John, I closed the side gate at the Marlo cemetery and knotted in tears, an uncontrollable sadness, and it was for you, for all I’d seen, for this loss. The pile of pebbles and dirt mounded on your plot - if I could, with others, I’d place a big granite boulder there, as big as a fridge, as a monument, nature’s farewell.

Billsy, I’d just been up Ellery and it’s all gone, right to the top, burned through the alpine ash and those big snowgums in the tors, as old as the mountain itself. Was an adventure getting in there – all the forests are closed - reckon you’d like the story, can see you smiling, shaking your head.

I stayed with Heather last night, John, and she misses you. I slept in the bed in the loft you made. Wish you could have known that, known you’d put me up, helped me out, a traveller, travelling light.

Remember when I lived in the old farmhouse up the river flats and I’d ride into town and leave my bike at your office and catch the bus up to Canberra and Sydney. You always helped me out, never questioned my ways.

Billsy, I went to the Marlo Hotel last night and of course your name came up, and there was talk about the going-away party I had, remember that poem I wrote, ‘First orange of winter’, I put in a line about you, something like “Heather’s a long distance runner, Billsy - he’s more of a sprinter”, and I met Al and Courtney and their little boy Will – you wouldn’t know about Will – and they’re lovely, and Al had heard the stories about the walk up into the Cobberas we did, the snow falling, snake country, the brumbies, a wild place.

John, I told Al I’d come back and we’d go there some school holidays, remembering you. What I didn’t say is we’d carry little Will up there, if we had to, cos you and I know what it’s like being a young boy growing up in this valley, the imagination it might instil.

Billsy, it’s been so long since I’ve been back – too long – and there’s a lot going on, I wish I could talk to you about it, but I reckon I’ve crossed a threshold. I cannot quit the river, the valley, the forests. I reckon it’s in me, part of who I am.

I think you’d understand, know what I’m talking about.

I caught up with Alexandra the other week, we had coffee; she’s lovely. Bet you’re proud. A fierce, independent spirit. She’s thinking of moving back. She will. Reckon children might be soon. Reckon Heather is waiting for her to come back. Everyone says her bloke is a beauty, a rock. Like the sound of him. I’ll go see them in Coburg, I’ve questions to ask.

And Hannah followed me on Facebook and sent me a message and said we should catch up for a coffee. We will. She lives only a few blocks away, what are the chances? I looked through some of her Facie pics and there’s one of her modelling something in her gym gear, Billsy, phwoar, made me feel old!

Sealy’s well, and did you know he’s now principal, and we had coffee on the Saturday morning in Marlo, he came over, was nice, sat around your kitchen table - Pete, Heather, myself - talked about the fires, the town, what’s going on, all the smoke, the changes.

People are hurting, Billsy, and they’re divided, and no one really knows the answers, and me and Royston had a falling out – he blocked me on Facebook! – and Burnsy had a go at me, but you know I needed to come back and see for myself. Reckon everybody just needs to go for a long walk in the forest, it’s as good a way as any to sort things out.

Big trees are still burning up on Brown Mountain, John, they’re smouldering away, trunks have smashed and splintered and the fire must have been hot up there cos nothing has grown back, and the ash bed was as deep as a fingernail, all soft and spongey, I dug into it, and the earth was black and smoking from the root holes, and I camped a night in it, and it was FREEZING, hardly slept a wink, my sleeping bag was no good, packed in a hurry – you know what I’m like – grabbed the wrong one, and I was woken I reckon soon after five by two empty timber jinkers rattling up the Bonang to a plantation at Tubbut that went bust – heard the Chinese bought it, all the logs going there – then the kookaburras started singing and I popped my head out the tent door and the sun still hadn’t shown, and it was too cold to get up, but I couldn’t sleep, so I did, and first thing I did was crouch down in a burning stump, like a big pizza oven, a beautiful heat, could have slow cooked some real treats in there, and I warmed myself up nicely.

Just about bogged the car getting up there the night before. Went up a forest road, was closed and sticky after the rain, and geez, I could have easily put it in the side ditch, and I had no ropes, imagine the embarrassment, can see your wry grin, a shake of the head. Had to reverse a long way to find a spot to turn around. Got a sore neck.

I saw a bull-ant up there Billsy, and I felt like shaking its hand – a survivor! Congratulations little fella!

It’s all gone, so quiet, no crickets and spiders, it’s burnt along the road all the way up, and Brown Mountain has turned black, but those big trees and ferns by the Bonang River were safe. I called it an ‘ark’. I went down there and souvenired a sign, STATE FOREST, but the ‘s’ and the ‘t’ were burned off, so it reads like what the fires did, gobbled them all up.

Got a flat coming back down the mountain, in a borrowed car, two-wheel drive, low clearance, very unsuitable, and the first place to change it was by the last house up the north end of Goongerah. Geez, it’s a bit wild up there, sort of place a man could go hide in the mountains if he never did want to be got. Looked real Deliverance stuff, banjo playing backwoods. Gas bottles strewn outside, trailer stacked with all sorts of items – like one of those yard sales you used to do – and bits of old machinery, but it was something, a building, and it’s not as though there are many up there, and now there are fewer still, with many of them gone to a pile of twisted iron and bed springs.

Anyway, pulled over and the front right was on the rim and had no idea if the spare was OK – it was – and I thought, bugger it, I’ll have to drive down to Orbost to get this fixed, and I see Dooley’s has shut-up – gee, the town is struggling, so much is closed, not an upbeat story – and I’d have to go to Voss Motors and me and Clint had a bit of a stoush on Facebook a while back, it was about the fires and ‘climate change’, won’t go into it, it’s unproductive all this bickering, but I reckon you’d get the picture, and imagine me having to front and ask for his help getting the tyre fixed! A man has pride, Billsy, his pride.

But get this. I changed the tyre, then from this house out wanders this young bloke, a shock of ginger hair and beard, shirt unbuttoned, and he looked taut, all muscle and sinew, from central casting, and didn’t use his words liberally, and he asked what’s up, and I’m not sure what he made of me, but I told him I’d been camped out on Brown Mountain and was planning to get up Ellery, and how I’d grown up in these parts, out Bete Belong way, and mate I dropped Heather’s name, said how on Friday night I was going to the Marlo pub and was staying with her – everyone knows Heather, don’t they? – and I could see he was checking my bona fides, who I was, that I had some credits in these parts, someone who’s spent time here, seen it, done it, has the forests in them.

He said most of the people in town haven’t come up here and seen it, what it’s done, and reckon he’s right.

That’s what I liked about you, John, you took me places, showed me stuff, you got out and had a look to see what’s over the hills on the other side of the valley.

I remember I was driving the old green Peugeot up to Canberra – remember that car, I loved that car! – and I saw you looking over a property up the Cann Valley Highway, probably a yard sale coming up. You got out and saw stuff. Had a poke around.

Anyway, this young bloke came out of this hillbilly backblocks building – turns out it’s like a de facto community hall for the locals, owned by a woman called Fi who’s no longer there, had enough of the off-grid life, but she lets locals use it, probably a gas fridge inside with a few beers I’d say – and we got talking and he sized me up, and once I’d finished he rolled the flat tyre to the back of his ute, pumped it up, found the hole, plugged it, then rolled himself a cigarette.

Reckon he’s that type of bloke. One job at a time, then a cigarette.

His name was Owen Hanson, and someone later told me who he was, his big sister, etc, and I don’t care what anyone says, in my book he’s OK. I’m indebted to him. He helped out a traveller, like you did. I’m gonna go back up there soon, when I can, and visit him at Martins Creek. Got questions for him as well. About the forest. About living in it. About how the trees, the smells, sounds, the shape of the country, gets in your blood.

Sorry, Billsy, I’m rambling.

You know me, why use a few words when you can use a lot?

Heather told me you used to like reading my travel stories – pissing off the end of Australia, climbing Kilimanjaro, camping up in the snow at Kosciuszko, I used to enjoy writing them – got paid by the word, made myself a little living by doing a bit of wandering. I was touched to hear you took an interest, you followed what I went and done next. I had some rough years after Orbost, Billsy, I won’t say it’s been all smooth sailing.

I always thought of you ‘Billsy’, thought of how you helped me, what we did, those backcountry hikes, the compass you and Pete gave me when I left. It was Pete who told me about your death, think it was about two days before the funeral, I had had no idea you were unwell, and I was sad, upset about not saying goodbye. It wasn’t right. You should have told me. I woulda driven straight to your door so we could go take a drive somewhere, have a walk, and I woulda asked you questions about wood, and building, and property prices, and got a bit of town gossip.

I wrote some words about you and posted them on Facebook – my acknowledgement, a thank you – and I was pleased Pete read them out to the crowd at the funeral, but Billsy, if I hadda known, I would have written other words, better words, to say goodbye.

I wrote down thoughts just now as I sit in the car by the cemetery at Marlo, cheeks wet, sobbing, letting it all out. Been a while since I had a good cry, Billsy. A man needs a good cry every once in a while. Scribbled them on a notepad in the front passenger seat:

“Never got to say goobye, I never will, I will always try to prove myself to you, try and live up to your expectations, the standards you set.

Met Al at the pub and he said you never drank, he never saw you at the pub.

You were always happiest doing things, being busy. Couldn’t sit still.

A tear is rolling down my cheek, John, thinking of you. Life will continue, it has to, but for many people in your community and at least one bloke who lives outside of it, it will always be a little less.

I’m sorry I didn’t have the time or make the time to come back and see you, say goodbye”

**

Billsy, this next bit, I didn’t write it down, but will tell you, reckon you’d like it.

Late on the Friday I walked out of Ellery, actually, one of the forestry blokes clearing fallen trees from the track gave me a lift back to my car, and he said they’d sent a search party out looking for me, everyone was talking about what I was up to (the police said if I didn’t return from the forest by the Friday they were sending up a chopper!). Mate, gotta keep ‘em guessing! If a man can’t have a little adventure up in the mountains, what’s the point of life?

Mate, I must tell you what I saw up there – no one else has been up to see it, was a first account – but not now.

Anyway, everything took longer than I’d hoped. The track was burned. I had to walk a long way in (had to sweet talk my way past an Orbost forestry bloke who refused outright to let me in – YOU’RE NOT GOING IN THERE, THE FORESTS ARE CLOSED - I used every trick in the book to wear him down, and the last ploy, final roll of the dice…. “mate, I used to play centre-half-forward for the Snowy Rovers!”). I camped out up high, and hoped to get to the top at about midday on the Friday, but got lost in those big boulders going up – the fire has ripped through all of them – and didn’t make it to the top rock until 1.40pm, then had to walk back to the campsite, then with backpack, back to the car, then drive down the mountain.

Remember that time I walked for hours in the dark from Cowombat Flat, up there in the very fingertip headwaters of the Murray, because I couldn’t find that cairn that marked the start of the Black and Allen borderline? I’ll never forget that night! What sort of bloke walks into the forest alone to camp and forgets his torch? Was you who made me go up there, Billsy, you put it in my head to find that cairn.

Anyway, a timber-getter from the Yarra Valley drove me back to the car – they’ve been contracted to work clearing the roads since early January – and I needed to drop off an axe at Goongerah but an American forestry crew had dropped trees on the road back so I had to come out the long way, back to the highway, and it was getting late, and I’d told Heather I’d be staying at her place for two nights, but once I’d seen those burnt forests I knew I needed to spend two nights up there, so I left her a text message, said I’d text her when I left the forest, and the plan was to be at the Marlo Hotel on Friday night, have a beer, catch up with Chas, Lorrie, Rhyll, Pete, whoever might be there, and stay the night at your place.

I left the forest after five on the Friday, Billsy, all the forest crews had knocked-off and gone back into town, and my phone was low on juice and the first reception I got was on the outskirts of Orbost, coming into town, and I hadn’t washed for three days and had seen stuff that’ll stay with me all my time, it was nearing six o’clock, and Heather hadn’t heard from me for days, none really knew my whereabouts, and I called her and the first thing I said:

“I’m like that naughty teenage son you never had”.

Your girls and Heather miss you John, of course they do, and they’ll always remember you, and you made so much for them – that house, the adventures – and you took me under your wing, a stranger making his way in a strange land, and for that I’ll always be grateful.

These are the words I write for you, Billsy. One day I should just borrow a flatbed truck and go prise a big rock from the hills, big and smooth and round, and place it on your burial mound, something to mark the spot, John Bills Lies Here, resting from a long walk, gone too early, but not forgotten.

Not by me, Billsy.

Big hugs,

d x