Arduous Trek To Rescue Man Who Fell Down A Bank

Wanganui Chronicle, 16 April 1949, Page 4

Arduous Trek To Rescue Man Who Fell Down A Bank

NAPIER, Last Night (P.A.)— A seven-mile journey on foot which took five hours to accomplish was undertaken by a party of six persons, including an ambulance officer and a nurse, to bring to the Nap er Public Hospital at an early hour this morning a scrub cutter who had been injured in a fall over a cliff. While returning to camp at the back of Tutira, 40 miles north of Napier, with a party last evening after visiting a nearby settlement for stores, the horse ridden by Mr. Maxwell Warren, aged 36 years, missed its fooling and crashed down a 50-foot steep incline carrying Warren with it. The horse was killed in the fall but Mr. Warren escaped with a fractured right wrist and probable internal injuries.

Mr. Warren was unable to move for pain and a member of the party went to the nearest homestead and communicated with the ambulance, which arrived at 9.30 p.m. Then began the three and a-half miles trek over rough country with the stretcher to rescue the injured man. After an arduous journey the party arrived back at the homestead at 2.30 a.m. An hour later Mr. Warren was lying in hospital. A remarkable feature of the accident was the fact that a nine and ahalf months’ old baby, which Mr. Warren was carrying on the saddle, became caught on a cut manuka stump and did not follow the horse and rider down the slope.