TWO BOYS' LONG TREK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19324, 11 May 1926, Page 8

TWO BOYS' LONG TREK.

WHANGAREI TO -MERCER

MOST OF JOURNEY ON FOOT.

CALL PAID ON POLICE. NOW BACK IN PROBATION HOME. » No small powers of endurance arc evidently possessed by two boys, aged 14 and 11, who in seven days tramped from Parua Bay, Whangarei, A 'to Mercer, in an attempt to reach their parents at Pirongia. The distance travelled was 127 miles, all but 30 miles, as far as can be ascertained, being performed oa foot.

The lads, who were in service at Parua Bay under license from the Mount Albert Home, ran away at the end of last month, and walked to the Whangarei Heads. Finding a dinghy on the shore next day, they crossed to tfro southern shore, and made their way to Devonport. On reaching Mercer, they were taken into custody by Constable Douglas, and returned .to Mount Albert Probation Home.

Naturally the boys managed to secure some assistance on their journey. After landing on the southern shore of Whangarei Harbour they made for Waipu, a kindly resident giving them a lift and some food to go on with. Their story was, truthfully enough, that they were returning to their parents at Pirongia but they forgot to mention, here as elsewhere, their connection with the Probation Home.

By stages of 20 miles a clay, so the boys say, they tramped down the east coast receiving food and shelter at two or three points and helping out these rations by corn cobs gleaned from wayside paddocks. Eight miles out of Devonport they met the modern Good Samaritan in a motor-car and were driven into Devonport, fed, given money and placed aboard the ferry boat to Auckland. The boys did not tarry in the metropolis, probably owing to the risk of recognition, but set off in business-like fashion for the Great South Road and so to Papatoetoe. Here their tale of woe wis rewarded by another kind-hearted person who put them up for the night and also gave them railway tickets to Bapakura, Probably emboldened by the continued success of their enterprise, the boys made for the police station at Papakura where no suspicions were aroused. The boys managed to eat a hearty dinner under the very eyes of the law's minions whom at that moment they were evading and no doubt were delighted when the police arranged for their conveyance to Mercer in the afternoon train. This was the easiest 20 miles of all their long trek but at Mercer, once more reporting to the police, the boys had to sufier the chagrin of discovery after having covered two-thirds-of a 190-mile journey to their home ,at Pirongia.

They are back in the Probation Home now and are reported not to be in the least footsore or in any other way the worse for their long tramp.