WISH GRATIFIED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 59, 11 March 1942, Page 6

WISH GRATIFIED

BOY'S NOTE HONOI RED BY AUSTRALIA Sydney, March 4. A pencilled note travelled across the world, and the Lord Mayors of two Australian cities collaborated to gratify the desire of a six-year-old Scottish boy to own a “boomerang." In his Dundee home, big John Burns, of the R.A.F., was reading about Australia to his son, little John. Little John pleaded with hi.s father to ask Australia to send him a boomerang, and Big John scribbled on a piece of paper, addressed to the Lord Mayor of Australia. Queenstown: "Would you be as kind and send the ‘boomerang’ to the above address This will be a great joy to a hopeful little bov who has a big ambition to have this wonderful and precious instrument." Unknown to his parents, little John dropped the paper, without envelope or stamp, into the pillar-box. It reached Queenstown (Tasmania) and was forwarded to the Lord Mayer of Hobart (Mr. Soundy). Only miniature boomerangs were obtainable in Hobart, and the note was sent to the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Aiderman Crick. Aiderman Crick bought a man-size boomerang from the aboriginal settlement. La Perouse, near Sydney, and sent it to Dundee, with an extract from the Australian Encyclopaedia, describing the boomerang and its uses. Excitement at Dundee was intense when the gift arrived. “You have no Idea of the interest it has aroused,” wrote little John’s mother, Mary Burns. ‘lt was on the front page of the local newspaper! Little John is so delighted with it. and so afraid anything mav happen to it, it goes under his pillow e/cry night, so that when he is wakened by the sirens he can take it out to the shelter with him." Little John sent Aiderman. Crick a “Scotch muffler."

“Gerry" took_ a “poor view." but thought the Italian gunners “could not hit a cow with a spade." Although the platoon is again in the Libyan desert, the “fighting doll” is not with it. The climate and hard rations, they explain, do not suit “Gerry’s" complexion.