LONG POLICE SEARCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20272, 4 June 1929, Page 10

LONG POLICE SEARCH.

ACROSS AUSTRALIAN ALPS. ARREST OF ALLEGED THIEVES. After a search for three men and two women, which involved an arduous journey on horseback across the Australian Alps, the Melbourne police cleared up a series of robberies in the city and country when they raided a house at Frankston. The robberies commenced early in March, when a motor-car was stolen from outside a garage at Brighton. Tho same day a light motor-lorry was taken from outside a shop in South Yarra. Nothing was seen or heard of the vehicles until about a month later, when the motor-car was seen near Mount Buffalo, about 200 miles from Melbourne. There were two men and a woman in it, and two other men were seen in the truck in the same district. About that time there was a series of robberies and safe-blowings at Bright, neat Mount Buffalo. As part of their investigations, two constables crossed tho Dargo High Plains on horseback to a hut 20 miles from St. Bernard's Hospice, in one of tho most isolated spots' of tho Australian Alps. The occupants of the hut had apparently just left, and on the door was pinned an "invitation to anyone passing: " Have a feed, but do not disturb anything. We are returning." It was evident that the people who had occupied tho hut intended to make it their winter quarters. Tho hut contained a largo stack of groceries, including a half-a-hundrcd-weight of butter, four bags of flour, a large quantity of sugar, tinned meat, and the freshly-killed carcase of a bullock. The police found the proceeds of several robberies. On their way back to the hospice the constables encounteicd a blizzard and would have been lost but for a guide whom they took with them. The horses wero almost frozen. Further robberies having been reported near Melbourne, the police raided a house at Frankston. where they found the five persons for whom they had been searching. ______