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89
About 3 p.m. that afternoon six little children
varying in age from 8 to six years went from the Military
↑
Childrens Playground to play on the bridge which spans
the Albany nullah just below the point where the Peak
Tramway Company's line crosses the nullah. The nullah on
that day contained an exceptional flood of water owing to
the recent very heavy rainfall and the children seem to
have been amusing themselves by throwing stones into the
flood.
8.
;
The eldest of them, Eric Davies, left to go home,
but before he had gone more than a very short distance
he heard screams from the bridge. At about the same
moment a Mrs. Fairburn who was walking from Kennedy Road
into town by the path which passes through the Children's
Playground, had just reached the bridge which crosses the
nullah about fifty yeards below the bridge on which the
children had been playing when she heard screams, and,
looking upstream, she saw a Chinese male throw two little
children into the nullan and then jump in himself.
As he
climbed the iron railings of the bridge she saw him in
profile, and later pointed out the accused as the man she
had seen. She was also able to describe his clothing.
9.
The alarm was at once given, and it was then
found that five little children and a Chinese male were
all in the nullah. Three of the children were rescued
before the point where the nullah runs into the tunnel
in the Murray Barracks, a fourth, Mary Pine Michael's
twin sister, was pulled out of the water some little
distance inside the tunnel, but the fifth, Michael Fine,
was carried through the tunnel and into the harbour near