Forestry Students raft timber down river Dee for £50 student charity wager
The documents are courtesy of Anne and the late Alan Harper (Forester based at Huntly) both children of Francis (Frank) G Harper.
The attached PDF shows a series of newspaper cuttings from various northeast newspapers but chiefly the Evening Express and P & J of Aberdeen that highlights the progress of an ongoing public discussion within the newspaper via letters. The discussion centred initially on one writer’s (Old Timer) assertion that the students of the day (1931) were much less robust and more work shy than their counterparts of several decades previously. This was countered of course by a robust response from another correspondent resplendent in the name of ‘Wood Merchant’ finally resulting in a challenge of rafting timber 15 miles down the River Dee.
Read on in the newspaper cuttings in the attached PDF below.
The forestry student Francis (Frank) G Harper of Aboyne was the grandson of a one of the last rafting timber merchants that operated on the River Dee prior to the construction of the railway.