‘Toughest little beggar I’ve come across’

Press, 4 January 1978, Page 2

‘Toughest little beggar I’ve come across’

PA Auckland “The toughest little beggar I’ve ever come across,” is how a helicopter pilot, Flight Lieutenant W. McGregor, has described Ricky Longstaff, aged 13, of Mokau, North Taranaki. The boy was the only survivor from a fishing craft which capsized south of Kawhia on New Year’s Eve.

The police are still searching for the bodies of nine persons believed drowned in two boating catastrophes in the same area. They are also trying to piece together the 24hour endurance feat which enabled the boy to survive.

Ricky Longstaff is in a satisfactory condition in Taranaki Base Hospital, but is still too shocked to give a full account of what occurred.

Flight Lieutenant McGregor, who is an R.N.Z.A.F. pilot, first sighted the boy when he put his helicopter down on the beach at Marokopa on New Year’s Day to talk with ground searchers.

“We saw this small figure coming along the beach, and at first we thought he was a searcher. He was dressed only in shirt and shorts, and he carried a red buoy.

“Then we noticed that he was bruised and terribly cut about the legs. We bundled him into blankets and flew him to hospital.”

It appears that, after being tumbled out of his liferaft about half a kilometre offshore, Ricky Longstaff struck out for the coast with another boy. Before the two reached the coast, waves pounded them on to a jagged reef. The other boy disappeared in the surf, but Ricky Longstaff was able to clamber over, and swim the few hundred metres to the cliff base. “It was almost a vertical face — “ropes and crampon country,” according to the helicopter crew. He hauled himself to the summit, and spent the rest of the day watching out for rescuers. A light aircraft spotted him just before dusk, waving the red buoy, but the pilot was not certain whether he was a survivor, or just an intrepid rock climber.

Next morning, Ricky tackled the descent on the other side, to get to a stretch of beach. This, too, was almost a vertical face, and the police say he was lucky not to fall to his death. On the beach he walked some kilometres before coming to the helicopter.