Winter Gale Sweeps Deep Cove

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30497, 20 July 1964, Page 1

Winter Gale Sweeps Deep Cove

(From Our Own Reporter) DEEP COVE, July 19. A heavy blizzard has swept the workers’ floating hostel, the Wanganella, all day today. Snow, heavy fog, cloud and rain have isolated the 400 workmen on the Wanganella since last Friday except for intermittent telephone communication and an emergency morse system.

No aircraft has been able to enter the area since the last one out on Friday afternoon.

Among those stranded on board the Wanganella are the acting-president of the New Zealand Workers’ Union, Mr W. A.-Dempster, the project manager for the contractors, Utah-Williamson-Burnett (Mr W. Lloyd), and a reporter of “The Press.” The snow was still raging around the Wanganella at 7 o’clock tonight. The storm reduced visibility to a few hundred yards as the snow pelted into the sea. The dense native bush on the precipitous slopes surrounding the Wanganella was covered with snow to within 200 ft of the sea edge. Mr Lloyd and the project engineer (Mr J. Thompson) trekked today through snow about nine inches deep to the Wilmot Pass, seven miles away.

They were inspecting the site of the most hazardous sections of the Deep CoveWest Arm road. This road has reached about half-way but the most difficult

section, near the summit of the 2250 ft Wilmot Pass, remains to be built Men making this road at one of the toughest points, a sheer bluff rising hundreds of feet above the adjacent Lyvia river, have been hanging on to the cliff-face like crows with their safety belts while they work pneumatic jack hammers and drills preparatory to blasting rock to form the road 140 ft below.

Other workers such as a bushman, Mr John Brady, aged 32, and a chainman, Mr Gerald Galle, aged 34, are working in hazardous weather. They live 1800 ft above sea level in tents at a place named Half-Mile Flat. “Our tents are covered with snow,” said Mr Brady. The workmen at this camp are felling trees and clearing a track to enable surveyors following behind to make their sightings. Seven men are living in the tents. Their only protection is the canvas w’alls and flaps of the tents, which frequently have gaping holes chewed in them by flocks of inquisitive keas.

Mr Brady said that to try to beat the intense cold the men had built punga floors and had had kerosene parachuted in to keep a small heater going. The deer in this snow-cov-ered mountain area become so hungry that they follow close behind the bushmen to eat the green leaves of the fuchsias as they are chopped down. The bushmen are sometimes able to supplement their largely tinned-food diet with fresh venison. Although the temperature outside the Wanganella was about 32deg today the men in the ship were comfortably warmed by an efficient central heating system.

They played darts, drank beer, watched three separate movie shows, played table tennis, and ate gigantic meals.

Others wrote letters home, played chess, dominos and cards, or formed musical groups around two of the ship’s three pianos. About 50 maintenance men, including electricians and fit-

ters, remained on duty today in the powerhouse on the shore, and various warehouses and workshops. The two nurses on the ship spent their spare time watching the antics of Pedro, the pet seal of Police Constable Ray Clark, as It played with a fish in the water beside the Wanganella.