A HUNTER’S STORY.

Wairarapa Age, 5 August 1921, Page 5

A HUNTER’S STORY.

MR H. K. EUSTACE, F.Z.S. The story of a real-hunter is always interesting, but it can be made doubly so when the hunter has the gift of narrative and a good supply of pictures. Mr Harry K. Eustace has both, and yesterday he gave two lectures at the Opera House, each oi which kept his audience engrossed from beginning to end of the two hours.

Mr Eustace spent nearly 30 years in the tropical forests of East Africa —British, German and Portuguese—and he became a real hunter of the wilds, living by his gun and accompanied always by a party of native boys. When the war broke out he had three or four camps in British East Africa. It was more than a month before one of his natives, after making a journey of 200 miles, informed him that war had commenced. Meanwhile the Germans passed through the district and destroyed several of his camps with many thousands of feet of valuable films recording the wild life of the forest. The pictures, which are a great attraction, were secured by Mr Eustace at great personal risk and often after many months of waiting for the opportunity. For example, there is a fine film of a rhinoceros and young, taken at only a few yards distance, the mother lying down to sleep, while the birds flutter repeatedly into her ears in search of ticks. Then she rises at the sound of the camera clicking, scents danger, and charges it. There is another picture in which, a rhinoceros wounded by Mr Eustace, charges and knocks him over and then falls dead. Not the least interesting part of the films shows the native followers at their duties, skinning the dead animals —zebra, rhinoceros and hartebeeste—and carrying the food and skins to the camp. There are some very fine pictures, too, of bird life in the forests and rivers, and extraordinarily interesting records of several lions romping about a water hole and devouring elephant meat laid as bait. One is apt to forget all the time the great peril of the photographer who has to lay aside his gun to take the picture. But the only way to enjoy such a lecture and pictures is to hear and see them. And that is what two very numerous and delighted audiences did yesterday. In the afternoon audience was a large proportion of children from the Masterton and Lansdowne schools, and others will be present this afternoon. The matinee is at 2.15 p.m., and the evening performance at 8.