KATE NEWTON NOT many history teachers would be able to speak from experience, but when Richard Ellis talks to his pupils about one of New Zealand's most major recent disasters it tends to be more personal than other lessons. "They know it's a good way of getting out of a whole class,"Mr Ellis said this morning, 40 years after the day he stepped on board the ill-fated Wahine. Today will be just another day for the 62-year-old Lindisfarne College teacher, but a glass of wine over dinner may be in order, if only to toast to his luck on April 10, 1968 when he was an Otago University student travelling to Palmerston North for a cricket tournament. When the call to abandon ship was made he boarded a lifeboat and came ashore at a bay before walking the rocky Pencarrow track for half an hour. "I have always known I was fortunate. When I got on to the track I could see a lot of dead bodies and there were live bodies too, those who almost made it to shore but didn't have the energy to go that one step and were sucked back like seaweed," Mr Ellis said. The 40th anniversary television documentaries and newspaper stories have reminded him again just how lucky he was. But no doubt today, like most days, Mr Ellis will look out on his front garden and be reminded of that day. Part of the Wahine's anchor chain rests in the front garden of his Havelock North home, given to him by the father of a student who worked as a machinery operator. "It's quite a nice memorial."
