MERRIJIG, Australia – A sheet of fog looming before him, Lachlan Culican saddled his horse one autumn morning and headed to the remote high country of southern Australia to find two campers missing.
Upon reaching the meadow where he had pitched his tent, Mr. Cullin was astonished by what he saw. The campsite was burned to the ground, with the campers’ burnt items piled up in heaps. Carcasses of deer were scattered all around the valley. Campers were nowhere to be found.
“There was nothing natural about it,” said Mr. Culican, a 26-year-old cattle rancher.
More than a year later, the disappearance of the campers, Russell Hill and Carol Clay, both in their 70s, remains unsolved. Speculations have intensified. Was it a fatal run-in with illegal deer poachers? A trick so that the campers, who weren’t married to each other, could run away together?
Around the campfire, long tales have blossomed in the absence of an answer. Often, they revolve around a local recluse known as the Button Man, who lives in the woods near the campsite and spends his time carving buttons with horns.
There is no evidence that the Button Man had anything to do with the disappearance, or had ever seen Mr Hill and Miss Clay at their campsite. Yet, their mere presence in this forbidden territory has captured the national imagination – embodied in a vast country, with strange charms and fear of distant places they can swallow without a voice.
Rumors and stories about the Button Man and the missing campers reflect an innate desire to find explanations for the unspeakable. But for a century and more, these mountains, more than most places, have kept their secrets tight.
a string of misfortune
Livestock herders who roam the rough country hundreds of miles northeast of Melbourne say it’s an easy place to disappear if you’re not careful, or if you want to.
Dingoes peek at the ground, roaring in the dark of night. Clear skies can turn to snow in the blink of an eye, even in summer. Most of the landscape is only accessible by horse or four-wheel drive in the warmer months, and not at all in the winter.
“It’s remote and beautiful and unpredictable,” said Graeme Stoney, 81, a local rancher. “It creates its own legends and its own secrets.”
Within this wilderness, a string of hikers and campers alike have found the fortune of Mr Hills and Miss Clay in recent years.
In 2008, Warren Meyer, 57, a veteran hiker, set out on a relatively easy six-mile walk in a national park on a hot fall day and was never seen again.
Possible clues have been found. A fugitive from a psychiatric ward with murder tendencies is seen around the area where Mr. Meyer had disappeared. During the same period some people in the area heard gunshots. During the search a ganja shop was found. But Mr Meyer’s disappearance was never solved.
Three years later, David Prideau, 50, the head of a Melbourne prison, went missing while hunting deer in the mountains. Some speculated that his disappearance may have been related to the murder of a gangland leader in prison under his supervision. For years afterward, there were reports of alleged sightings of Mr. Prideo across the country.
In July 2019, Conrad Whitlock, 72, inexplicably left his home at 3 a.m. and headed to high country. Later when the police found his car lying on the side of the road, his jacket, phone and wallet were all present. But he was not.
Three months later, Niels Baker, an avid bush walker, disappeared in the middle of a five-day hike. He had trained for months for the outing, which was scheduled for his 39th birthday.
And then, in March 2020, what Mr Hill and Miss Clay told their family was they set out for a weeklong camping trip – although they didn’t mention that they were going to be together.
Once they reached their camp site, in a wide valley among snow-capped mountains, Mr. Hill, an amateur radio enthusiast, dialed his fellow hobbyists to tell him where he was.
This was the last time anyone listened to either of them.
“The bush is very forgiving, Australian bush,” Greg Paul, A senior police officer said at a news conference last year after Mr Hill and Miss Clay went missing.
The police are not believing that they are connected to any case. But that didn’t stop people from thinking.
“It is an extraordinary coincidence that so many people have gone missing,” said Mr. Stoney, the rancher, “but you would expect that they have all taken the wrong step and nothing is involved.”
A mystery in this land of mysteries has outlived all the rest, and still haunts the local residents, many of whom are descendants of the main characters.
This includes a double murder that took place 103 years ago.
In that scorching heat, the body of 48-year-old Jim Barkley was found in a shallow grave not far from the cattle station he managed. Suspicion immediately fell on the only other person living there: John Bamford, who cooked for Mr. Barkley. But Mr Bamford could not be interrogated by officers – he had disappeared, only to be found dead nine months later, with a bullet in his skull.
No one has yet been charged in the murders. The most common theory is that Mr. Barkley was killed by Mr. Bamford, who was in turn shot by a friend of Mr. Barkley. But people also speculate that there was a rumor about Mr. Barkley’s affair. Others say that the two men could have had a dispute with the cattle thieves.
The grandchildren of those directly or indirectly involved in the case around the valley are now in their 70s and 80s. Each family has passed down their own version of events, and they often contradict each other or official records.
Historian Keith Layden, who wrote a book about the murders, said “there have been many allegations from many families,” and many names have been tarnished.
The prevailing sentiment is that the whole matter is left with the ghosts.
“You try to ask a mountain rancher, and he’ll say, ‘We don’t talk about it here,'” Mr. Layden said.
One of those men is Rob “Choppy” Purcell, now retired. His silhouette – one of four men on horseback – is on the logo of a local pub in the town of Merijg at the base of the mountains. He was also on the beer koozie he was holding.
“Many people have written books about the area, but they don’t know what they are talking about,” Mr Purcell said. He spoke with the conviction of someone who knows more than the official record. But he was unwilling to divulge details – not to outsiders.
Bruce McCormack, 63, whose family was one of the first to settle in the area, told the story of how his grandfather, a good friend of one of the slain, went to the valley to investigate the murders not long after. He stayed there for three months, Mr. McCormack said, and when he returned his message was: “Justice was done, and leave it alone.”
“There are people who know more, but they are all dying,” said Mr. McCormack, “and I’m not saying too much either.”
legend of legend
More than 100 years after the murders, as local residents again try to understand the loss of two people in precarious circumstances, a new set of stories have emerged, blurring the line between truth and urban legend.
These stories focus on the Button Man.
Locals insist that they do not really think that the bush recluse, whose real name is unknown, had anything to do with the disappearances of Mr. Hill and Ms. Clay. There is no indication that the police consider him a person of interest.
But his name was first linked to the case because he had Allegedly Told police that she had encountered Mr Baker, who had gone missing five months before Mr Hill and Miss Clay.
The focus is on the Button Man, with little else to explain the disappearance. This is almost certainly unwanted. Locals, who say tourists now flock to the mountains hoping to part ways with the great man, worry about his safety.
Campers and hikers say Button Man walks out of the woods without a sound. Sometimes they have a good conversation. Other times, he looks agitated and tells them about what they are doing.
In some of the stories told by people who have encountered him, he asks: “Would you like to see my Button collection?” Or, sometimes, “Do you want to see my ax collection?”
There are other stories that are told less often: those who know him a little better refer to him by the friendly nickname Button. He is rumored to be helping a university to collect data about a high country and living in Melbourne during the winter.
Those who see Buttons coming through Mansfield, the regional center where campers often stock up before proceeding into the mountains, say that he is friendly and polite as he fixes his car or grabs a bite to eat. stops.
But many also joke to hikers before heading into the canyon: “Beware the button man!”
“It’s become a long story told around the campfire,” said Ben Large, a local resident from behind the counter of the Mansfield bike shop.
In broad daylight, the pastoralists who know the valley best see its mysteries as nothing more than isolated cases of misfortunes linked together by chance.
But when pressed, they are reluctant to completely dismiss the possibility that something else is happening. They share other stories from the mountains: a slender-haired creature who visits campers in the dark, hikers who find pictures of themselves on their cameras taken by an unknown hand.
It is easy to imagine that something might be hiding in the bush when it is night, fog covers the mountains and tree branches hit the roofs, as if something is alive.
“Darkness plays strange games,” said 71-year-old Charlie Lowick, a local farmer, who finds new homes for retired racehorses. “That’s why you keep the fire burning all night long.”