PROSPECTOR FOUND

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 April 1936, Page 14

PROSPECTOR FOUND

WEDGED IN A CREVICE. BRISBANE, April 7. Mr. J. Gillies, who arrived to-day at Nit. Isa after a journey through Central Australia, reported having found Phillip Hamel, a prospector, lying unconscious wedged in a crevice with a riding camel wedged firmly above him. Hamel was unable to say how long he had been there. Mr. Gillies, with a party of several men. left the Western Australian border near Wave Hill about ten weeks ago, and while camped at Rock Hole repairing their motor lorry, they were approached by some aborigines, who led Mr. Gillies and his party to a place about ten miles away, where they found a riding camel, with its feet upwards and loaded with all necessary prospecting equipment, wedged in a hole about 15 feet deep, where some old mine workings had collapsed under its feet.

There were no signs of any rider, and since it was impossible to extricate the camel, they shot it. After searching the country round about, they finally lowered an aboriginal boy into the hole. Peering into the crevice beneath the camel he said he could see a man’s hand. One of the white men then went into the hole and saw part of a man’s body. After four hours' work the hole was enlarged enough to allow a man to reach, the spot where the man was lying. Mr. Gillies crept through this hole and found Hamel alive, but severely injured and unconscious. They quickly brought him to the surface, and he regained consciousness the next day. The narrowness of the crevice into which he fell undoubtedly saved his life because the camel became jammed about two feet above his head.