. He received multiple fractures and internal injuries and has been placed on the seriously ill list at the South Otago Hospital. Mr Clements slipped on the cliff edge and toppled into the sea below. He struggled on to a rock while a girl went to the lighthouse, 200 ft above, for help. A police party from Balclutha, 19 miles away, rushed to the scene. They found it was possible to get down to the injured man by rope, but impossible to bring him up the cliffface. The only way of rescue was from the sea, and Kaka Point surfers and visiting members of the Oreti (Invercargill) Surf Club were called to assist. Everything was against them. The sea was too rough to approach from the north, but finally the surfers got their boat

into the water a mile south of the lighthouse. Two surfers scrambled down a rope to the injured man and together with the four in the boat managed to get Mr Clements strapped on to a board and into the craft. The return journey was equally hazardous, and from where the boat was eventually beached Mr Clements had to be carried half a mile by stretcher to a waiting ambulance. The rescue took two hours and a half.