AN ESCAPADE AT SEA "A cat's got nine lives, but I reckon I've got 10," Duke Gillies declares. The veteran sportsman, now aged 91 has had numerous escapes from potential danger. He got into dicey situations because of his adventurous spirit. He got out of them because he was fearless but not foolhardy. A fishing trip from St Clair to Green Island in the war years was one example of how Mr Gillies and his friends could have come to grief, but escaped to tell the tale. "It was on a Sunday in 1943 or 1944 when we decided to go fishing," he relates, "So we took the Aussie surf-boat, put a canvas canoe across it and set off." The mates rowed out to the island, anchored their boat offshore and caught some good fish. Then got into the canoe and went ashore where they cooked some of their catch. They left the island around four o'clock in the afternoon and headed for home. Their trip was uneventful until a howling northerly blew up off Blackhead and scuttled their plans. "We weren't making any headway. We still had the canoe across our boat because it didn't have a ring so we couldn't tow it," Mr Gillies recalls. -"It was dark by then and you weren't allowed on to the beaches after dark during the war. And we could see about ten men from the army up the cliff at Blackhead. They were smoking and we could see the rings of light." Duke Gillies and his mates didn't panic. They quickly pulled their boat above the high tide mark and set off by foot to St Clair. "We had to dress in the clubrooms in the dark - got our clothes on inside out, and divided the fish amongst ourselves by feeling them, then we quickly took off for home," he laughs. The next day Mr Gillies was at work when the receptionist told him a commander from the army wanted to speak to him on the phone. The military man wanted to know if he knew anything about a surf-boat which his men had spotted on the beach that morning. The boat hadn't been there the night before, the commander declared. Duke Gillies managed to evade the commander's questions but after work he quickly retrieved the boat. About two years after the war ended Mr Gillies realised how close he and his mates had been t disaster. He met the commander who said: "Are you Duke Gillies from St Clair? What happened to your boat that night? You were lucky my men didn't see you or you would have been blown pieces. They were dying to fire at something that night!" This item from the Otago Age Concern Publication Memories are Made of This is used with permission Page 1