Hillary’s geologist before Court

Press, 24 October 1984, Page 28

Hillary’s geologist before Court

PA Auckland A member of Sir Edmund Hillary’s South Pole expedition said he had laid about 60 complaints with the police which resulted in only one arrest — his own. Bernard Morris Gunn, aged 58, a computer scientist of Point Chevalier, who had been found guilty of assault, appeared for sentence in the District Court at Henderson. He had denied the charge. Gunn said cases he had reported to the police included car conversions, vandalism, stolen property, drug abuse, burglary, possession of offensive weapons and about 20 cases of trespass. “The only person arrested is myself,” he said. “People talk about law and order declining. It is a total collapse of law and order.” Gunn said the court ruled that people trespassing on his property had the right' to climb along his fences without interference. Judge Brown said Gunn’s property abutted a beach at the high tide mark so that anyone walking along it at high tide would be trespassing. But the offence related to an assault on a child , walking along a stone wafl, not

trying to climb over it to get to his property. The Judge said the probation report noted that Gunn was awarded the Polar Medal as chief geologist on Sir Edmund Hillary’s transantarctic expedition and that he had had a distinguished academic career. “I can appreciate the frustrations of having a house adjacent to a fairly popular public beach, and your attitude to the vandalism and the types of behaviour in that area,” the Judge said. It was not a major assault, he said. He discharged Gunn without conviction,, under section 42 of the Criminal Justice Act, ordering him to pay $l2O towards the cost of prosecution.