Legendary Blue Mountains bushwalker Gordon Smith was a man who looked like he’d strolled straight out of an old Chesty Bonds singlet commercial.
Tall, with a magnificent physique, this founding member of the Sydney Bush Walkers club went on many an epic adventure in the Grose, Wollemi, Gangarang and Kanangra wilderness areas in the 1920s and 1930s. He was part of the club’s “Tiger Walkers” clique renowned for their feats of speed, endurance and daring over the roughest terrain.
In the Blue Mountains, Gordon Smith Pass on Kanangra Walls and Gordon Smith Chimney on Mt Banks are named in Smith’s honour.
Smith (1902-1945) was also a record-breaking champion race walker and the first Australian “Centurion” in 1937 - the first man to walk more than 100 miles in 24 hours.
He was a fine leader of fellow bush adventures and The Bushwalker magazine of 1946 remembered him as a man who led by “quiet guidance and encouragement, never by assertion: which capacity is perhaps the measure of true leadership. His unassuming manner and quiet persuasiveness endeared him to all who knew him.”
The most poignant monument to Gordon Smith and other bushwalkers like him lies in a lonely and simple yet spectacular Blue Mountains war memorial perched on Splendour Rock near the summit of Mt Dingo.
A century on from the end of World War I - the war that was supposed to end all wars - Barker College students completing their Duke of Edinburgh Award recently made the long, hard trek to Splendour Rock to pay their respects to Smith and acknowledge his sacrifice as a soldier and his feats as an outdoors adventurer.
They listened to the Last Post and the Ode to the Fallen and the story of this stunning natural war memorial that features a brass plaque with the words: “In memory of bushwalkers who fell in WWII.
Their splendour shall never fade.”
Author and adventurer Andy Macqueen has written about Smith in his books covering the history of Blue Mountains bushwalking and noted the sad irony that the man dubbed “the Phar Lap of bushwalking” was “overcome by one of the grimmest walks of all time: one of the so-called death marches in the jungles of Borneo [during WWII].”
As the Sydney Bush Walkers website tells: “In June 1940 Gordon resigned from his Public Service position, said good bye to his wife and joined the long list of able bodied men who answered the call, enlisting in the 6th Infantry Battalion with the rank of Private. This was no easy decision – he was 38 years of age, had been married for 15 years and had a son Gordon, then aged 12. He was heavily involved in bushwalking and racewalking and had his own career.
“Soon he embarked to Singapore and was transferred to 2/19 Infantry Battalion on Intelligence Duties. Able to read maps and negotiate unknown terrains, he was an obvious choice for such a role.
“In February 1942, when Singapore fell to the Japanese forces, he was listed as Missing in Action.
By 1943, this had been amended to ‘Prisoner of War’. He was one of the unlucky prisoners who was transferred to Sandakan in Borneo. In what was one of the darkest episodes of the Pacific Theatre of the war, he and the other prisoners in that camp endured forced labour, beatings, torture, starvation and illness. In 1945, two groups of about 500 of the fittest prisoners were marched out of the camp to Ranau in what became known as the Sandakan Death Marches. He died on 8 March 1945. Of the 2345 Australian and British POWs who were imprisoned in this infamous camp in January 1945, only six survived. It is bitterly ironic that Australia's best long distance walking exponent should have died in such circumstances.”
Looking out over the stark beauty of the wildest corners of the Blue Mountains beloved by bushwalkers such as Smith, the Barker students listened as the roll of those bushwalking club members honoured at Splendour Rock for giving their lives in WWII was read out:
BRUCE ELDER, Coast & Mountain Walkers R.A.N.
KENNETH GRENFELL, Rucksack Club R.A.A.F.
REG. HEWITT, Sydney Bush Walkers A.I.F.
GEORGE LODER, Trampers Club R.A.A.F.
JAMES McCORMACK, Y.M.C.A. Ramblers R.A.A.F.
GORDON MANNELL, Sydney Bush Walkers R.A.A.F.
MAC NICHOLS, Y.M.C.A. Ramblers A.I.F.
ARNOLD RAY, Coast & Mountain Walkers R.A.A.F.
CHARLES ROBERTS, Coast & Mountain Walkers A.I.F.
NORMAN SAILL, Sydney Bush Walkers R.A.A.F.
GORDON SMITH, Sydney Bush Walkers A.I.F.
GORDON TOWNSEND, Coast &. Mountain Walkers R.A. A.F.
JACK WALL, Campfire Club R.A.A.F.
While Smith died on a Borneo death march, the likes of Townsend went missing on a flight over
Germany, and Elder went down with the HMAS Sydney. The students heard how the NSW
Federation of Bushwalking Clubs resolved to honour these men at the conclusion of WWII. In an article headlined “We Will Remember Them” in The Bushwalker magazine in 1946, the federation noted that “many bushwalkers - both men and women - served with the Forces in the Second World War and most of them, fortunately, returned to us. Some, however, will never again walk the bush tracks. Not one of these rests on his native soil yet the love of each for his country was deep, intimate and abiding.”
In 1947 The Bushwalker reported that a decision had been made to affix a brass plate “to Splendour Rock, that magnificent view-point at the southern end of Mount Dingo. Here, where the eye is drawn to the glory of Kanangra Walls, surely the spiritual home of bush walkers, is a spot beloved of many of those whom we seek to honour.”
Mount Dingo is one of the prominent peaks of the Wild Dog Mountains between Katoomba and Kanangra Walls - a spectacular landscape where one of Gordon Smith’s great bushwalking contemporaries, the dog-loving Myles Dunphy, so evocatively gave the features dog-related names on one of his famous hand-drawn Blue Mountains maps.
At dawn on Anzac Day, 1948, the Splendour Rock plaque was unveiled by another legend of Australian bushwalking, Paddy Pallin, and every Anzac Day since, bushwalkers have made the pilgrimage there to ensure “their splendour shall never fade”.
Before leaving to undertake the steep descent of Mount Dingo under torchlight on the hike back to their camp cave at Mobbs Soak, the Barker students also reflected on the words of the great Australian war historian Charles Bean: “What these men did nothing can alter now. The good and the bad, the greatness and smallness of their story will stand … It rises, as it always will rise, above the mists of time, a monument to great-hearted men; and, for their nation, a possession for ever.”
And they heard the Prayer of Remembrance, a Biblical beseech that there be a need for no more Splendour Rock memorials: “Almighty God, Our Heavenly Father, we remember with thanksgiving those who made the supreme sacrifice for us during times of war. We pray that the offering of their lives may not have been in vain. May grace enable us this day to dedicate to the cause of justice, freedom and peace and give wisdom and strength to a better world.”
