BUSH STORY HEROINE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21099, 5 February 1932, Page 6

BUSH STORY HEROINE.

*, BABES IN THE WOOD." /DEATH IN MELBOURNE. PLD NURSERY TALE RE-ENACTED. [from our own correspondent.] MELBOURNE, Jan. 28. The death occurred in Melbourne the other day after a long illness of a 75-year-old woman who long years ago was the heroine of the bush story which made a reality of the old nursery tale of "The Babes in the Wood." She was Mrs. G. Turnbull, a widow, but at the time of her bush adventure in 1864 she was only a little girl of seven—Jane Duff, daughter of a Wimmera shepherd. One day Jane and her brother Isaac, aged nine, went off into the bush west of Natimuk to gather brush to be used for brooms, and they took with them another brother, Frank, who was not yet four years of age. Finding wild flowers in bloom, the little party strayed further than they intended, and when they turned for home they were hopelessly lost in the dense scrub. Before they were found by black trackers the children went through nine days of terror, hunger and cold, wandering found until they were almost more dead than alive from exposure and exhaustion. They lived by eating berries and licking the juice from plants. At night they slept tinder leaves and native bush. When the youngest boy began to weaken through exposure and cold, little Jane stripped off her own clothes to keep him warm. She and Isaac took turns to carry him. . /Although the searchers were unable to locate the children for so long, the black trackers followed their tracks for some distance, noticing that their footsteps ;were becoming weaker and that the internals between their rests were growing shorter. When "King Richard," the principal tracker, and two companions found them they only added another terror to the experiences of the lost children. IThe blacks frightened them and the children laughed and cried alternately as they threw themselves on the ground in despair. By then the youngest child was too ill to speak at all. To reassure them •"King Richard" said, "My face is black but my heart is white." It took months of careful nursing to restore the children to health. Frank, who has since died, never entirely recovered. Isaac is still alive at Nhill, in Victoria, but he is in bad health. Some years ago a wealthy Englishman who was impressed by the story presented Mrs. Turnbull with a marble statue of "The Babes in the Wood." It is now proposed to erect a memorial to her at Nurcoung, and a scholarship is to be established in her memory.