RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31863, 16 December 1968, Page 27

RANDOM REMINDER

THE GREAT OUTDOORS

Who will dare say that the younger generation lacks the spirit of adventure which, the greybeards say, marked lheir own youth, after they have read this stirring account of daring and danger based on the activities of a 21-year-old who determined to spend a weekend away from the stresses and strains of city life? He decided to tramp and eamp in all directions over Banks Peninsula and in spite of the lukewarm reception given to this pronouncement by a sceptical family, he made a good start by hitch-hiking to Le Bons Bay. From there he walked a day and a night—or so he says—to Pigeon Bay. There he found a tranquil beach, whispering trees, warbling native birds, a softmurmuring sea: and access to the beach by way of a path at the foot of a cliff. Mustering up his hazy memories as a seconder in the Cubs, he made camp,

and set off for the other side of the bay, where he could see a man at work. He helped the man clean hundreds of fish, straight from the net, and assisted in the capture of seven sharks of a size which, if unlikely to win them a place in the “Guinness Book of Records," was .more than ample, particularly when it was necessary to dive in and kill one which had come off the hook. With darkness, a light easterly rain, so our young Daniel Boone made his way back to camp, covered his sleeping bag and other worldly goods with a sheet of plastic, and settled down for the .night. His sense of well-being did not last long. The residents of Richardson Terrace would sympathise with him; for in the early hours of the morning he was woken by the waves breaking over him. and that was not part of the well-ordered plan he had devised. Rapidly he gathered his chattels and prepared to abandon this

damp camp. Only to make two decidedly unsettling discoveries. He could not leave his little niche because the waves were smashing against the foot of the cliff—the one with the path. Second, he was wet through, and so were all his clothes. He was left with an area of about a square yard, heavily littered with fallen trees, as his abode for what was left of the night. So, feeling rather like someone on the Murmansk run, he unwillingly re-entered the soaking sleeping bag. It was not, in a word, a pronounced success. He was back home next day—another lift in a car —and reached the warm bosom of his home. His decision to spend his next "away from it all" holiday in more congenial surroundings was hastened by his wide-eyed 11-year-old brother, who could not quite understand how an intrepid adventurer, really up in the game, had not read in the papers about the spring tides of the time.