HARDY VENTURER

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 111, 3 February 1934, Page 18

HARDY VENTURER

Sought Health and Found It

A Hampshire man whom a health trip to Africa 65 years ago changed from a delicate, stay-at-home young doctor into a slave-fighter, a prospector and an explorer has died in Brisbane (Australia) at the age of 86. He was Dr. Sidney Spencer Broomfield, one of the most picturesque figures in the gallery of modern adventurers. Just before his death he had returned from a lone expedition to unknown Arnheim Land, where he had travelled through hundreds of miles of territory in which no white man had ever been seen before. In Africa as a young man lie hunted elephants, led a tribe of natives against the Arab slave traders who used to carry off whole villages into captivity, and collected specimens of animals and plants. In addition, he made trading trips to Sumatra and Borneo and made two exploring exipeditious into parts of Australia which were then unknown to the outside world. His third and last trip started in February 1931, when at. the age of 84 he set out with two horses and a trap for Arnheim Land to collect material for a book. Two years and seven mouths later he turned up in Darwin witli little more than the clothes he stood in, a multitude of charts and notebooks anil a story of adventurous travel that most men of half his age would envy. / He bad travelled alone for more than a thousand miles, made his way through territory peopled by _ aborigines who had never seen a white man ■before, spent a week as the guest of the cannibal natives of Liverpool River and faced death by thirst and starvation in the desert. As he pushed on through Arnheim Land his fame as a healer spread far and wide and natives flocked to him from hundreds of miles around to be cured of their ailments. And on his way he mapped nearly one-quarter of tlie great aboriginal reserve which is now shown only by a blank on maps of Australia. During tlie whole of his journey he was not once threatened by (be natives, who regarded him as a miracle-man and therefore sacred. The awe which he inspired in tlie natives was increased by his striking bearing, his flowing beard and the teninch waxed moustache which he wore. But the privations of his last adventure undermined his strength and shortly after lie arrived at Brisbane from Darwin he was stricken down by pneumonia, from which bo died in a few days.—Reuter.—Special to “Tlie Dominion.”