Bulldozer Digs Up Gelignite

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29724, 18 January 1962, Page 11

Bulldozer Digs Up Gelignite

(New Zealand Press Association)

WHANGAREI, January 17. There are two lucky people in Whangarei today, and one is much luckier than the other. The luckiest is a bulldozer driver who dug up with his scoop a magazine containing a box of liquefleld gelignite accompanied by a box of detonators.

Not quite so lucky was a schoolboy who fell from the Whangarei Town Wharf.

He could have been crushed between the wharf and a barge, but got away with a double compound fracture of the left arm. The bulldozer driver, Noel Lomas, aged 37, of Kamo road. Whangarei, was working on site preparation for the new Northland fertiliser works. Mr Lomas was working near a cutting when his blade sliced a corner off a buried steel magazine. He exposed a case of gelignite which was liquefleld and frothing. There was a steel drum also which contained a box of several hundred deteriorated detonators. These were taken out and returned to the Railways Department by the police. A guard was posted and the area cordoned off until Army officers arrived at the site to dispose of the gelignite. A Railways spokesman said that the magazine was probably put in about six years ago when the cutting was put through and since overlooked.

Mr Lomas said that a fellow driver was following him and saw that he had cut something —it appeared to be a pipe. The other driver, Trevor Wakelin, had a look through

the hole and saw the case of gelignite. He stopped the unsuspecting Mr Lomas from making his second cut at the magazine. The schoolboy who fell from the wharf is 13-year-old Herbert Hita, son of Mr and Mrs Rau Hita, of 37 Second avenue. He was fishing from the Tovzn Basin wharf when the accident occurred. His parents say that he fell between a Whangarei Harbour Board barge and the wharf. He was rescued from the water by Mr Newton Wood.