KAIRAKI RESCUE

Press, Volume C, Issue 29712, 4 January 1962, Page 3

KAIRAKI RESCUE

Two Boys In Danger

Two Wellington boys aged about 14 called for help from the Waimakariri bar for half ian hour on Tuesday night before being rescued by Mr R. D Pool of Christchurch, i at 845 p.m. The boys, Wayne Richardson and Brian Wellesley, were swimming off Kairaki beach just before dusk when their rubber mattress over|turned, and the strong current swept them out into rough water. Their faint cries were heard by a fisherman on the beach. He ran to the Waimakariri Yacht Club, where Mr Pool was beaching his new 14 foot runabout. Sea Whisper. A crowd of about 30 campers and fishermen watched as they searched the bar in. the twilight with torches. Wayne Richardson was found floating on his back and he was returned to the beach before Mr Pool realised that there were two boys. Brian Wellesley was found treading water a few yards farther on. Mr Pool, a clerk in the Supreme Court office, said yesterday that in another 10 minutes it would have been pitch-black and the rough conditions would have made it almost impossible to find the boys. Exhausted and cold, the boys were driven to Pines Beach where they were on holiday, and Mr Pool who had not even been thanked, was left to get his boat back on the trailer by himself. Mr C. K. Perry, a Dunedin storekeeper, who was fishing from the beach, described Mr Pool’s rescue as "courageous and daring.” and said that in another hour if the boys had not drowned, they would have been swept out to sea when the tide changed. His boat was used regularly as a pick-up boat during yacht races, said Mr Pool, and earlier that afternoon he had rescued a yachtsman whose boat had overturned. “The boys should never have been there, and I only hope they have learned their lesson and won’t be so foolish in future,” he said. “It isn’t only their own lives they are risking, but other people’s as well.”