Broken love pact at centre of missing campers’ long-time affair

Russell Hill and Carol Clay had a plan to leave their partners and rekindle a childhood love story, but the retired logger reneged on the deal and stayed with his wife.

A Supreme Court jury has been given the first detailed insight into the long-term affair between the pair as a friend recounted calling Hill’s wife when he failed to show up to a camping trip as planned.

Russell Hill and Carol Clay.Credit: The Age

Amateur radio club member Robin “Robbie” Ashlin said he was shocked to learn his 74-year-old mate was having an affair and became worried that if the wives of other club members found out, they’d think the other men were doing the same.

Ashlin, an auto glazier from Bairnsdale, knew Hill for nearly 30 years. The logger would bring his bulldozers out of the High Country in the winter to get their broken windows fixed, which is how the two met.

Ashlin said the pair had realised they shared an interest in amateur radio and developed a friendship which included 6pm nightly catch-ups with the radio group that was later formed.

Hill moved to Drouin with his wife, but would continue to visit Ashlin when he transported cut timber to Bairnsdale.

Gregory Lynn has pleaded not guilty to murdering Russell Hill and Carol Clay.Credit: Facebook

But Ashlin said he only became aware of Clay’s relationship with his friend during a camping trip in 2019, when he arrived to find her there.

“Even though I was told Carol was a friend, blind Freddy could see how they looked at each other,” Ashlin told the jury.

In late March 2020, Ashlin and the group arranged to meet in the Wonnangatta Valley and Hill pledged to join them.

When he failed to show up between March 21 and 23, Ashlin said he called Hill’s wife, Robyn, to inquire as to his whereabouts.

It was during that phone call, he told the jury, that he learnt the full extent of Hill and Clay’s relationship.

“[Robyn Hill] told me that Carol had been on the scene, or around, for over 20 years. That is when I admitted to her that yes, I did meet Carol,” Ashlin said.

The president of the radio group said he was shocked by this, but quickly learnt Hill and Clay, 73, had been childhood sweethearts who went on to marry other people.

Ashlin explained that Clay had left her second husband to be with Hill, but his friend had backed out of a plan to do the same.

Russell Hill’s Toyota Landcruiser and the burnt campsite at Bucks Camp.Credit: Victoria Police

Ashlin said he told Hill’s wife they should call the police about his disappearance.

Airline pilot Gregory Lynn, 57, is on trial after pleading not guilty to murdering Clay and Hill on March 20, 2020.

Lynn’s legal team told the jury both Hill and Clay died accidentally, while the prosecution alleges the hunter killed the pair with murderous intent.

The couple’s campsite, including Hill’s white Toyota ute, was later torched, and their bodies allegedly bundled into Lynn’s box trailer and driven out of the valley.

Hill and Clay’s burnt remains were later found in the remote Union Spur Track, near the small township of Dargo.

Retired electronics engineer James Patrick Francis said he also met Hill through amateur radio and went on a camping trip with him to Timbarra in East Gippsland.

Francis said Hill called to ask if it was OK that he brought a woman along who wasn’t his wife.

“He arrived with Carol. Russell introduced us, I think, and I subsequently came to know Carol quite well,” he said.

“What they told me around our many campfire chats is they had met originally as teenagers and had had a romantic relationship as teenagers. But then they drifted apart. Interestingly, neither of them could remember why.

“They’d gone their separate ways and married other people.

“My undertaking was that Carol was a family friend, pretty much throughout the life from teenage times, and also at some point later on a romantic relationship developed with Russell.”

On Friday, the jury was also told more about Hill’s life as a younger man.

Ashlin said Hill deeply loved the Wonnangatta Valley and had helped build the Zeka Spur Track with a bulldozer as part of his job.

He said while Hill was a secretive man, he didn’t mind sharing the valley with others.

“He knew every nook and cranny around the joint. They were campfire stories. He loved it,” Ashlin said.

“He was as happy as a pig in shit [when he was there].

“He loved the valley, and he did not mind sharing it with anybody.”

The trial continues.

A new podcast from 9News, The Age and 9Podcasts will follow the court case as it unfolds. The Missing Campers Trial is the first podcast to follow a jury trial in real time in Victoria. It’s presented by Nine reporter Penelope Liersch and Age reporter Erin Pearson.