LIFE IN A SAND DUNE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 25 August 1925, Page 8

LIFE IN A SAND DUNE.

STRANGE ENGLISH HOME. DISCOVERY BY' TOURISTS. . Eroin time immemorial men have made themselves strange homes, Diogenes lived in a tub; St. Simeon •styntes and his followers spent long years, on the tops of tall pillars in the desert; now one hears of a. man who lives in a sand dune, in England. His strange dwelling was . discovered the other day by two young men strolling along by the estuary ol Wordsworth’s beautiful. River Duddou, Here, where the river widens out to the sea, there is a vast sandy foreshore, and. it is at a lonely spot called,Roanhead that the discovery was made. Attracted by a big sand dune tower, ing above its neighbours, the two youths, decided to climb it, and after laboriously scrambling through the loose sand they reached th e top. Nothing was to be seen but a. vast,.expanse of sand and sky, and they would have scrambled down again, none the wiser, if an old tin, half-buried in the surface of tlie dune, had not caught their eye. A chance kick failed to dislodge it, and wondering what could hold it fast in the loose sand, they stopped down and discovered that it was the top of a shaft made of bottomless biscuit tins, bound together with twigs! This shaft disappeared down into the heart of the sand dune, where nothing could be seen.

Visions of buried treasure must have danced before the eyes of the explorers, but their hopes were soon dashed to the ground. After a while they :succeeded in finding a wooden trap-door hidden under the sand, anti on lowering themselves through , it into darkness, found themselves at the entrance to a small tunnel, through which they had to crawl on hands and knees. 1 .... • . At last they found themselves ihfa room about 6ft square, thatched with twigs and straw. A candle wag standing in a recess, and after lighting this they found yet another loom which apparently served as a bedroom. Both rooms, showed every sign of being used, the clothes and boots of the owner being found lying about A spirit stove was standing in a corner of the living room, but there was no sign of a. fireplace, tlie shaft evidently being used merely for ventilation. Realising that it was private property, the two men left the rooms as they found them and scrambled out. of the dune again, carefully concealing the entrance as they had found it.

Truly a. strange* home, and one that might "have stepped out of the realms of fiction. But there are people in tlie neighbourhood who can testify : to its existence, and who know the identity of the strange man who has chosen to make his home a castle in the sand dunes.