The column of thin, blue smoke spiralled gently from the small, carefully built fire. Low flames from just a handful of deliberately arranged sticks danced beneath a tin billycan supported by two river stones. It was the manner of the man sitting on a low, flat granite boulder nearby, that the fire should be so. Sufficient heat to boil a cup or two of water doesn't need much wood; and the Major took care that his presence in the unspoiled mountain habitat was unobtrusive.
He loved the mountains and had spent much of his working life in the Australian Army Survey Directorate, mapping the Great Dividing Range which runs the length of Australia's east coast. But the mountains also humbled him. He felt a privileged visitor and moved with care lest the sounds of unseen life in the undergrowth, among the tangled branches of snowgums and in the glittering mountain streams, might suddenly cease and banish him to a sterile silence for the impertinence of his intrusion.
At nights, wrapped in a sleeping bag on a groundsheet, hard against a fallen log to protect against the chill, whispering breeze, he would listen through the incantation of crickets for the soft pad of wallabies as they passed warily to drink from the near stream.
These were the times he liked best, when he could leave behind other men, who needed tents and conversation to protect them from the night. There were some who said Major Hugh Powell Gough Clews was of the mountains. He saw what others could never see and felt what others could only conjure with imaginative words.
He breathed their air, scented by gums and alpine flowers, listened to and understood their voices and always took time to enjoy their beauty. This was where he knew he belonged.
On this morning in February 1950, the Major should have been enjoying peace and solitude deep in the bush of the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney. That was where he had decided to retire. He was sixty years old, but had been talked into a five-year contract as a senior surveyor for the construction of a big hydro-electric scheme in the Snowy Mountains -- the highest ranges of the Australian Alps at the southern end of the Great Dividing Range.
The plan developed by the Commonwealth Government was to collect the annual snow melt in vast high-altitude reservoirs, then redirect the water through tunnels under the mountains to the dry interior to the west. On the fall from the high alpine dams, the water would also be used to generate hydro-electricity for the cities of Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney. It would be one of the biggest engineering undertakings ever attempted anywhere in the world.
And the mountains where it was all to happen were an unchartered wilderness. Almost nothing was known of the topography, geology or hydrology -- all crucial information which had to be gathered as quickly as possible before engineers could decide where to even put access roads, let alone the intended massive dams, reservoirs, tunnels and power stations.
What little of the mountains had been mapped had been done by the army and in particular, Major Clews.
So he was back once more within the awesome realm of towering peaks rising sheer from seemingly bottomless gorges, wild river torrents and almost impenetrable undergrowth which not only made movement slow and exhausting, but also dangerous. The density of the scrub and sudden mists could conceal precipices which dropped away for hundreds of metres.
Gazing out across the peaks and valleys in this craggy, frontier, Major Clews often tried to imagine what it would look like with giant dams and roads, men and machines and even the townships which were planned. He would shake his head. It was just too much change to envisage easily. It was also sad. Once the giddy depths of the grandest valleys were filled with water, the wilderness would have been conquered; the mountains tamed and forever subservient to the needs of man. Or would they? Perhaps he knew the mountains better than that. Either way, he trusted the scars would soon heal.
As he crouched by his breakfast fire, survey charts spread across the ground, weighted by small stones, he was aware of the ending of one age and the beginning of another. The only people intimately to touch these mountains before he and the teams of surveyors, geologists and hydrologists, now clawing their way over the rugged terrain, were stockmen and before them, Aborigines, who for time immemorial had followed the summer migration of the Bogong moths from the plains into the mountains.
Five generations of stockmen had herded cattle and sheep into the high country to graze during the summer months. They knew the mountains well enough but most confined their droving to stock routes established along the easiest gradients and to where there was access to water. Few had need to explore the almost inaccessible areas into which the men of science were being sent.
He idly prodded his fire with a stick, savouring the sweet Eucalyptus smoke and the warmth in his mug of black tea. Breakfast was simple -- cold meat and cheese sandwiches thrown together the previous day before leaving his main camp, at Dry Dam, already a full day's march away.
There were no roads and the Major disliked riding horses, so he walked. Throughout the mountains were small, scattered teams of scientists and workmen looking for the best sites for dams, power stations and roads. The Major met them all as he traversed the mountains, organising his survey parties. He commiserated with the drillers who, because of the lack of roads, had to manhandle their heavy drilling rigs, piece by piece, over the mountains. It was a hellish task and he was glad it wasn't his lot.
It was often three or four days before Major Clews returned from his excursions to base camp, a world of industrious men with noisy jeeps, excited talk, two-way radios and orders and queries from headquarters in Sydney, nearly five hundred kilometres away.
The morning's first bird calls cracked the still air: currawangs, with their haunting whip-lash cry, the chatter of multi-coloured parrots and the occasional screech of a black cockatoo.
The major stood bare chested in the crisp morning air, his mug and billy now rinsed and dripping on black granite by the edge of the stream. With care he wrapped a rubber pouch high and tight, around his chest. Inside were maps and mail for the men he would meet later in the day. Almost all the mail delivered against the chest of this wiry, ageless man wandering alone in unchartered mountains originated in postboxes in unpronounceable villages and cities across the breadth of Europe, a world away.
He replaced the shirt, tucking it into baggy serge trousers held at the waist with a simple, hand-made leather belt. The legs were tucked into thick woollen socks, that bulged above heavy rubber-soled army GP boots. After re-packing a small rucksack with his bedding, billycan, mug, tea, sugar, pipe tobacco and the flask of rum he carried everywhere for a nightly tot, the major carefully smothered the embers of his small fire. Taking a last indulgent look around his surroundings, he firmly planted his cherished 'mounties' hat on his head then strode purposefully into the bush. With early morning sun on his back and mountain air in his lungs, a man felt good to be alive.