DOCTORS AT PLAY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 228, 28 September 1935, Page 13

DOCTORS AT PLAY

BOOMERANG THROWING NOT ALL “SPECIALISTS” SPECTATORS SEEK REFUGE MELBOURNE, Sept. IS. A number of the doctors who attended the British Medical Association conference in Melbourne last week gave proof of their belief in the ax tom that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. For half an hour one morning they watched a “circus,” with the Bean of the Faculty of Medicine at Melbourne University. Professor W.A. Osborne, leading a team of distinguished doctors in an exhibition of plain and fancy boomerang throwing and whipcracking. An open paddock in the university grounds was chosen for the display, and some hundreds of doctors gathered vlosely round thp performers. Professor Osborne, a stylist of the oi l school, opened proceedings with a well-directed shot over the heads of six Sydney specialists and a group of students. Dr. S-

Pern, who had arrived like a champion tennis player, with a big pile of boomerangs, began vigorously with a well-flighted shot, and succeeded in sweeping a bowler hat from the head of an eminent overseas visitor. Professor Harvey Sutton, director of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Sydney, then began a few preliminary movements, and the crowd moved back a yard or two. Within five minutes the air was alive with boomerangs, and when one pursued a woman member of the university and finally >tru<'k a pressman a sharp blow on the thigh, the eminent spectators took refuge in their enrs, and remained thorp throughout; the display. Several times the performing doctors nearly secured patients for themselves. Meanwhile, Dr. IT. A. Lethbridge, picturesque in a slouch hat, commenced stockwhip cracking, both left and righthanded. Warmed by this excercise, he removed his coat, and a group of notables from Harley Street, London, who had boi ducking their heads in unison as the missiles went by, chose a vantage point a little further barkPresently Professor Osborne laid his bowler hat, stick, gloves and coat under a convenient gum tree and drew applause from all sides by returning a boomerang to his feet. By now the per- ,

pormers were left isolated in a huge circle, and the upper foliage of some of the university lake-side trees had been broken over the, heads of the crowd, among whom the Crown Prince of Tonga was an interested spectator. Reluctantly the doctors realised that their section meetings were already overdue and the gathering broke up when Professor Osborne and Professor Harvey Sutton hastily dropped their boomerangs and, resuming their coals, hurried off to deliver the first lectures of thp morning.