Vale – John Davis

It was a very bad accident. John Davis was travelling back from a coal mine protest in the helicopter of Richard Green and his wife. For some reason, on their way back to Sydney the helicopter crashed in the Wattagan Mountains. All three died in the crash.

I did not know Richard Green, but knew of his magnificent landscape photos. He was also one of the photographers who contributed photos to the Gardens  of Stone In Focus Photography Competition, and on that site you can read about Richard here.

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I have known of John Davis, their travelling companion, and his work for a long time. When I started bushwalking, one of my inspirations was a book – “Rope and Rucksack”. It was in my school library and it was a truly marvellous resource to a starting out bushwalker. John was the key author of the book. Around the same time (late 1960’s), he also produced a magazine devoted to outdoor adventure pursuits called “Rucksack Magazine”. Both the book and the magazine had chapters and articles about canyoning and climbing, and these were well illustrated by John’s excellent photos. I think John was the first person to attempt to seriously photograph the canyons of the Blue Mountains. Some of his early canyon photographs I can remember were used as large display photos on the walls at Paddy Pallins shop in the city.

During the last half of the 1970’s, when I was an active member of the Kameruka Bushwalking Club, I can remember John being the judge at the annual photo competitions. His comments were very wise and inspired you to try and do better with your photography.

During my time working as a science teacher, I would have showed many of his excellent science videos that he produced for schools.

I later saw his name again, when I started doing a lot of rock climbing. One local crag – Narrabeen Slabs, in particular I can remember has a lot of routes that John was on the first ascent. I knew about John’s early climbs in the 1960’s. It seems he was an active climber for a long period. Bryden Allen has some good stories of some of John’s climbs from the 1960’s on his website. You can read here about the first ascent of Balls Pyramid and the first scent of the Central Clock Tower and the Town Hall Clock Tower. John was later caught by police climbing on the Art Gallery of NSW.

Some tribute sites have been set up with lots of photos and memories. You can see them here and here. Artshub Australia has a good obituary.

The last contact I had with John was late in October when he made a nice comment about some of my photos I had posted on Facebook taken at Kanangra Walls. Even though John was in his 70’s at the time of his accident, he was still very active in many fields such as green politics. He had recently set up a large and very thoughtful website called Energy Without Carbon. John Davis lived a long and very full life and he will be missed by many.

 

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