60 in 60 #30    Letchy 

 

I am reflecting on the last 60 years, and writing 60 blog posts. 30 about people and 30 about events, places, experiences and entities.

 

I met a lot of really good people during my sixteen years in school chaplaincy and made many close friends. The one I have the greatest affection for is Letchy. He was christened Greg Letch but is universally known and loved as Letchy. He was chaplain at Morley SHS when I was at Carine and we met at one of the regular PD/training days run by Youthcare. 

I don’t have distinct memories of our first meeting but I know we hit it off pretty quickly, having much in common: young families, a love of footy and sport, and a passion for working with kids. Letchy and his wife Sheryl trained as Salvo Ministers in the eastern states before he became a chaplain. They’ve lived in Ballajura for the last 30-odd years, not far away from my big brother Alan’s place, and have three sons, Ryan, Garred and Daniel, all of whom are now married.

 

I have much clearer memories of our first adventure. We both enjoyed playing golf so I suggested we go out to The Vines Resort to watch the Heinekin Open Golf Tournament one January. He has some rellies who live at the Vines which gave the added bonus of access to the swimming pool to cool off during the heat of a Perth summer. I had taken Paulie the year before and he rode his bike around as we joined the galleries following players like Greg Norman and Ian Woosnam. He had scored a signed glove from Aussie Major winner Wayne Grady as well. I persuaded Letchy we should take our mountain bikes so we could get around the course quicker. What we hadn’t counted on was the over-officiousness of the course marshals who tried to stop us riding our bikes. Why? To avoid damage to the course! You mean the course where 30,000 people have been traipsing up and down for the last week, and the countless buggies and service vehicles, media crews etc etc? I stress, we were never riding on the fairways, only on the paths and spectator areas beyond the rough. We continued to ride, trying to avoid the marshals but when we got near the clubhouse they had called in reinforcements, a couple of on duty police officers! As we approached them they signalled for us to stop. I looked the other way and kept riding! Letchy wasn’t so quick, or rebellious, and was baled up by the constabulary! He got a talking to and was told not to ride on the course any more. I found him a little later and we went for a swim to keep out of trouble! When Sheryl heard the story later I think she thought I was a bad influence on her husband!

 

Around this time I was pretty involved with SU (Scripture Union) as a volunteer camp leader and a number of us were invited to a meeting and challenged to come up with ideas for camps SU could run during the various school holiday periods. SU runs lots of camps: hiking, caving, abseiling, canoeing, white water rafting, wilderness camps, as well as creative and performing arts, beach festivals, MAD camp as mentioned in #29, sailing camp etc. I was stuck for a new idea until a Eureka moment occurred a week or two later. I had a flash of inspiration- Footy Camp! I would recruit a bunch of mates who shared my passion for football and we would run a camp in the July holidays for kids who loved footy! I will devote a future chapter of 60 in 60 to the legendary tales of Footy Camp but suffice to say here that Letchy was one of my first recruits, despite his sad affliction of being a West Coast Eagles supporter. He was already umpiring local junior footy which made him a logical choice as umpy for the daily battles between the Cats and the Dogs, the two teams at Footy Camp. 

I directed the camp for about five years from the late 90s and it is still going strong now, some twenty years later. Stay tuned for the full Footy Camp story in the next month or two.

Similarly, Letchy was an inaugural coach in the CFFL as mentioned in #28 and he has contributed many memorable moments in the annals of that august fantasy footy league, but alas, they will have to wait for a future chapter as well.

 

In 2003 I invited Letchy and another mate, Birchy to join me for a footy weekend in Melbourne. I took Zach, and Letchy brought Garred making a party of five flying out of Perth on a Thursday night. It was round 7 of the AFL season and we went to 3-4 games over the weekend, the main attraction being the game between the Cats and the Eagles at Kardinia Park on Saturday afternoon. Geelong started on fire, with David Wojcinski and Paul Chapman kicking goals but as was often the case in those days, West Coast had Geelong’s measure and hit back. The result was a rare draw which was pretty unsatisfying for all of us. We had a kick of the footy on the ground afterwards before heading back to Melbourne for a night game at the MCG. It was great to hang out with some mates and to be able to bring our sons along as well. 

 

I was always looking for ways to get kids from school involved in stuff, especially if it was positive, challenging or a Christian event. Letchy was of a similar mind so we combined resources one year and took a group of kids from Carine and Morley down to SaltBush, a Christian Music Festival that ran at Katanning for a few years. Our mate and fellow chaplain Sev, Tony Severin, was part of the organising team. Camping, music, food and fun made it a great event, especially with a trip to the big adventure playground in town, complete with giant slides, swings and things that went round and round or up and down. 

 

Doing stuff with Letchy was always great for two reasons. He is a great companion, a funny, lovable character, always up for an adventure and a laugh, but he is also a godly man with a heart full of compassion, love and wisdom. Many many times our conversations would turn to deeper subjects, how we were travelling in our marriages and relationships, our walk with God and our work and ministry with young people. Countless times Letchy has given me insights and reflections that speak deeply to my situation, especially in the difficult times when I battled mental health problems and depression. He is one of those people who has spiritual understanding but has his feet firmly planted on the ground. He was not afraid to challenge me about things or to gently point out where I was going wrong but always in an attitude of love and mateship.

 

I write this in the past tense only because having lived on opposite sides of the country for the last ten years we rarely get the chance to hang out together these days. I miss those times a lot.

 

I know Letchy will agree 100% when I say that the best times we’ve had together were when we hiked sections of the Bibbulmun Track which stretches over a thousand kilometres from the Perth hills all the way to Albany in the deep south-west of WA. While some people are able to set aside the 40-odd days it takes to walk the whole track in one go, we set out with the aim of hiking end to end in stages, for 2-3 days at a time. We started at Kalamunda and set off on the first stage carrying heavy packs, food and water, sleeping bags and cooking equipment, enough for three days. There are hiker’s huts at regular intervals all the way along the track and most people hike one or two sections per day, roughly 20 kilometres. The huts have three walls, tables and benches, drop dunnys, firepits and water tanks. Sometimes we shared quarters with other hikers, sometimes we were the only ones there for the night. It was pretty hard going to start with until we got used to the weight and how best to manage our equipment and provisions, especially in the hillier sections. We walked at a steady pace and talked a lot. Not constantly, there were plenty of stretches where we walked in silence and soaked in the beauty and peace of the Australian bush, but we also talked and listened and shared our stories, thoughts, feelings and opinions. We had a good understanding of how each other were going and knew when it was time to stop for a rest, a drink, or for lunch. One of the greatest luxuries in life is eating a simple meal of Cup-a-Soup, crackers with tuna and cheese and a bite-sized chocolate bar while sitting in a shady spot in the bush with one of your best mates. We loved it and felt like we were eating like kings on those days. It amuses me no end to recount that one day while at work I decided to replicate that sort of meal for lunch and discovered it was nowhere near as satisfying when eaten sitting in my office as it was on a fallen tree in the bush with Letchy!

We did four hikes over a couple of years and from memory made it as far as Dwellingup on the last one before circumstances changed and put a stop to our hikes. 

 

We moved to Victoria in 2011. 

 

We didn’t give up on our goal. I was all set to go to Perth and hike a further section when I had a mishap, slipping over while cleaning vomit out of a bus!! I badly wrenched my knee and had to make a painful call to Letchy to say I wouldn’t be able to go hiking with him on that trip! We were both deeply disappointed. I did get back to WA and hike another section with Letchy about a year later.

A few traditions developed on our evenings on the Bibbulmun. Letchy would spend hours tending to his feet, treating and patching hot spots and blisters with creams and bandages, all the while complaining about his boots and lamenting that the latest incarnation of footwear he was wearing were no better than the previous pair of boots. While I felt sorry for him and the pain and discomfort he suffered, it always amused me that my feet never gave me any trouble even if I was wearing a cheap pair of op shop sneakers!

While he was being foot doctor, I would read aloud entries in the log books that were kept at each hiker’s hut and then write up our story of the day. 

 

Our Bibbulmun adventures carry some painful memories as well. On the trip we had to abort due to my injury we had planned to take Ryan and a young Afghan boy called Huss that Greg and Sheryl had fostered for a number of years. He was a refugee from that troubled country and the Letches had welcomed him into their home and their hearts, treating him like a son. Letchy still wanted the boys to have the Bibbulmun experience so a few weeks later he went with them on his own and they hiked a section of the track. 

Less than a year later tragedy struck and Huss took his own life. It was a devastating and heart-breaking time and I vividly remember crying with them on the phone when I heard the news. Any death is sad but the death of a young person carries a level of sadness that is hard to fathom or describe, and when you add the extra dimension of suicide, the pain and anguish defies description entirely. My heart ached for my mate and his wife and family but my pain was a mere shadow of the hurt they experienced.

There was nothing I could do except be there, on the other end of the phone, and to offer my love, care and sympathy. 

 

I did have an opportunity several months later to do something concrete and symbolic to support my mate. Letchy and I returned to the Bibbulmun and hiked the same section he had walked with the boys, retracing their steps and reliving the memories that were now so precious to Letchy. I read their journal entries in the log books and then added my own thoughts and reflections in tribute to Huss and to my great mate. 

I’m not sure when it will happen but I trust we will get back out on the Bibbulmun again.

 

After Letchy left chaplaincy he started working as a bus driver in Perth. Years later when we moved back to Victoria I also started working as a bus driver and we shared stories of strange customers, difficult drivers, common problems and mishaps on the road. I think he told me he’d broken eight mirrors one year! He still drives a Party Bus on weekends.

 

After I finished directing RYLA seminars we looked for something we could do as a family instead of me doing stuff with other people and Carolyn being left with the kids on her own. The thing we found was SU’s Augusta Beach Mission, an annual event at Turner Caravan Park in Augusta, the most south-westerly town in Australia. For the following twelve years we were part of the team of Christian families and volunteers who ran programs for children, teenagers, adults and families who were camping at Augusta in the first two weeks of January. I was part of the teenage team the first year while Carolyn worked with the pre-schoolers. Our kids joined in all the programs. I graduated to leader of the teen program for a few years before eventually becoming the Mission Director. We loved spending the first couple of weeks of the year in an outreach ministry in a beautiful part of the world, with people we loved. There were lots of changes along the way and our team grew in the process. In the last 3-4 years we were involved there were about 80 people on the team when you counted all the kids, teenagers and young people. 

 

I invited Letchy and his family and Birchy and his clan to join the team and for several years the Holts, Letches and Birches enjoyed camping together at Augusta as part of the SU team. The program name changed from a beach mission to a family festival and we got better and better at running great programs that included, music, drama, games, movie nights, quiz nights, Q&A forums, kids clubs, teenage adventure activities and concerts. As the festival grew in size and scope we needed to develop a new leadership model. We decided on a leadership team that divided roles up according to people’s skills. Rolf became the administrator, taking care of all the organisation and paperwork, Paul and Michael organised all the drama and children’s programs and Letchy became the logistics officer, arranging, collecting and managing all the equipment including marquees, tents and the bus. My role became team leader/MC. We had a kitchen team led by experienced cooks who provided amazing food for 80 people three times a day. I even recruited Mum and Walter onto the team and Mum was wonderful running craft activities each morning with the mums and ladies. There were some truly gifted and amazing people on the team and a huge amount of work went into preparing and training the team each year before we got to Augusta. (I will probably devote a chapter to SU and our time at Augusta, there are so many people and events that form such special memories for us.) 

Letchy was brilliant at his job and Sheryl was equally as good in working with the little kids. I have great memories and images of Sheryl and Carolyn working together at Augusta and our friendship as families grew even stronger through being part of the festival team. Garred and Daniel in particular grew into leadership roles within the team as well.

 

Before Covid I usually managed to get back to WA about once a year to visit family and friends. I always stay at least one night at Letchy’s, the “Ballajura Motor Inn”. I always feel welcome and comfortable there and love catching up with such close friends. Letchy is the essence of a genuinely good bloke. He’s warm, friendly, funny and caring. He gives me big hugs and always makes me feel special, loved and cared for. We laugh together, and we cry together. We celebrate and commiserate. We muck around and we get serious. He’s one of the very best people I know.

 

Love ya Letchy!