HEROIC NIGHT JOURNEY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22356, 29 February 1936, Page 23

HEROIC NIGHT JOURNEY

WOMEN TO THE RESCUE Sjj; ; , THROUGH PAPUAN BUSH To the heroic efforts of two members of her own, the so-cailed weaker, sex, in making a 30-mile night journey by foot along a rocky coast, Sirs. G. W. Blundell, who is spending a holiday attributes <her rec-ov-eiT from the deadly blackwater fever. Mrs- Blundell is a resident of Papua, the British portion of New Guinea. \Thile living at the Mamai plantation jit Port Glasgow, where her husband js manager, she , was suddenly taken seriously ill with blackwater fever. Her husband, in an endeavour to get assistance, sent a letter overland by native runner to the Mogubu plantation, where he knew that Mrs. H. R. Glanville, a nurse, was staying as a guest. The messenger arrived at Jfogubn at 5 o'clock on a Sunday evening. It took only a few minutes for the women there to decide on action. By 6 o'clock, Mrs. Glanville and. Miss Debbie Irwin, accompanied by a fe'F natives carrying some sandwiches and a pair of hurricane lanterns, £ad set out to walk to Mamai to render assistance. The distance is a little over 30 miles, and the* trip was made in most exhausting; conditions. The route was by way of Amazon Bay to Milport Harbour, and over a range of hills to Mamai. It was high tide while the party was rounding the bay. Here the coastline IS a mass of rocks, coming down to high-water mark, so that on this part of the journey the party was scrambling over huge rocks for mile after mile. Then cafte sago swamps, native villages, a,n hour's canoeing and a climb over the hills to Mamai, which was reached at 5 o'clock on Monday mornJEi |ileven hours' travelling all through the night, on foot except for one hour, frith only two stops of 10 minutes each; wer rocks where the foothold was treacherous and there was only the light of -a hurricane lantern to guide them; through swamps and jungle, through villages where the yelping of dogs brought the wild Papuans out in fiaste, the Women to scream and the men to gaze in astonishment —that was the trip" these two white women made, with only native "boys" as companions.

% They were met at 4 a.m. by Mr. Blondell a mile from the plantation. He had not believed they could arrive so soon, and had only just heard that they were on the trail from a native who had gone on ahead. When they arrived at the plantation Mis. Glanville was not too prostrated to go. „to work immediately. In a few days she had pulled her patient "round the cijrner."' When she became convalescent, Mrs. Blundell travelled to Port Morseby, the principal settlement of Papua, to complete her recovery with a holiday trip to Australia and New I Zealand.