ASLEEP IN A HUMPY

Northern Advocate, 29 July 1935, Page 4

ASLEEP IN A HUMPY

GIRL WHO WAS MISSING. , BUSH SEARCHED ALL NIGHT. SYDNEY, July 24. A body of police,, a larger body of returned soldiers, members of the Bankstown branch of the league, and others searched all night the bush country south of Bankstown, for a 10-year-old girl, Elaine Florence Panton, who was .missing from her home in Chapel Road. Early in the morning Elainte packed an attache case with food and clothing and set off on foot for Padstow Park, where a picnic was to have been held. She did not reach the picnic ground, but apparently wandered through thickly timbered country to Picnic Point on the George’s River.

The parents having reported the gh-1 lost, Constable Foster commenced a search of the district the same night. He was hampered by the large area of wild country and darkness. When the news reached a meeting of the local sub-branch of the Returned Soldiers’ League, volunteers were called upon to form search parties, and several members who had cars parked near the hall rushed the ex-service-men to the locality. Others went on bicycles. There they were faced with a big task, for the country is among the wildest about Sydney, and as the men moved through it they encountered deep gullies and ravines with wide crevices between huge rocks to a depth of over 50 feet. The searchers, joined by residents, combed over 300 acres of the bush, and worked toward Picnic Point. There they aroused several residents, who remembered having seen the girl earlier in the afternoon. The searchers were joined by Sergeant O’Dwyer and several constables from Campsie. Eventually a party of soldiers visited a humpy at a point five miles away from the girl’s home. Elaine was'in the humpy sound asleep.