HIT FROM ABOVE

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33215, 3 May 1973, Page 18

HIT FROM ABOVE

Super lump I breaks arm (N.Z. Press Association) HAMILTON. An Ongarue shepherd, Mr Sam Smith, was fencing on his employer’s property about 18 miles from Taumarunui on Monday afternoon when a wet lump of superphosphate dropped from a topdressing plane and hit him on an arm. The arm is believed to have been broken in at least two places. The lump of super was thought to have been not much bigger than a cricket ball. The farm owner, Mr S. Fullerton-Smith said: “Sam is very lucky it didn’t hit him on the head, it could have been fatal.” Mr Fullerton-Smith, who was at the airstrip, said the pilot apparently had not seen the two men working below him. A spokesman for Wanganui Aero Works at Taumarunui, Mr R. Soar, said pilots were always warning people to keep well out of the way when planes were topdressing. “I’ve seen bits of concrete, nuts, and bolts and so on lying in waggons and these can find their way into a plane’s load,” he said. “But as for a lump of wet super—l’m afraid it’s one of those things that can’t really be helped. Mr Smith was desperately unlucky.”