Friends of Russell Hill have told Victoria's Supreme Court they were worried when he failed to appear on a regular evening radio call in the days after he was allegedly murdered by a former airline captain.
Greg Lynn, 57, is on trial for the murder of Mr Hill and his lover Carol Clay in the remote Wonnangatta Valley in March 2020. He has pleaded not guilty.
The court has heard Mr Hill had a hobby interest in amateur high-frequency radio and would speak regularly with a group of friends most evenings, especially when he was out camping.
On Friday, the president of the radio group, Robin Ashlin, told the jury that when Mr Hill failed to join radio calls on consecutive evenings, he told Mr Hill's wife to call the police.
In the lead up to Mr Hill's disappearance, the court heard he had spoken to his friends on the nightly 6pm radio call, and nothing had seemed untoward.
Mr Ashlin told the court Mr Hill sounded as "happy as a pig in sh*t" when he spoke to his friends via high-frequency radio from the Wonnangatta Valley at the regular time on Friday, March 20, 2020.
"He was in the valley … he just loves the place … it means a lot to him," Mr Ashlin told the court.
"He's probably been there more than anyone."
Mr Ashlin, a Gippsland business owner who shared a friendship with Mr Hill for more than 25 years, told the court he himself had been camping with Mr Hill at Bucks Camp before, at the spot where prosecutors allege his friend was murdered.
He said Mr Hill had an appreciation of the Wonnangatta Valley area in part because he had been involved in building tracks there during his work as a logger.
He described his friend as a "workaholic" who "kept a lot of stuff to himself," noting he was also a "pretty fit lad for his age".
Mr Ashlin told the court that the radio call on March 20, 2020 — the night prosecutors allege Mr Hill was murdered — was the last time he spoke to his friend.
"He couldn't have been happier … when he signed off as VK3-VZP, Russell Hill, Wonnangatta station," he said.
"And those were the last words he spoke to me."
Another radio friend, retired traffic controller George Kozlowski, agreed that Mr Hill had seemed "normal" when he heard him speaking on the radio from Wonnangatta in the days before his death.
"When Russell spoke, he spoke slowly and it was just Russell as I knew him," Mr Kozlowski told the court.
Prosecutors allege Mr Lynn killed Mr Hill and shot Mrs Clay in the head, possibly following a dispute over a drone, at Bucks Camp on the evening of March 20, 2020.
They allege he then burnt their campsite and then moved, and later burned, the couple's bodies, the court heard earlier this week.
Defence lawyers for Mr Lynn have told the court he did contaminate evidence but that the killings were accidental and occurred after two separate struggles for control of a gun and a knife.
Mr Hill was private about his 'affair' with Carol Clay, court hears
Friends of Mr Hill also told the Victorian Supreme Court they were surprised to hear he was in a relationship with a woman, Carol Clay, who was not his wife.
The court has previously heard the pair were in a "loving and caring" relationship that had lasted at least 14 years.
Mr Ashlin told the court how in early 2019 he was intending to meet a different radio friend at a camping spot in Gippsland and inadvertently met Mrs Clay for the first time.
"When we arrived, unbeknownst to us, here's Russell and Carol," he said.
In his statement to the court, he agreed he had written that "he nearly fell to the floor" when he learnt of the extent of the relationship.
"It was something about Russell I'd never even thought of," Mr Ashlin told the jury.
Mr Ashlin told the court Mr Hill had initially introduced Ms Clay to him as a "friend" but he was not convinced.
"You can look at people and the way they look at each other … blind Freddy can work out whether it's a friend or a relationship might be there," he said.
Mr Ashlin told the court he later found out that Mr Hill and Ms Clay were "childhood sweethearts" and that Ms Clay had been "around and on the scene for 20 years".
Another of Mr Hill's radio friends, James Frances, told the court he was introduced to Ms Clay when Mr Hill brought her on a camping trip, and eventually got to know her quite well.
"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 had drifted apart," he told the court.
The trial continues.
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