BOY’S DEATH

Hokitika Guardian, 9 April 1937, Page 7

BOY’S DEATH

FALL OVER CUFF

SYDNEY. April 5

William Bland (16), of Mount Street, Coogee, fell 35ft. over a cliff at Coogeo into a crevice, last evening, and was killed outright. His neck was broken and skull fractured. It. was several minutes’before his body, which was wedged head-on in the crevice to its full length, was located. Two Eastern Suburbs ambulance officers, Deputv-Superintendent Langford and Bearer Evans, were lowered oyer the cliff ort ropes, but. were unable to release the body for nearly an hour. Bland, who was the only child of a widow, hall been swimming in a rock pool near the southern point of Googee Bay.

Two of his companions were fishing further south, and it is believed he was on his way to join them when he Knl. He was walking along a goat track, and, according to Charles Swivell, of Bloomfield Street, Coogee, and A. La Lorenzo. he kept peering over the cliff edge as if searching for someone. “This chap had better look out for himself," SwivelJ remarked to his friend. “At that moment,” said Swivell, “his feet seemed to slip from under him and he toppled over the edce. We faced to the cliff, but could not see him. “I enlled to two lads fishing about 20 yards away that a man had fallen ovc-r.

“They ran across the rocks searching, and one of them told me I must have been mistaken. I told them I was not, and pointed td the spot from which the youth had fallen. “They then found him. Meanwhile La Lorenzo had run to telephone the ambulance and police." > .. Mrs Bland was called from church to be told the news of her son's death.