Attack on the Black Cat Track. Max Carmichael
history. So the Black Cat was an obvious candidate.4
Jon Hill was another expat Brit who went on to serve in the Australian Army. He has been described by his friends as a ‘happy non-whinging pom’ and others as a quiet and cultured man. Raised in South West England, Jon was encouraged by his father to develop an early interest in the outdoors and bushwalking. At the age of eighteen, on attaining his A Levels and completing a four-day hike across Dartmoor and Exmoor, Jon migrated to Australia, where in 1983 he enlisted in the Australian Army. He was selected to attend the Officer Cadet School, Portsea, and on graduation he was allotted to the Royal Australian Artillery, where he served in regimental postings associated with artillery.
In 1993, Jon deployed with Australian forces on Operation SOLACE to Somalia, during which time he provided a liaison service between the Military and Non-Government Organisations. After attending the Australian Command and Staff College, and a promotion to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, Jon served in a variety of staff and project management appointments. In October 2004, he resigned from the Army to become a Public Servant within Defence, and later moved to the private sector, where he continued to employ his project management skills.
At various times during his Army service Jon had worked with Glen Reiss, a relationship that continued when the two men worked at the road toll company, Transurban, in Melbourne. It was there that he met Pete Stevens and Zoltan Maklary.
Jon had a particular interest in military history. He had studied the World War II Kokoda Track campaign, and in 2010, with Pete Stevens, had walked the length of that track. That walk had germinated a desire in the two men to experience more of history, and after considerable research they chose the Black Cat Track as their next trekking objective.
Another former Army officer in the group was forty-seven-year-old Glen Reiss. Glen grew up in the central Victorian town of Bendigo. In 1985 he joined the Army, and like Jon Hill was selected to attend Officer Cadet School, Portsea. However, that year as a result of an Army restructure the Portsea school was closed and its students transferred to RMC Duntroon, from where Glen graduated in December 1986. Allocated to the Royal Australian Army Ordnance Corps, he served in numerous logistic appointments until July 1999, when he resigned from the Army at the rank of Major to take up a management position with a legal firm. Since then he worked in a variety of consultant and project management roles, including at Transurban where he worked with Jon Hill and Pete Stevens. A keen outdoors person and military history enthusiast, Glen had intended to walk the Kokoda Track with Jon and Pete. However, a knee injury forced his withdrawal from that trek. Missing out on that trek had been a bitter disappointment to him, so when the idea of a Black Cat Track trek was raised he quickly agreed to go.
Employment at Transurban brought the three former Army officers in contact with former RAAF officer Zoltan Maklary. The four men established a firm friendship, and when Jon, Pete and Glen decided to walk the Black Cat Track they convinced Zoltan to join them.
Zoltan grew up in Melbourne and was educated at Camberwell Grammar School. At the age of nineteen he left home to study Aero Engineering at Sydney University. In the final year of his course he joined the RAAF as an undergraduate. During his RAAF career he worked on projects involving the F-111 and F-18 aircraft, and undertook a two-year Master of Science course at Cranfield in the United Kingdom. In 1991, Zoltan resigned from the RAAF with the rank of Squadron Leader and accepted an appointment with Rockwell International in Los Angeles. On returning to Australia he took up a position with Transurban. He recalls the circumstances that resulted in his meeting the three former Army officers:
It was around 2000 when I was building a team at Transurban. Glen was the first to join me. He came in as a contractor and then, at Glen’s suggestion, Jon came in and did an interview, and a few weeks after that he joined us. Then a little later, once again at Glen’s suggestion, Peter joined us.
For the next three years we all worked in the one team. We had a strong relationship at work and a lot of camaraderie. I suppose ex-military people have a lot in common and you tend to be able to mix it up pretty well and have fun.5
Zoltan was not your typical outdoorsy person. At the age of fifty-four, he had never been trekking and was initially somewhat coy when it came to committing to the Black Cat trek idea:
It would have been a good twelve months before that when the topic first came up. Jon and Pete had done Kokoda beforehand and they were talking about wanting to do something similar with a military flavour, you know — Pete in particular is into the military history side of things so the Black Cat came up, and so yeah, it probably took me, I don’t know, a good two or three months for me to come around to the idea …6
At the other end of the country, in the Far North Queensland town of Mackay, Nick Bennett and Steve Ward had also made a decision to trek the Black Cat Track. They had reached this conclusion in isolation from those in Victoria, but their motivation was similar. Both had an interest in military history, although Nick’s main interest was to experience PNG culture. Both men were used to working and living in the bush.
Born in New Zealand in 1957, Nick Bennett grew up in Rotorua’s notorious Ford Block public housing estate. Through a combination of quick thinking and luck he survived the experience and grew up to work in many different roles. He had been a police officer working in diplomatic protection, and worked as a trawlerman and a shark fisherman. He had been a truck driver, and trained safari guides for tours in the deserts of Central Australia.
In 2005, Nick’s professional career as a facilitator, development manager and management consultant took a sharp deviation. He used his considerable experience to enter the field of Executive Performance coaching when he, with his wife Rowena, set up their coaching business, Minds Aligned. However, while he led an interesting, if somewhat unconventional lifestyle, he was unfortunate to suffer several health issues.
His approach in addressing these health issues was characteristically different, and in 2006, in an effort to be mentally and physically prepared for a medical treatment program, he walked the Kokoda Track. It was during that trek he first heard of the Black Cat Track, and it instantly appealed to him, but it would be seven years before he would have the opportunity to take on the new trek:
Life events got in the way, and each year when I would start to plan some other thing would interfere. A lot to do with family and the death of my parents, one in NZ and the other in the UK. Then I had a massive angina attack in November 2011, which resulted in my having a stent fitted in January 2012, which knocked me about a bit.7
Nick would be further ‘knocked about’ in March 2013, when he suffered a heart attack. Nevertheless, he remained determined to continue with his plans regarding the Black Cat:
I had spoken of the track for all of that time, and at the end of 2012 I committed to doing it in September of 2013. I felt my integrity was at stake if I failed to do it. In preparing for it I invited over twenty-three of my friends who I respected, guys that I wanted to have an adventure with, to participate. But apart from Steve Ward, none of the others took it up, telling me I was nuts …8
When the Victorian-based trekkers finally met Steve Ward, the first thing that struck them was his massive calf muscles and his tattoos. At the age of forty-six, Steve Ward was the youngest member, and the second Queenslander, in the trekking group. Another former soldier, Steve had joined the Army in 1984 at the tender age of sixteen, as an Army Apprentice. After graduation he was allocated to the Corps of Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, and completed a further fourteen years of service.
On leaving the Army, Steve used his military skills to gain employment in a calibration workshop, before moving into the totally unrelated field of hospitality. He became the owner and operator of a Gloria Jean’s coffee house. Over time, he and his wife Merryn developed this enterprise, eventually opening a second Gloria Jean’s coffee house, before selling both of these facilities and opening their own independent espresso bar. In fact, it was through his coffee house that Steve came to join the trek. Early in 2013, Nick Bennett had popped in for a brew and the two had chatted about the Black Cat. Steve Ward:
I knew that he had recently had a heart attack and was on the road to recovery. He had said to me a few years previous that he was interested in doing the Black Cat,