PICNIC TRAGEDY

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 March 1926, Page 8

PICNIC TRAGEDY

A CAVE COLLAPSES. SYDNEY, February 10. Dreadful tragedy marked a week-end picnic at Kurnell, a historic landingplace of Captain Cook, in Botany Bay. Above the rocks at the water’s edge at Little Yena Point, a girl sat waiting for her escort to return from making afternoon tea. But, while she waited, two strangers were digging the body from under a landslide of ten tons of rock. Peter Hume Barry, of Annandale Street, Annandale picnicked all day ai; Kurnell with his friend. About 4 p.m. he left her sitting in the shade of a tree while he went down to a cave on the water’s edge to prepare the “billy” for- afternoon tea. The spot he selected was overhung for several feet by a heavy ledge of rock. Right in the recess, Barry built the fire, and tended it for nearly half an hour until the water boiled.

At 4.32 p.m.—his broken watch stopped at that time —Barry apparently stepped back from the fire a few feet, and at that moment the ledge of rock above gave way and he was buried under a fall of ten tons. Strangely enough, his head and chest were untouched by the fall, but his back was broken and his legs crushed to pulp when the rocks gripped him and pinned him down. Death was, of course, instantaneous. Two strang-

ers heard the rockfall, and, remembering that they had seen Barry disappear in that direction half an hour before, ran to the spot. By almost superhuman efforts they succeeded in dragging huge boulders from his body and succeeded in prising his loose. Then they improvised a rough bush stretcher ami carried the body half a mile into the scrub. JI is friend, all unsuspecting, was still waiting when they informed her that Barry had met with an accident. Ambulance and police were soon on the scene, and when Barry was taken to hospital the worst fears were confirmed.