OVERCOME BY THIRST

Taranaki Daily News, 3 December 1930, Page 5

OVERCOME BY THIRST

GRIM DESERT TRAGEDY. Sydney Nov. 13. . Two bodies, lying side by side, near Lake Naberoo, about 100 miles northwest of Wiluna, Western Australia, told a more eloquent story of the awful drama of the interior that had preceded the death of two men than if they had lived to recount it.

The discovery of the bodies’ followed a three-day search by police and blacktrackers for Harry Dyer and Laurence Raunio, members of a party of four [which left Wiluna recently to prospect and to shoot kangaroos. On Munday of last week two of the men returned to Wiluna and told the police that the others left the camp with water supply sufficient for 24 hours, but did not return within that time and did not reply to the smoke signals that were sent up.

A search party was at once organised, and the nature of the country in which it was feared that the men were lost was such that great care had to be taken

to avert further tragedies. The party set out as soon as possible, and after an exhausting search found both men dead with severe bullet wounds. Death appeared to have been instantaneous. A dead kangaroo from which the blood had been drained gave the search party a lead to the awful story that was behind the death of these two men. Their water was exhausted, and weak from trekking through the parched country Dyer and Raunio saiv a lake. It was evident that they made for this, only to be disappointed like many a weary traveller before them. Water in most o-f these lakes is so highly impregnated with salt as to be impossible to drink. Dying from thirst, and unable to seek further water, the discovery of this lake must have wrecked all their hopes. The blood of the kangaroo, maybe, provided them with relief for one day, then ihe prospect of a slow and awful death bythirst ■ probably became too much for them.

So it seemed they agreed to die together. Guns under chins they faced one anothei - in grim silence and pulled the triggers to find solace in a merciful death. They added another to the long list of tragedies that have followed man’s battle with the vast interior of Australia.