I think Garry Barden would have been one of my favourite people if I’d met him. Good with his hands, creative and optimistic, fond of a laugh and a yarn, these are the sorts of people we should fill our lives with. Anyone who is a good father and a good worker is a good person, but all the other qualities I’ve heard about in the past 24 hours make Garry special indeed.

I’ve checked out some of his art at steelife.com.au and it’s remarkable. One of the things that has always fascinated me about sculptors is that they see order in the chaos of a lump of wood or stone or even a bucket of bolts. They manage to bring forth what is beautiful from what is ordinary and it makes life worth living.

Garry also loved to travel and explore. It’s one thing to fly to a city, go on tours and see shows, but it’s something else altogether to walk in the footsteps of those who’ve gone before us. 

When I met solo walker Terra Lalirra earlier this year, I asked her what Australia sounded like and what it smelt like because I can’t get those things from a photograph or a plane at 30,000 feet.

I reckon Garry could have told me what it feels like to stand in the shadows of the mountains at Everest Base Camp. Or what the ancient city of Macchu Pichu sounds and smells like. I wonder whether the ghosts of fallen soldiers haunt the tracks of Sumatra and if they whisper in the ears of adventurers.

Some people think of journalists as feeding on misery and tragedy but that’s not true. We’re there to be the eyes and ears (and noses sometimes) of the readers, both now and into the future. If I do my job right, you get a sense of who people are, what they believe in, what was going on at a particular place and time.

It’s a great job for that but also a hard one, because we cannot come face to face with tragedy and pain and walk away unscarred. Even our fiercest soldiers sometimes fall victim to stress and trauma and they are made of far sterner stuff than I.

I would have loved to spend time with Garry Barden and ask him all of the questions above and more. To hear his stories and communicate in the way human beings always have, over food and fire.

-STEPHEN MUDD