PLAYTIME TRAGEDY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18275, 16 December 1922, Page 9

PLAYTIME TRAGEDY.

BOY SMOTHERED IN SAND.

FATAL " TREASURE - HUNT."

A boyish " adventure" at the home of John Apted Gaughalm, aged 10, of Brighton Avenue, Bondi, had a tragic ending, says a Sydney paper.

John, with his brother Arthur, and a friend, Leslie Lamb, aged 9, were playing a game of treasure-hunters in the back yard. With toy spades they had dug a hole, scarcely 4ft. deep, and John stood, in the hole, passing the sand up to his playmates in tin buckets, as they had seen done by workers on the city railway. Lamb, who had been sitting on the fence, looking on, jumped down near the edge of the hole. Abruptly the sides caved tti on young Gaugham, and he was completely buried in the deluge of sand.

Terrified, the other two boys rushed across the street and called Mr. Robson, who lives opposite, to their assistance. Mr. Robson and other neighbours dashed across, and dug frenziedly for the boy. After 10 minutes' breathless work John was found on one side of the hole, and fully bit. down —just double the depth of the treasure-seekers' hole. He was unconscious, and Dr. Wood ; or Bondi, was (jailed. Artificial respiration was applied, but failed, and the doctor was forced to announce that the boy was dead. The tragedy is not difficult to account for. Brighton Avenue and the immediate neighbourhood is all built-up ground at the north" end of ißondi, and residents declare that quantities of rubbish have been buried under the sand- This results in the formation of Hump-holes, and it <ronst have been over a sump-hole that the young treasure-seekers unconsciously selected tb,e site for their game. The Gaugham's yard is 25ft. by 301t; in extent, precisely like a score of neighbouring ones. Every, one of these may harbour similar death-traps just below the surface. Indeed, a somewhat similar accident occurred recently at the home of a neighbour on the opposite side of the street. The children had dug a small hole, and "to tease them their father jupnped into it. Tnere was no more startled man than he when his feet sank through the bottom, and he was engulfed to his armpits. . ■