Cold snapshot

By Monique Ebrington
WARBURTON resident Don Willis spent his night lost in bush crouched under his camera tripod and umbrella.
Mr Willis set out to take photos of the landscape around the Cora Lynn Falls, a tourist spot near Marysville, around 2.30pm on Sunday 27 September.
He was wearing several layers of clothing, and thermals, and had packed his new Pentax camera and a block of Old Gold chocolate — all the experienced walker needed for his intended four hour walk.
Mr Willis was familiar with the track, having been there several times before.
It wasn’t until it reached 9pm, two hours after Mr Willis was due home, that his wife, Glenys Evans, phoned 000.
“It was at around eight o’clock,” Ms Evans said.
“I guess I was worried because it was such a bad night — it had been raining non-stop.
“I thought maybe he’d dropped in to see somebody on the way home and hadn’t let me know.
“I was worried enough to call the SES.”
Mr Willis arrived at the trail 3.30pm intending to take photos at dusk and be home for tea at around 7pm.
He said it was when he tried to follow a stream back to his car before nightfall when things didn’t go quite to plan.
“I think blokes have their own inner maps in their mind and I like to fill mine in,” Mr Willis said.
“I suppose I was cursing myself as to why I miscalculated where I was.
“I wasn’t looking at it because I wasn’t stopping, I was a bit tired but I knew I had to get onto the trail and it was when I started taking in the signals of where I should be.”
He said it wasn’t until he realised the difference in the foliage around him and the appearance of the river bank that he realised he was going in the wrong direction.
“I had followed the wrong river, in the wrong direction,” he said.
“It was too late to find my way back so I made my umbrella tent and thought about it all again.
“I realised I’ve just got to survive the night, it’s going to get cold but nothing was going to happen ’til dawn when I had light and when I was going to get out.
“I knew it would be a lousy night but it would be all right.”
Mr Willis said there was enough room under his make-shift tent for his upper body and ‘two leaches at a time’ and he didn’t sleep a wink that night.
He said his key to getting through the night was to not look at his wrist watch.
“If you look at your watch and think it must be 3am and it’s only 11 then you’re going to be disappointed,” he said.
Ms Evans didn’t get much sleep that night either and was among the SES, Police Search and Rescue and bushwalkers club who were ready to look for Mr Willis at the Cora Lynn Falls at first light.
When it was light enough the next morning Mr Willis retraced his steps and landed on the right path and said he didn’t expect anyone to be searching for him.
“I was thinking no one would start anything ’til dawn,” he said.
He said he heard someone ‘cooee’ when he stopped for a drink by the river and it was then that his wife found him.
“I was thinking, that’s either a bird or maybe that’s someone calling out,” he said.
“We saw each other at the same time.”
He said he was pleased to be out of the bush and said his experience won’t deter him from getting back nature.
“I was brought up on farms. The land is there, it’s something I like to get back to,” he said.
“I don’t think of it as threatening. You just have to be cautious and the rest is stupidity.”
As far as Ms Evans is concerned, however, he will have to carry a space blanket and sleeping bag the next time he wants to get back to nature.