YOUNG GIRL’S ORDEAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25429, 10 January 1944, Page 2

YOUNG GIRL’S ORDEAL

LOST FOR FOUR DAYS ALONE ON OPEN BEACH (P.A.) NEW PLYMOUTH, Jan. 9. After spending four days and three nights in the open, clad only in a bathing costume, Colleen Trott, the eight-year-old daughter of Mr and Mrs C. E. Trott, of Hawera, was found at 3 p.m. yesterday on Waihi Beach, four miles south of Ohawe Beach, 'Hawera, where she was last seen at 2 p.m. on Wednesday. The girl was found by Messrs J. Garvey and D. Cameron, one of whom recognised the child after she had asked to be directed to a bathing shed. The girl had had no food and said that she had had no water. She was severely sunburned ai d blistered, her bathing costume was torn, and parts of her body were scratched, but Dr A. M. Young, who attended her, said that, in view of the exposure and the absence of food, she was in remarkably good condition. When she disappeared Ohawe Colleen was playing with her brother Colin, aged nine years, and Mervyn Gates, also aged nine years, near a recent fall of earth below the cliffs about 200 yards from the entrance to the beach in the direction of Schnapper Bay. The boys stated that they decided to return to Ohawe Beach proper, but the girl refused to do so. The boys were questioned concerning the whereabouts of Colleen, and were sent back to get her. They returned with the news that she was nowhere to be seen, and it was feared that if the girl was not in the sea she had been buried in one of the slips which had recently fallen from the cliff. Her explanation yesterday was that she had fallen asleep when her brother left her and had become lost. In the meantime, the whole coast area had been searched.

—lt is announced from London that Captain W. E. Parry, who commanded H.M.S. Achilles in the River Plate battle, in which the Admiral Graf Spee was sunk, has been promoted, together with six other captains, to the rank of rearadmiral. He was formerly Commodore of the New Zealand station.