Tracey Matthies
The disappearance of Carol Clay and Russell Hill while camping in Victoria’s High Country in March 2020 quickly captured the nation’s attention.
Pakenham Gazette readers were especially interested as the former state Country Women’s Association president was one of their own. Carol Clay lived in Pakenham and regularly featured in our pages.
More than four years later, in June 2024, former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn was convicted of the murder of Carol, but found not guilty of the murder of Russell.
And just a few months later, at least two books documenting the case that drew so many in were published.
True crime authors Greg Haddrick (In the Dead of the Night, The gripping pursuit of the Wonnangatta Valley murderer, pilot Greg Lynn), and Robin Bowles (Last Man Standing, Greg Lynn – Jetstar pilot and the Wonnangatta mystery) take different approaches in their telling of the story.
Reading two books in succession on the same series of events, there will obviously be many similarities, but the authors will focus on or highlight different aspects of the story.
Haddrick writes in detail of the long, drawn out investigation and meticulous building of a case against Lynn.
The reader sits alongside the police team and feels their frustration as the clock ticks on listening surveillance warrants, and as a move to pressure Lynn into action using the 60 Minutes’ current affairs program takes longer than expected, when the start of the episode is significantly delayed by another program.
On the other hand, Bowles sets out to portray the remote Wonnangatta Valley as a mysterious and dangerous place with a history of unsolved murders and disappearances. In fact, the entire part one of her book is used to recount the 1917 murders of Jim Barclay and John Bamford, and the disappearance of David Prideaux (2011), Conrad Whitlock (2017) and Niels Becker(2019).
“Only the valley know where they are,” Bowles writes, before fully addressing the Hill/Clay story.
What the reader doesn’t expect in comparing these two books are the two entirely different scenarios painted by the authors surrounding the installation of listening devices in Lynn’s Caroline Springs home.
In Haddrick’s version, police obtain a warrant but are stymied by Victoria’s Covid lockdowns that saw Lynn and his family constantly at home, leaving police unable to place the listening devices in the normal manner. With time passing and the initial warrant deadline approaching, police got permission for a ‘hot install’, entering the house in the dead of the night to place the devices while Lynn’s son played video games and other members of the family slept.
In her version, Bowles writes: “…posing as gas technicians, undercover police visited several houses in the street, including Lynn’s, saying they were looking for a gas leak.
“They got lucky. Lynn was on his way out and did not want to wait. ‘Just pull the front door shut behind you,’ he told them. They sprang into action, installed the bugs and left.”
The reader has no way of knowing which way it actually happened.
Despite this contradiction, and differences in how they have structured their books, both authors have written comprehensive, highly readable versions of the Wonnangatta Valley camping trip that resulted in the tragic deaths of Pakenham’s Carol Clay and Drouin’s Russell Hill, and the subsequent investigation and trial of Greg Lynn.
Both seem to have inside contacts and access to original material to give their books credibility. Bowles made several visits to the locations in the course of her research and quoted various articles published in the Pakenham-Berwick Gazette.
Both Haddrick and Bowles include credited photographs of Carol Clay taken by and originally published in this paper.
Unfortunately, as a Gippslander who has camped and travelled extensively in the High Country over the years, there are a couple of instances in Bowles’ book that jar for this journalist.
On page 75 she quotes Hill’s shortwave radio friend, Rob Ashlin, as saying, “I told him to take the High Plains Road, coming out near Swiss Creek”, instead of Swifts Creek.
And on page 84, Bowles describes Lynn’s journey home on the day after the couple’s disappearance, writing, “He skirted the town (Dargo), crossed the Wonnangatta bridge and came out lower down, around Kingswall”.
The area, named for the Kingwill family, is known variously as Kingswill, Kingwill and even Kingwell Bridge, but never Kingswall.
In the Dead of the Night, The gripping pursuit of the Wonnangatta Valley murderer, pilot Greg Lynn, by Greg Haddrick, published 2024 by Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW.
Last Man Standing, Greg Lynn – Jetstar pilot and the Wonnangatta mystery, by Robin Bowles, published 2024 by Lake Press, Hawthorn, Vic.
