- Title: NEW HEBRIDES: QUEEN SEES LAND DIVER OF PENTECOST ISLAND FATALLY INJURED IN FALL.
- Date: 19th February 1974
- Summary: 1. LV ZOOM OUT Men on tower 0.11 2. MCU Royal party looking up at tower 0.24 3. PAN ACROSS Crowd TO divers making way to tower 0.32 4. LV ZOOM IN Tower and men preparing to dive 0.37 5. SV PAN Royal party TO first diver on ground 0.43 6. LV Third diver claips hands and dives to ground 0.53 7. SV People looking and covering faces 0.54 8. SV Injured man being carried away by local people 1.04 9. SV Royal party looking on 1.05 10. SV Injured man being carried to shelter 1.12 11. SCU Injured man lying on bed being treated 1.18 12. GV LV Pentecost and Britannia in background 1.28 "The men of Pentecost Island, with liana vines tied around their ankles, dive from towers on special occasions as proof of their manhood. The Queen, dressed in slacks, was in a holiday mood when she arrived in Pentecost Island with the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Anne, Captain Mark Phillips and Lord Louis Mountbatten for the land diving....the first held for two years. They watched with interest as the vines were tied to the ankles of the divers and the islanders danced and chanted to prepare them for the moment when they would hurl themselves from the tower one hundred feed above the mud. The first two divers seen by the Queen landed head-first in the mud without injury as the vines broke their fall. Then the third diver, a man in his thirties named John Tabi...married with three children...launched himself from the top of the tower. Both vines tied to his ankles snapped and he plunged head-first into the ground with a sickening thud. He lay still. Women wailed and the Royal Party looked concerned as the man, limp but still conscious, was carried to a nearby shelter. The man's legs were paralysed. He was admitted to hospital with a suspected fracture of the spine. It was a tragic climax to the Queen's first visit to the New Hebrides. This is Errol Hodge on Pentecost Island reporting for ABC National News." Initials BB/2025 BD/PN/BB/2051 Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 5th March 1974 12:00
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- Location: PENTECOST ISLAND, NEW HEBRIDES
- Country: Vanatu
- Reuters ID: LVA4MAQKGTNI4I5SHW3IUMQ2HQF7
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