A LONG CHASE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 48, 25 August 1923, Page 7

A LONG CHASE

THROUGH WILD AUSTRALIA

POLICEMAN'S PLUCKY ADVENTURE.

[ (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.} SYDNEY,ISth August. j Over the vast distances of wild country in Northern Australia the authorities depend more upon the rigour with which criminals are tracked and brought | to justice than upon the maintenance of a numerous police force over the area in which they are called upon to mamI tain law and order. To adequately potae the thinly-populated _ tracts would mean prohibtive expense. But the policy indicated has inculcated into the hearts of black and white alike a profound respect and not a little admiration for the law. Thus, it, was as much a- j matter of policy as of justice that Const-able Wood, when he set out from Darwin, the capital of the Northern 1 Territory, in the first week of last month with two.black trackers and ten horses, carried instructions to bring back at all hazards three aboriginals undergoing life sentence for murder, who had escaped from Darwin Gaol. A typical specimen of , Australia's splendid bush policemen' in leggings, tight cord, riding breeches, and neat tunic, lithe, and alert, Woods had a difficult task before him. It required all the cuteness of the detective, the endurance of the athlete riding all day long over the roughest of tracks over mountains and through rivers, all the experience and wisdom thebushman, and the scent of the bloodhound. This latt&r no whit© man has, but the blacks can scent like dogs, and the two trackers, going on ahead picked up the track of the fugitives with marvellous rapidity. Mile after mile, losing it and finding it again, and picking up scraps- of information from blacks' camps or white stockmen whom the policeman knew, we'll where to find and where more than like ly the men had begged some food, the 1 little party kept steadily on, going eastward almost parallel with the coast oi Van Diemen's Gulf. Tlie cunning blacks well knowing the cleverness of the trackers, had taken elaborate pains not only to get away from the recognised routes but at every stream they had wade wide cuts in the trail, so that the shrewdness of the white had .constantly to co-operate with the ready scent of the ' black. , Over the Alligator Rivers they found themselves south of the base of the Coburg Peninsula, and from .there, stiU hot oil the scent, they made across the! wild and inhospitable intervening country, inhabited only by blacks, some ol them far from friendly, and reached the coast on the other side of the peninsula, only to find that the fugitives had pro cured a canoe and crossed to Goulburn Island, where the big missionary station, where blacks are trained to various primary industries, is located. To get to^the .island meant crossing several miles of sea, and two days were wasted m searching the coast for a canoe At last a frail little craft was found, and the constable, determined to press on set out inut in a rough sea. Soon, however, the canoe was swamped, and had Woods not been a powerful swimmer, the expedition would there have ended But ho reached the shore again, and restorted to smoke signals, which resulted in a whale boaff putting off from the island which earned him .thither. Once there cw Ufr ti? e in"or Sanising a party of iifty blacks to scour the island, and at last the fugitives were found i n a piece of dense scrub, foodless, and almost exhausted, and ready to surrender without a struggle. I n a couple of days the constable was again in the saddle with the captive* handcuffed in charge of the trackers, and after a journey of 650 miles spread over twenty-six days, he delivered them at the gates of Darwin Vjaol. ■ ~ *