Liturgies

Wednesday, August 24th 2016

Heather Jan Easton

By Tim Easton

Hello everyone; the homily today is for my sister, Heather Jan Easton and the repercussions her death has had on my family for the past forty-two years. It was 10 December 1974 when Heather fell to her death from a rock massif in Lamington National Park called “Lost World”. It gets this name because the cliff line is consistent around the massif base apart from the south-west and north-east razorbacks which enable bushwalkers to climb onto this magnificent wilderness within the World Heritage listing of Lamington NP.

I was just a thirteen year old boy when this tragedy occurred. I was invited on the walk with a party of five who were part of the Kelvin Grove Teaching College bushwalking club at the time; Heather was a student teacher there. Some of you may know of Ross Buchannan who has written several books on bushwalking in south-east Queensland. He was the leader of this trip which started in Christmas Creek and climbed onto the Stretcher Track then around to the Stinson Plane Wreck which many of you may know of. In 1937 Bernard O’Reilly found this plane in the rainforest of Lamington National Park after the owners of the plane had given it up, believing it to have been lost in the Pacific Ocean. It was Bernard O’Reilly who found two men still alive and the Stretcher Track was cut to carry them out.

We were on the last day of this four day trek when in the early hours of the day Heather slipped on what I believe were Casuarina seeds; these are large oval shaped seeds that can upset the steadiest of bushwalker. I was in front of her just behind Ross Buchannan, another friend just two years older than I was behind me, then Heather and finally Karl who was a close friend of Heather’s.

I heard her call out as she tumbled and tumbled to the cliff edge at great speed with her steel framed pack helping to form a large “ball” that sent her flying to her death some fifty metres below. There was nothing any of us could do as she was already plummeting to the cliff edge as we barely had turned to see her rolling.

These photos are mostly of recent trips with my two oldest children; Brendan in November last year and Georgia in February of this year they both completed a three day trek to Black Canyon and Lost World which is possibly the two most remote parts of Lamington National Park and are utterly spectacular on all accounts. There are also some photos of a trip with my youngest daughter in 2010.

The other photos are of Heather’s short life; she was just nineteen when this accident occurred. Fortunately it was purely an accident with Heather doing what she loved most, being in “The Great Outdoors” as my father had embossed onto the brass plague which is still there to this day along with the twenty of more horse shoes my father had nailed to the large gum tree that had caught Heather’s body from falling all the way to the Albert River some 500m below. It is incredibly unforgiving country and when the rescue party arrived around the middle of the afternoon it was decided to call in an army helicopter to lift Heather’s body out.

Just after Heather fell, Ross scrambled down to the base of the cliff and within a short time asked for Karl to join him. He wanted myself and my friend to stay put on the edge of the cliff where we could see only the tops of large gum trees below. I knew things were not good and perhaps for most of that day I drifted in and out of shock. My friend Nameer told me only a few years ago that a huge Wedge Tail eagle soared into greet us as did the mist and cloud.

A Playback Theatre a few years back on hearing this story immediately tapped into the spiritual component which I find quite remarkable as it is always a place I have returned on an annual basis and all three of my children have followed me there. In April 2014 we spread half my father’s ashes up there.

As my mother said to me on the day of the accident when we finally had walked to the base of the Kerry Valley near Beaudesert she said: “You must never hate the mountains Tim”. Her words have stuck with me to this day.

But tragically the timing of Heather’s death being 10 December meant a large depressive cloud hung over our family every year and throughout Christmas. When I reached my mid-thirties I sought out the professional help of a counsellor to understand this depression. This person helped me through a process of honouring her passing; a process I still use at Heather’s birthday on 3 May and her accident on 10 December.

For me this experience is to this day the greatest teacher of what is important in this life and indeed the fragility of life and how such an event can effect a single family. For my father I don’t think he ever really got over it and my mother I once heard her say it took some ten years. For my sister I know like me still feels Heather’s absence. It is not just Heather’s passing but the family she most likely would have had in far western Queensland where her true passion for horses and the outback life lay. She worked there at every opportunity as a jillaroo on two stations; Amby Downs near Roma and Galway Downs near Windorah.

But of course a family must move on and the individuals within that family must find a place where they accept the loss of someone so dear. In honesty it never really goes away but so much can be learnt from this tragedy.

And as many of you are aware across the globe and particularly in Syria and Iraq families are being destroyed and splintered almost on a weekly basis; the two year old Syrian boy who was washed up on the beach in Turkey just last year, drowned along with his five year old brother and mother. Some of you may have seen the ABC documentary of the father who brought his dead family back to their home town in Syria for burial.

And back here in Australia, just 100 years ago we were still killing Aboriginal people and their families for not co-operating with the invasion of their land and the will of the new white settlers.

My experience while tragic has none of the repercussions of some of these current and past human experiences, it has however helped make me a more compassionate human being with the knowledge such an experience can bring. It has also made for me a permanent connection with Lamington National Park and the extra-ordinary World Heritage beauty it holds particularly at “Lost World” on the western rim.

Thank you,

I trust this has been useful for you.