they planned to visit, they were educated, had secure well-paid employment, and they enjoyed a relatively high standard of living. They also shared a keen interest in military history, particularly of the World War II campaigns in New Guinea. However, for all that, they were a diverse group. Two lived in north Queensland, the other six in Victoria. Five of the men had a background of military service, another in agriculture and farm management. One was an accountant and one a former policeman-turned-life-coach. Six of the group had some experience in trekking, but only one of these, Pete Stevens, had any first-hand knowledge of the Black Cat Track.
A nuggetty sixty-two-year-old with a no-nonsense attitude and a determination to get things done, Pete Stevens had been born in the UK but spent the first ten years of his life in Malaysia, where his father was serving as an Army officer. Later, the family migrated to Australia, living in the Adelaide suburb of Netherby. In 1970, after completing secondary school, he entered the Royal Military College Duntroon. During his RMC training in 1972, along with a number of his classmates, Pete walked the Black Cat Track as an adventurous training activity. He remembers the trek as ‘very wild, very adventurous, but probably not as dangerous as it is now’.
Graduating in 1973, Pete was allotted to the Royal Australian Infantry Corps. During a twenty-year career he served in a variety of regimental and staff appointments, including a period of study in the UK at the Royal Military College Shrivenham. In 1993, at the rank of Major, he accepted a voluntary redundancy package and for the next three years worked in a variety of civilian occupations.
Later, Pete secured a position as a Test Engineer at Australian Defence Industries in Bendigo, where he worked on the Bushmaster vehicles made famous during Australia’s commitment to Afghanistan. He then went on to work in various Melbourne-based companies in the research and development field, and as a project manager and consultant. During that time he met and worked with Jon Hill, Glen Reiss and Zoltan Maklary. At around the same time he met and befriended Rod Clarke, who was a member of the same swimming club as Pete’s wife, Dee. In 2010, along with Jon Hill, Pete had walked the Kokoda Track, an experience that had left him with a thirst for more:
Doing the Black Cat was another adventure, I suppose. I’d done Kokoda, a tick in the box, and the fact that Jon and I had done it reasonably, not easily mind, it’s an arduous walk, but we were looking for something a little bit more challenging, something a little bit more remote but still tied to military 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,
