Miss Bignall’s Crocodile

Fame In A Day

SOME people are born to fame; some, like winners of lotteries, have it thrust upon them. Miss Margaret Bignall, an attractive young lady from the Solomons, achieved it by means of a crocodile and the front page of the “Sydney Sun.”

Margaret has come to Sydney to attend a business college, and she resides at Manly. One morning recently, she went hurriedly to her wardrobe and stirred things around there in the semi-darkness, seeking a garment.

There was a kind of fierce snort and a wild scramble; and there, squatting on the floor of the wardrobe, she saw

something reptilian, and entirely hideous, glaring at her.

Margaret’s shriek was heard by surfers a quarter-mile away.

They thought it was a shark-alarm, and scampered ashore.

People came warily, armed for battle.

Margaret’s sister took one look. “Why,” she cried, “it’s my crocodile egg!”

And so it was. She brought the thing, as a curiosity, from Fulakora, in the

Solomons, and had left it in Margaret’s wardrobe, and it had most surprisingly hatched out. She expressed great scien tific interest in the phenomenon: but what Margaret said could not possibly be re peated here.

The story got abroad, and a reporter and photographer from the “Sun” arrived and interviewed the crocodile. Their pic ture, which is here reproduced, gives a remarkable presentation of the youngster’s astonishment and indignation.

Margaret has found that fame has its penalties. About 20 different people, complete strangers, have written to her, to ask questions about the life history of saurians; and she is now known at the college as “the girl with the crocodile”!

Archdeacon R. de Voil sailed from Syd ney with his wife for Rabaul, N.G., by the April Montoro,

Miss Bignall’s crocodile poses for his photograph.