BLOODY MIRACLE’

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33514, 20 April 1974, Page 1

BLOODY MIRACLE’

‘‘We’re a bloody miracle, then.” said Mrs Elizabeth Dixon yesterday morning, reading “The Press” only a few minutes after she and another trainper were winched by helicopter from a steep slope in Arthur’s Pass where they’ had spent five hungry days and nights of snow and rain.

Yesterday’s edition of “The Press,” read by the rescued trampers as they ate their first solid food in days, reported one of the 27 searchers for the missing trampers as saying, “If they get out of there, it’ll be a bloody miracle.” The tired search parties preparing to continue the search from rescue headquarters at the Mount White bridge yesterday morning saw the miracle become reality as an R.N.Z.A.F. helicopter from Wigram swirled through the fog to deliver a surprisingly fit and talkative pair of trampers. One of the crew of the helicopter that plucked them from a steep fan above the Otahake River, about four miles from the route the trampers planned when they set out last

Friday, said: “They looked so fit and healthy when we picked them up that I wondered if we had got the wrong people.” Mrs Dixon, aged 47, of Wiggins Street, Sumner (photograph at right) and her companion, Neil Henry Duff, aged 58, of Head Street, Sumner (left), who had not been seen for a week, had coffee and cheese sandwiches with the search group shortly after 8 a.m. yesterday. It was their second meal of the day. About dawn they had eaten a celebration breakfast of salt, pepper, and the last of their dehydrated potato to mark the sighting at dusk on Thursday evening of the flashing lights of a searching helicopter that could not pick them up because of the closing dark.

The same helicopter returned yesterday about 7.30 a.m., and found the missing pair huddled within 100 yards of where a Harvard pilot had reported seeing ■ them—according to Mrs Dixon “The most wonderful thing I have seen in my life.” The trampers had pitched their red tent on a steep fan last Monday night after a day in which their .solid food ran out, and Mrs Dixon lost a pack and their ice-axes when she was almost swept away when crossing a rainswollen stream. The pair were then following the Otahake River valley, thinking it was the Poulter River.

As four search parties combed the Hawdon River valley, the Trudge Col, and the Poulter River valley—the intended path of the two trampers—Mrs Dixon and Mr Duff huddled together for warmth at night in their one remaining sleeping bag, and spent the days collecting ferns for bedding, and according to Mr Duff, “making the camp as tidy as possible—after all it was our home for a while.” Eight inches of rain and three inches of snow in the area during their week of isolation left them cold and wet; but their good spirits as they stepped from the helicopter surprised many of their shivering wouldbe rescuers. Both were anxious that their relations be told of their safety as soon as possible, but neither had thought they would not get out alive. “We just huddled and wriggled at night. It’s the only way to keep WT.-rn,” said Mrs Dixon.

Mr Duff, a builder, said he had occupied himself

during the day by trying to make a perfect campsite. “1 even went as far as building a very nice path to the tent, though it seems a bit silly now,” he said. In the warmth of the rescue command-vehicle, Mrs Dixon seemed intent on impressing on the chief ranger of the Arthur’s Pass National Pe.rk (Mr P. Croft) how much she appreciated the beauty of the country in which they had been trapped. Mr Duff, unshaven and weary, said, “I think it’s about time I stuck to the easier stuff.’’ Both were well enough to return to Christchurch in their car, which was driven by Constable A. Cunningham. The helicopter crew, Flight Lieutenant R. Lamb, Pilot Officer M. Devereux, and Sergei’,nt B. Thornley, helped Mr Croft collect and disperse his searchers from the area.