Search Continues For Missing Man

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30451, 27 May 1964, Page 1

Search Continues For Missing Man

Two pieces of fibreglass were found by searchers yesterday in the Goose Bay area where Mr William Morton Bullen, of Christchurch, is missing. The pieces have not been positively identified as parts of Mr Bullen’s dinghy.

No sightings of Mr Bullen or his 10ft dinghy were made from land, sea or air yesterday.

The search will continue today. Mr Bullen, aged 49, lives at 10 Garreg road. Bryndwr. He is an executive in the wool department of Dalgety and New Zealand Loan. Ltd., and is married with no family. He went to his bach, at Barney’s Rock, about two miles north of Goose Bay and 10 miles south of Kaikoura. on Friday. He telephoned his wife at 7 p.m. on Saturday, saying that he would be home by 6 p.m. on Monday.

Mr Bullen's bach is On a hill overlooking the coast, about 300 ft above sea level. Constable T. Mickell, of Kaikoura, found Mr Bullen’s car, unlocked, at the foot of the track leading up to the bach. The bach was unlocked, and there was no sign of the fibreglass dinghy, which has an outboard motor and a pair of oars.

Mr Bullen was last seen on Sunday afternoon. He was in his dinghy, not far off shore in the Goose Bay area, according to two women in a car travelling along the coast road. Yesterday morning, a Devon aircraft from the R.N.Z.A.F. Station, Wigram, took off to make a sweep of the area. It was unable to make the search because the cloud was down to sea level. In the afternoon, a Bristol Freighter made sweeps over the area without sighting Mr Bullen or his dinghy. A fishing trawler from Kaikoura, the Rakeha, searched the coast line without success, and an N.A.C. aircraft which flew over the area about 4.45 p.m., made no sighting. Visibility’was fair to good. Parties of civilians and the two constables at Kaikoura searched some of the

coast near Barney’s Rock and found two pieces of fibreglass. The pieces appear to be from a dinghy. Today. Sergeant R. J. Crooks, of the Christchurch Central Police Station, and a constable will go to Kaikoura to organise more 'search parties. Mr Bullen has known the area for 40 years. His father, Mr W. Bullen, and grandfather farmed the Lakes and Elms sheep stations, in the Kaikoura district. The family has had the bach at Barney’s Rock for 50 years. A reef below the bach is known locally as Bullen’s Reef. There was a heavy easterly swell off the Kaikoura coast at the week-end, and the Goose Bay area is full of rocks and reefs, However, Mr Bullen, a keen crayfisher from boyhood, knew every rock and reef.