VALE JOHN EDWIN BRYANT

A keen hound hunter with the Edebohls and Scott Hound crew, John was known to many in the ADA as the Master of Ceremonies of choice for hunter's dinners and for major celebrations, such as the Association’s Fortieth Anniversary Dinner in 2009.

Regular readers of Australian Deer might also remember John from a special ANZAC day feature in the March/April edition (Vol 45 No2) in 2000.

John Bryant was just 19 years old when he enlisted for National Service in 1967. Within eight months, he was in Vietnam with the third battalion – seeing active duty in the battle of Coral Balmoral in 1968, which included 26 days of fighting. Like so many of his comrades, John returned home to an Australia that wanted to forget his service and with health effects, both physical and mental, that he would carry with him for the rest of his life.

In the mid-1990s, with his physical health failing, John went to Dargo with a mate to spend some time in the bush with a hound hunting crew. Every aspect of hound hunting was restorative for John – the camaraderie, the self-sufficiency, the challenge and the simple salve of time in nature. John quickly became a part of the deer hunting community; his quick wit, larrikin charm and natural polish soon made him the MC of choice for hunters' dinners and functions.

John moved from southeastern Melbourne to Stratford to be closer to the bush and lived there happily on his small acreage for the past quarter of a century.

John also returned to Vietnam, where he travelled regularly, not just confronting his own ghosts but working tirelessly with his former enemies towards a profound reconciliation. Over the past five years, John dedicated his life…and his life savings…to the search for a B52 crater at the Balmoral battle site that had served as a mass, makeshift grave. On April 1 this year, John’s efforts saw the discovery of 20 North Vietnamese soldiers whose families have now been able to lay them to rest, more than half a century after they left their homes.

John’s friend Ross Garlick read the following poem at his funeral service