NIGHTMARE JOURNEY

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 January 1935, Page 8

NIGHTMARE JOURNEY

TO RECOVER MAN’S BODY

SYDNEY, January 11

An eerie task was performed by a party of ten men who set out from Gosford, about 50 miles from Sydney, to recover the body of Harold Richard Keegan, 30, a bush worker, who had been crushed to death by a huge blackbutt tree which he felled in thick bush on Kangi Angi Mountain. The men spent nightmare hours, and they were attacked by hundreds of leeches.

Keegan was apparently crawling under the ,tree he had partly sawn through to make sure that there was space for his crosscut saw on the other side, when he brushed against a. prop, causing it to collapse. The tree fell, killing him instantly. The tree was 7ft 6in thick, and to fell it Keegan had built a platform on the sleep mountain slope. He had evidently measured the tree into sleeper lengths and sawed three-quarters through 29 feet from the top. leaving 30 feet of the trunk intact. It -was this trunk that fell on him. When Keegan failed to return home, his wife, fearing a tragedy, informed a neighbour who had directed Keegan to the patch of high trees in which ho was working. Accompanied by his son, the neighbour went in search of Keegan. Darkness had set in, and though he had great difficulty in locating the place, he eventually found the fallen tree, with Keegan practically hidden beneath it. No two persons could possibly have moved the 20-ton trunk, so father and son hurried to Gosford to organise a rescue party.

The party of ten men set out shortly after 10 p.m. They .had to force their way through thick, interlaced vine-, and scrub, while leeches fastened on their legs and insects attacked them. One man removed 90 leeches from his body, and on their return the men found their boots full of them. The trunk was eventually raised, and Keegan’s body was lashed to a stretcher, which was carried bv the men in turn, working in relays of four. “We had to cover three miles to make the descent, and at times the stretcher was perpendicular as we hauled it over huge rocks or lowered it over cliffs." said, one ci the mon later. "The trip was a mail'-' marc." i — .