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John Ewbank - RIP 12-Dec-2013 At 4:06:29 PM Usedtobe

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Hi Macciza, Send me an email off-list (john.pickard@bigpond.com) and we'll see if we can set something up. I think I can find my old climbing log book. Has all the dates, etc. I also have slides from those days, never scanned them, but I think I can find them given enough notice.

Another memory very appropriate this time of the year. I forget when it was, but four of us: Ewbank, Pickard, Alec Campbell and Steve (Blue) Lucas) went to Bungonia Gorge. JE & Alec to try a route on south face, me and Blue one on north face. We all piked off. But we spent a great Christmas (and my birthday) relaxing in the sand in the bottom of the gorge taking turns to read out loud chapters of an Emile Zola book (the Charles Dickens of France) that I had with me. Pretty grim book, like all of Zola's.

Tragically, Alec was bi-polar, exacerbated by the shit he endured from the army when drafted during the Vietnam War, and later shot himself in about 1968 or thereabouts. Blue died in a motor bike accident. Both have plaques on the lower RH side of Dog Face. Now that John has also died, looks like I'm the last man standing.

Like me, John had a VERY prominent nose. One Easter at the 'Bungles, he and Dick Smith (yes THE Dick Smith) put routes up the west face. But on the way up the track, John had tripped, and the weight of his pack with all the steel crabs etc. of those days, pile-drove his face into the ground. He kept moaning "Feel my nose, I think it's broken." Maybe it was, but like mine, it was pretty bloody ugly before anyway!

Unfortunately I won't be able to get to Mt Vic this Saturday for John's farewell. Make sure that you don't get too maudlin. He wouldn't have appreciated that! Tell all the old stories, and make sure you embellish them with generous doses of bullshit. Now that he would have liked.

John