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viewing the tools. All of Indonesia's under-the-hood sages claim ties to a day labourer from East Java named Turut, who acquired a reputation as a kind of Merlin among mechanics before he died in 1986. Eddy Susanto, a 32-year-old worker at Ketok Magic Nusantara, says that as a child, he saw Mr Turut pick up a length of railway track with his bare hands and tie it around his waist. Says Mr Susanto: “It convinced me he wasn't an ordinary person.” Mr Turut guided Mr Susanto and 29 other self-proclaimed disciples through a training regimen. They earned the right both to practise ketok magic and to train others, but proselytising has proved difficult. Young people “aren't patient to learn the magic things," Mr Susanto says. Sceptics abound. Ishak Ismail, owner of Buyong Motors, a conventional Jakarta garage, says: "I don't believe in such a thing. I do the real things. No magic." Tarsikun, the driver who delivered Mr Hope's World Bank car to its ketok doctor, is also dubious. He says that while waiting outside, he heard loud noises that "didn't sound like magic.” Still, he adds, "the results are OK, and much faster than ordinary workshops.” (Source: The Wail Street Journal, 5 Feb ‘93) WELLINGTON, 25 Jan ‘93 - Three New Zealand hikers said on Monday they saw, chased and photographed a huge flightless bird and are convinced it was a moa, believed extinct for 500 years, the New Zealand Press Association reported. Paddy Freaney, Sam Waby and Rochelle Rafferty said their encounter in the South Island's Craigieburn Range on Wednesday left them stunned but they were positive of their sighting. "As soon as I saw it, I believed it was a moa - amazing as that sounds. It was one of those things you don't believe is happening, yet it is happening,” Freaney told NZPA. Freaney, a hotelier and a former instructor with the British Army's elite Special Air Service, dismissed the pos- sibility that the bird was either an ostrich or an emu. "I've seen them in the wild, I know exactly what they look like. This was definitely not an ostrich oranemu. The minute I saw it, I knew what it was. I believe we saw a moa." Waby, an art teacher, and Rafferty, a gardener working for Freaney, con- firmed the sighting. In pre-European times, New Zealand had 25 species of the moa, which domi- nated the economy of the native Maori. They ranged in size from small bush animals to giants standing three metres high and weighing 230 kg. Freaney said the bird's body was about a metre off the ground, with a long thin neck almost another metre long ending in a small head and beak. It had reddish- brown and grey feathers. (Source: MUFONET Network, 20 Feb ‘93) JAKARTA, Indonesia - The World Bank knows that Indonesia's economic problems can't be solved by magic. But fixing the boss's car is another matter. Just ask Nicholas Hope, resident director of the World Bank's office here. After an accident damaged his Toyota Crown, a local garage said repairs - mainly body work - would take two weeks and cost $700. Too long and too much, Mr Hope's staff decided, turning instead to a practition- er of 'ketok magic’, or magic knock, an Indonesian hybrid in which mechanics tap unearthly powers to better wield their socket wrenches and spot-welders. Half a day later the car came back, fully restored. The bill came to just $122, and now, more than 18 months later, the car "still looks fine," Mr Hope says. Thousands of ketok-magic shops have opened in Indonesia in recent years. Workers in these garages por- tray themselves as merely the tools of a magic spirit with which they can com- mune after long periods of fasting and rigorous study. These magicians prefer to practise their trade with no outsider looking on. At Ketok Magic Nusantara, which fixed Mr Hope's car, visitors are kept from the inner sanctum by an iron fence. Another garage bars customers from Brian Simpson performed a golfing miracle last week - two holes-in-one with one shot. Brian, 69, had to wait 50 years for his first hole-in-one, but it arrived in sensa- tional circumstances. Brian and Bill Austin, 58, were paired in last Tuesday's veterans’ com- petition at the Busselton course, 200 km south of Perth, when the impossible happened. Bill's tee shot on the 151 m par-three Vol 2, No 13 - 1993 54°¢NEXUS S4 FLIGHTLESS BIRD FLAP... MAGIC MECHANICS a PAR FOR THE COURSE