came up but neither man nor dog seemed much interested in the finds but I was questioned as to where exactly I had walked. Then the harness was put on the dog and he was told to `Seek!'. They gradually got out of sight but eventually returned not having found anything, saying the scent must be more than five hours old. We were told to leave the site marked and continue searching. Later word came through the radio that the parka hood and shoes were definitely the girl's.

We continued searching until around 11.00 a.m. when we received word over the radio that the girl had been found two miles away. She was found walking on a road by a police trail-bike rider. She had made good progress for someone barefooted, and far from running away when she was spotted, she grabbed hold of the policeman and wouldn't let him go for anything.

They got us back to base quite quickly. We saw no sign of the girl; we supposed she had been whisked off to hospital by then, although the consensus was that apart from sore feet there was very little wrong with her. We returned to Melbourne later that afternoon.

These are only a few of such stories. Each member of every search party has his or her own store of fascinating tales to tell. I have tried to pick out searches in which our Club members played a more prominent role, but there are no written reports and so we have no way of knowing which of our Club members attended which search. So for the most part the stories are locked away with the individual people concerned and only come to light when yarning around the camp fire or on some other similar occasion.

All members of the Federation's Search and Rescue section were honoured by the Victoria Police when on 11 September 1989 they were presented with the Chief Commissioner's Certificate. The citation reads, `For outstanding service to the community and significant assistance to the Victoria Police Force in the area of search and rescue over a period of forty years' - a compliment of which all searchers can be justly proud.