PIPE FOUND ON VELDT

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 15, 12 October 1933, Page 8

PIPE FOUND ON VELDT

Returned to Owner After Thirty-two Years

BOER WAR INCIDENT

Picked up on the South African Veldt 32 years ago, shortly after hostilities in the Boer War were brought to a close, a pipe belonging to Mr. Colin C. McPhedran, a member of the South Canterbury branch of the South African Veterans’ Association, was restored to its owner at the annual reunion of the branch in Timaru last week.

Speaking at the conference of the association, which opened in Wellington yesterday, Mr. H. C. Thompson, Timaru delegate, explained that the pipe which had Mr. McPhedran’s number, N.Z. 5618, and a fern engraved on it, was picked up on the veldt between the Mafeking line, near Vryburg and Elandsfonteln, by Mr. Charles Rees, while serving as a trooper with Roberts’ Horse in South Africa. Mr. Rees now resided in Australia, and asked Mr. W. D. Archibald, formerly of the Seventh Australian Light Horse, who was now an officer of the Union Steam Ship Company trading between Australia and New Zealand, to try to find the owner of the pipe or his next-of-kin, said Mr. Thompson.

Mr. F. G. Seddon, secretary of the Veterans’ Association at Wanganui, was the first to meet Mr. Archibald, and he received full particulars. The next move was to ask Base Records for the name of the trooper who carried the number on the pipe. Captain C. Bishop, of Wellington, who was handed the information, wrote to Mr: Thompson asking if Mr. Colin Car#'bell McPhedran, or next-of-kin, was still to be found in South Canterbury. “We were pleased to report that Mr. McPhedran was a member of our executive, and very much alive,” said Mr. Thompson. “It is remarkable that the pipe should have been found oi; the vast expanse of the veldt, and that it should be a neighbouring ‘Aussie’ who located it. He held it as a souvenir, and then, after 32 years, found the owner.” Mr. Thompson said that Captain Bishop, now president of the Wellington branch, in a letter to him, considered that It was great for the South Canterbury comrade to regain his pipe after such a long lapse of time. In his letter, Captain Bishop had stated: “I lost a horse once on trek. If I had put my number on it the ‘Aussie,’ ‘Tassy,’ or ‘N’Zedder’ who took it by mistake might have brought it back by now. Do you think there is any chance?” Mr. Thompson said that, in receiving the property, Mr. McPhedran had stated that, although he was not now a pipe smoker, he would hang the pipe up as a valued curio. He thanked all concerned in the recovery of the article.