Desperate Girl Clings To Log

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31318, 14 March 1967, Page 17

Desperate Girl Clings To Log

(N.Z. Pre« Association— Copyright) BRISBANE, March 13. The courage of a girl, aged 16, who was rescued smiling after a two-mile nightmare ride on a log in the middle of a raging flooded river, has cheered the flood-stricken town of Herberton, in Northern Queensland.

Miss Pat Cahalane, a nurse at Herberton Hospital, was today recovering from her ordeal at the home of the hospital matron. She could not be taken to the hospital as it is cut off by flood waters. The 1200 persons of Herberton, north of Brisbane, are completely isolated by the floods. The town has been cut in two and has no drinking water or power supplies. Miss Cahalane’s ordeal began in the early hours of Sunday morning when she was being driven home by her boy friend, Mr John Keough, aged 20, of Ravenshoe. Their car was swept off a bridge about four miles from Herberton, by swirling flood waters. A Herberton policeman. Sergeant G. McKewin, said: “A woman saw the car lights disappear, and some people went out to try to save them. Two men and myself found John Keough 15-feet up a gum tree in the middle of the floods. “The river was going about 30 miles an hour past us. It falls 1000 feet in six miles. To look at, you would not

think anybody would have a chance. Sergeant McKewin said that the rescue party was out all night looking for the nurse. “Then at daylight we found her clinging to a log in the middle of the 1000 ft wide river- She was amazingly calm and smiled at us. She was cut and bruised,” he said. “She had been swept two miles downstream on the log. Heaven knows how she survived.” Sergeant McKewin said rescuers dived into the torrent and used 400 feet of rope to bring the girl back. After her rescue, Miss Cahalane said: “The car was swept into the river off the bridge in an instant. I waited until it filled with water and then dived out of the window. h

“I am a fairly strong swimmer so I just struck out an dhoped for the best Trees and wreckage were everywhere.”

She said that at last she took hold of a log smashing through the foam—and hung on.