WILLIS ENDS TRIP

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30543, 11 September 1964, Page 11

WILLIS ENDS TRIP

fN.Z. Press Assn.— Copyright) BRISBANE, Sept. 10. The lone transpacific raftsman, William Willis, aged 71, last night threatened to swim a crocodileinfested river to return to his raft, Age Unlimited. He refused to sleep ashore and residents of nearby

Tully, north of Brisbane, finally agreed to take him across the river by boat in darkness. Willis beached his 12-ton 31ft triple-hulled raft on a deserted strip of sand and mangroves two and a half miles south of Tully yesterday morning at the end of a 10,000-mile voyage. He fired distress rockets but was not sighted from the town, so he left the raft and began to walk towards the Tully river. Mr Hank Penning, a Tully schoolteacher, said today that he and his wife were standing on the town side of the river when they saw a figure on the opposite bank wave and fire a distress signal. “1 went home, got my dinghy and went across to him,” Penning said. “He put out his hand and said: ‘l’m Willis, from New York.’ 1 knew straight away he was fair dinkum. I remembered reading about him only a few days ago.” Penning said Willis told him he was just about to dive into the river when he was seen. “He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. The river is teeming with crocodiles,” Penning said. Later in the evening Willis said he wanted tb return to the raft to sleep and threatened to swim the river before local residents agreed to take him across in a boat, he said. Penning said Willis told

him he had finished his last onion the previous day and had only a few tins of food left.

Market For \.Z. Meat

(Special Crspdt. N.Z.PA.) LONDON, September 10. New Zealand may have an opportunity shortly of selling meat in Milan if it is “the right type”—lean and defatted. A report from Milan says that the Municipal Council has met to discuss the high price of meat and to consider the formation of a group of retail shops similar to that run by Rome’s Municipal Council, which undercuts wholesale prices.