Columnist HUGH SELBY can’t fathom why his best friend took off without a word of farewell…

What’s a man to do when his best friend just ups and leaves without so much as an excuse me or see you later or best wishes?

Last time we met there were no dark clouds on the horizon, nothing in the melting pot called unresolved grievances, no niggles or concerns, but rather talk of how he might take the missus away to someplace she’d like, and where it was easy enough to move around, now that her ability to be a keen, healthy golfer had left her. Yes, that was the main topic, really upbeat.

We shied away, as usual, from mentioning their post-retirement plans of going here, there and everywhere. They had the means. By god, they’d worked hard enough, given more than enough of themselves to grateful patients, committees and volunteer activities. What they didn’t have was the physical health to do it.

Took me back to a time when the kids were still small, when I’d walked around the corner to their place after dark one night, and they told me she’d been misdiagnosed by a specialist. It wasn’t too late, but one could draw a bright line of how it affected her, his, and their family life over the following decades.

By then we’d been best mates for more than 20 years, a friendship built on outdoor activities that started when we were just nine in a shed on a Saturday arvo at the back of a public primary school.  

We walked, we camped (too often in the rain), we canoed, we rock climbed (on the famous Three Sisters after dark), we caved, we spent a bit of time together in Japan.

My school years were happy from Friday arvo to Sunday night, and during the holidays. That’s when we’d be doing the things that we wanted to remember.

We stayed away from each other on the really important days of our lives – our weddings and the birth of our children – because we were in far apart places. I sent him a telegram for his wedding. I’d hoped to be his best man.

But then we skied, a week together with friends every year for decades. These were the years before talk of climate change, and before snow guns, when we spent the days picking the way among the rocks and tree roots, swearing at our stupidity for paying for such piss-poor conditions.

One year, before the tollways, there was a petrol strike. We had drums of petrol in the back of his car which had a tow bar too. The car was packed to the gills. As he drove the tow bar would strike the road pavement and there would be a shower of sparks.

I could talk about his Mini 850 with an upturned canoe, much longer than the car, on the roof so that we sped along dirt roads as though the whole contraption was a pseudo-hovercraft. I could, but I won’t. We lived to tell the tale.

There were three of us actually, lifers. I met Dave before he did. It was at Sunday school and that morning was about Albert Schweitzer (the doctor who established a clinic in colonised Africa). Funnily enough I don’t remember any mention of his famous quote: “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. “ 

I wish they’d told me. I had to learn it the hard way.

Then they were at high school together and later car pooling from our side of Sydney to their university on the other side. Dave being Dave meant that our little runt of a friend sometimes had a hard time.

Three very different careers, lifestyles, and challenges to be faced and won. But always ready and willing to use what we had to help the others uncritically and unreservedly.

Seems like yesterday that we three walked the beach sands and sat beside the shimmering lake at Tuross, chased each other down the piste at local and Japanese snow resorts – with me always watching his back (he was a beautiful skier, fast too), barbecues above Lake Jindabyne and other places, and ribbed each other from morning to night about everything and nothing at all.

That was our friendship, an interlocking of three lives, with no signs that there’d be a walk out without so much as a grunt or an upraised finger.

Mind you, I am not the only one with a grievance. His partner of 50 years was expecting the usual, that he’d come in with a pot of fresh tea and something to say about the lake outside, the weather and the plan for today.

When he didn’t come on time, or at all, she made her way with difficulty to his room. When she spoke he didn’t answer, didn’t even try to offer an excuse for his tardiness.

Mate, there’s a time and a place for everything and being rude and indifferent to your lifelong partner first thing in the morning, and your best friends of 60 years plus, is a bit much.

So much that I really don’t know how I can speak at your funeral. Not yet. That’s asking much too much.

Dr Brian Morton AM, born October 3, 1949 – died July 4, 2025. He was 75.