HELPERS FIRED ON

Taranaki Daily News, 21 February 1935, Page 5

HELPERS FIRED ON

MINER LOST IN DESERT NATIVE ATTACK FEARED AGED PROSPECTOR WEAK WATER SUPPLY GIVES OUT By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Brisbane, Feb. 20. A party of prospectors arriving at Mount Ila from Western Australia by car told the story of the rescue of an old prospector named Baynes, whom they found wandering in the Kimberley ranges some weeks ago and who had lived on raw meat he' had cut from his dead horse. The party first found a dead packhorse and tracks of a second horse leading into the hills. Enlisting the aid of friendly aborigines, the tracks were followed for ten miles when the party came on a second dead horse, from the rump of which slices of meat had been cut.

The black boys, who were leading, were suddenly fired on, and one was wounded in the leg. Two of the prospectors went to the blacks’ rescue and they also came under a fusillade of bullets.

Next, day the party found the old man lying under some rocks. He was very weak and his water supply was exhausted. He said he had been living on horseflesh and explained that he fired because he thought he was being attacked by hostile natives.