They say that opposites attract each other which may well be the reason why Doug Fry and I became such fast friends, a friendship that spanned sixty years, from the year of my arrival in Australia in 1965 to his death in January 2026.
He was the very antithesis of me. Whereas I was always mercurial and constantly on the look-out for change, Doug was a public servant who had the one job all his life, Examiner of Patents at the Patents Office, lived in the one town, Canberra, for all his working life, and was only married to the one wife, wonderful Jung Hee, for fifty-five years, my own score was fifty, forty-five, and two, in the same order (the fifty and forty-five are approximate numbers only, but the two is, so far, fixed.)
Where our interests coincided was the Youth Hostels Association. I had been a keen Youthhosteller in Germany, and when I heard that there was a Youth Hostels Association active in Canberra, I joined up, which is how I met Doug. He was then the driving force behind converting a small shearer's hut near Angle Crossing into a modest youth hostel.
I had been in Australia for just a few months and owned no more than the clothes I stood up in at a time when a car was 95% of a young man's personality. With just 5% personality and a still thick German accent I never stood a chance with the girls, and so, instead of partying and drinking, I helped Doug over many weekends to transport to the new youth hostel the required beds and mattresses and tables and chairs, tied to the roofrack of his car, the same car in the photo below which he sent me much later after I had already moved to New Guinea, and in which he proudly posed beside his later wife, the Korean Jung Hee.
While I continued to travel the world, moving from one job to the next, never looking farther ahead than the end of my nose, Doug remained in Canberra and in the same job, married Jung Hee (which he must've done shortly after I moved to New Guinea in 1970), had two lovely daughters, Susan and Amanda, but we met again each time I had a chance to revisit Canberra. Then, in 1985, I finally returned to Canberra in a last-ditch effort to put down roots, and I remember joining Doug most weekends in his favourite activity, Orienteering, also known as 'cunning running'.
But there was never anything cunning about Doug's friendship. He and Jung Hee always welcomed me with open arms, and over kimchi, my favourite Korean side dish which reminded me of German sauerkraut, we reminisced about those almost forgotten Youth Hostelling days.
The last time we met was in 2024 - click here - when this one-time marathon runner had already been confined to sitting in a wheelchair. I felt my tears welling up but hid them behind a smiling face. I promised to visit again, but my own travelling days were coming to an end and I never returned to Canberra before one of his daughters phoned in early January 2026 to let me know that his funeral had already taken place.
My subsequent internet search revealed that he was the son of quite a distinguished Australian, Sir William Fry, who even had a nature reserve in Victoria named after him - click here. On the website, his father is described as an "Australian Everyman". I like to think that this would also be a very fitting description of my friend. Rest in Peace, Doug.
