Last seen twenty years ago, on 13 March 2003

 

The only sign you can find today of Hugo Julcher is his picture on the Queensland Police missing persons file: a smiling fellow in singlet and underpants, a fresh-caught barramundi dangling from his fishing line.

 

Recently, I was messaging David Clarke who's spent nearly twenty years at Lockhart River where he works for the Aboriginal Shire Council. As he puts it, "I've done my share of wandering but my bones urge to ultimately rest here. It's strange where life carries you."

He also knows David Glasheen of Restoration Island and went diving with Hubert Hofer when he was still at Bamaga. And if that wasn't enough, he also spent time in Rabaul, Kavieng and Kieta. It's a small world indeed!

Then he told me about another mad Austrian. Not that Schicklgruber chap, but Hugo Julcher who for many years lived at the mouth of the Olive River before he went missing in 2003. I pricked up my ears, and what transpired was a very strange story about a very strange man. "I doubt if anyone has written up Hugo's story", he added. Well, here it is:

For about ten months of the year, Hugo Julcher and his then companion Heather Schlaegl used to share their remote shack some forty-seven nautical miles north of the Lockhart River with about a dozen resident crocodiles and who knows how many local snakes and cruising sharks.

 

 

It was built from flotsam and jetsam found on the wide, white beaches within easy walking distance of that lonely shack. An old sail made up one wall and an old tarp provided half the roof, and all sorts of odds and ends had been turned into just about every stick of furniture.

 

 

Hugo came to Australia from post-war Austria in the early 1950s. He was promised work in his trade as a cabinet maker but none was available when he arrived, and so he worked in just about every other job you care to name in every state, including buffalo shooting in the Territory.

 

The mouth of the Olive River

 

How he ended up at the mouth of the Olive River seems to be lost in the mist of time. Eventually, he married Heather from Cairns, and brought her seven hundred kilometres north. They lived mostly on fish and bush tucker and, according to the occasional visitor, didn't waste any time worrying about the crocodiles that lived within a few steps of their hut.

Heather died back in Cairns sometime in the late '90s, and Hugo was again living alone in his remote piece of paradise. Then, in March 2003, he failed to meet a boat that was to get him supplies from Cairns.

 

Hugo Julcher and Heather Schlaegl sometime in 1997; Hugo would've been 65 then.

 

The Missing Person Notice reads, "Last seen on Oliver River Camp 47 Nautical Miles North of Lockhart River by friend Graeme ROBERTS, Hicks Island. JULCHER failed to meet a ship scheduled to transport him to Cairns on the 13/3/2003, has not been located since this date", but people think the crocodiles finally got Hugo, the hermit of Olive River.

 

 

I've since lodged an application with the National Archives for access to his early immigration papers. It's the least I can do for one of the last of a vanishing breed who came in their thousands from all over Europe after World War II, seeking work but also looking for lots of adventure.

 

A blast from the past

Roy, Sheryl, moi

 

On this day eight years ago, the phone rang and a stranger's voice said, "This is Sheryl from Brisbane. We're across the river at Nelligen and would like to come and visit you."

"I don't know a Sheryl from Brisbane", I replied. "Yes, you do", the voice said. "I'm Sheryl. We worked together in the ANZ Bank in Canberra in 1967." OF COURSE! And so we met again after 48 years.

Back then Sheryl and I not only worked in the same bank but also lived in the same boarding-house about which I had written here. She had found my story on the internet some years ago and contacted me then by email but I had promptly forgotten. She and her husband Roy were campervanning up and down the East Coast and calling in on friends.

Sheryl had been more of a teenage crush than a friend to me as she was by far the best-looking sheila in the bank. I had been in Australia for just over a year and owned nothing more than the clothes I stood up in at a time when possessing a car was 95% of a young man's personality.

With 5% personality and a thick German accent I never stood a chance.

 

 

P.S. ... and to think that fifty-six years ago, I would've willingly given up on the idea of seeing so much more of the world, would've willingly stuck with my dull 9-to-5 job in the bank, would've had kids and a big mortgage on a small house with a white picket fence around it - as they say, "the full catastrophe ..." - IF SHE HAD ONLY SO MUCH AS SMILED AT ME!!! Are these just the faintest echoes of Somerset Maugham's "Red"?