It was a hand-made wooden cross, which is to be placed high up on Scarface Mountain in honor of Australian Army Capt. Paul McKay, 31, from Adelaide, who died by suicide by hypothermia on the mountain on New Years Eve in 2013.

Stevens’ act is the latest link in a chain connecting the small town of Saranac Lake with the continent of Australia, a chain which includes McKay’s family, members of the Australian military and numerous locals here. The chain was forged by McKay’s fatal decision in the last hours of 2013. The chain was borne out of pain, but has transformed into a comfort, a tradition and a path forward for McKay’s family, locals and Aussie military who were impacted by his death.

Ever since McKay’s death, village officials here have recognized Anzac Day, the Australian equivalent of Memorial Day or Veterans Day in the U.S. Each year, representatives from the Australian military hike with village officials up near the summit of Scarface Mountain on April 25. They visit a memorial left for McKay hidden off the trail in the woods, marking where he died and where his ashes were spread.

For the past two years, Stevens has been stationed with his family at the Australian embassy in Washington D.C. and has been the representative sent here for the annual ceremony and climb up Scarface. He said doing this hike for the past two years — especially with Saranac Lake Village Mayor Jimmy Williams, a veteran of the U.S. Navy himself — has been impactful.

The Stevens family, from left, Mathew, Jacob, Lilly and Ally, from Australia, got to experience a white Christmas for the first time in their lives in Saranac Lake. (Provided photo — Ally Stevens)

He is returning to his home country on Jan. 18. Before they left, though, he and his family wanted to see a white Christmas for the first time.

They felt there was no other place they’d rather do it than in Saranac Lake. The town means a lot to them. Stevens said traveling here to remember and honor McKay’s life on behalf of his country has made a bond and formed friendships that will never leave him. He did not expect to make such deep and personal connections as he did here in Saranac Lake, but few places in the world have captured a part of his heart and soul like Saranac Lake has.

McKay’s death was the trigger event that brought Stevens here. Now he’s got his own connections, though he never forgets McKay. He agrees with McKay’s mother, Angela McKay, that Paul chose a beautiful town as a resting place.

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A new cross

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Last April, when Stevens hiked up to see McKay’s cairn, the cross marking the location had been damaged by the weather. It is made of two sticks tied together with rope and Stevens had to retie it.

Angela, of Adelaide, always asks for updates on her son’s memorial. She’s concerned with how its doing. Stevens wanted to make a more durable marker, and after getting Angela’s blessing, hand-crafted a new cross of white oak, which he gifted to Williams to place on the mountain at the annual pilgrimage next April.

Angela said this was humbling. She’s never met Stevens, but said she feels connected with him.

The cross has the Australian Army rising sun badge in the middle, cut from a challenge coin. On either arm are plaques. One has McKay’s name, birth date and date of death. Stevens said he thought about what should go on the other for a while. He wanted it to be personal and meaningful. None of the “stereotypical passages” seemed right. As he read articles and listened to songs about McKay’s death, he remunerated over the words for a long time.

Suddenly, he said the words came to him, a message from one soldier to another: “Rest easy now mate. You fought with all you had. And you left footprints in your wake.”

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A light

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Paul’s death established many meaningful connections. The people forming these connections are working to keep awareness of mental health high.

“The thing that, for our family, which we always wished was that Paul’s death might assist, might help, might even inspire other people who have mental health issues to say, ‘Look, I need to get them addressed … I don’t want to become another casualty,'” Angela said.

John Bale, the CEO and co-founder of the veteran suicide organization Soldier On, told her at the time that McKay’s death made the Australian military’s need to address suicide clear. He said that the issue had been previously ignored.

She hopes it shone a light on a taboo topic.

Many people struggle with thoughts of suicide, Stevens said — veterans, civilians, children. The worst outcome, someone taking their own lives, has a dramatic impact on those left behind, he added — dozens to hundreds of people.

Talking about suicide is a way to let people know the consequences of that single action, he said.

“Before the decision is made to take that action, think about the transference of pain that that takes,” Stevens said. “The cross you bear might be terrible. But the question is, is it better you bear it than your loved ones? That’s the question anyone in that situation should ask themselves.”

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Connecting

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Angela said her son was a quiet and thoughtful man. He loved theater, sports, painting, travel and history. When soldiers got time off, while others would relax or have fun, he visited historic battle sites. When she and her late husband John learned Paul had died in Saranac Lake, they had to get out an atlas to locate it. She still doesn’t know why he chose to die in Saranac Lake, but over the years, she’s repeatedly said he chose a special place.

Clyde Rabideau, who was the village mayor at the time, made a post on Facebook which gained a major response globally.

“In the days after he died, I think it was going online and reading those posts from people around the world that kept John and I sane,” Angela said.

A friend of Paul’s asked Rabideau to place a poppy at his memorial cairn on Anzac Day. Rabideau was recovering from a surgery, but he made the hike up the mountain on crutches and held the first Anzac Day commemoration in Saranac Lake.

Angela said to see images of the two country’s flags flying 10,500 miles away on Anzac Day in honor of her son was amazing. She’s just as amazed that, more than a decade later, it is still a tradition Saranac Lake keeps.

“It has forged a wonderful link between this small community and people in Australia,” Angela said.

Saranac Laker Nancy LaBombard got in contact with the McKay family after Paul was found. When Angela and John came here to spread Paul’s ashes on the mountain six months after his death, LaBombard and her husband Richard took them out on a boat on Lake Flower, where they could see Scarface Mountain from the water.

They’ve remained in touch over the years. Angela said Nancy is “wonderfully kind.”

In 2018, when Richard was gathering support for Nancy to be named as the queen of the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival, he asked the McKays for a letter of support, and Nancy was crowned.

“Here, of course, we found it an absolute hoot that a country that’s a republic has a king and a queen,” Angela said.

When Australians, friends of Paul’s, visit, they sometimes stay with people here, and become friends or part of each other’s families. Angela has heard from Vietnam veterans here who say they salute Scarface Mountain every morning to honor Paul.

Angela said it is good to talk about suicide. Discussing it in the open, instead of it being a taboo is helpful, she believes.

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Echoes and footprints

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Stevens said his message to Paul is to say that Paul can rest because he gave everything he had. In his last message to his parents, Paul said he was “fighting an unwinnable battle.”

He had returned from Afghanistan two years prior to his death and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He was a battle captain at a command center, making decisions in high-intensity situations.

Soliders he was stationed with say he was often uncertain of the choices he made. After a fatal attack on Oct. 29, 2011, in which 13 Australian soldiers and their interpreters were killed or wounded, he blamed himself, though other soldiers said there was nothing he could have done to change the outcome.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has found that male Australian veterans are 27% more likely to die by suicide than civilian Australian males, and that female Australian veterans are 107% more likely to die by suicide than civilian Australian females.

During the war in Afghanistan, 41 Australian soldiers died in combat. Since the war started in 2001, more than 1,273 Australian veterans have died by suicide.

These numbers are small compared to the U.S., Stevens said, but Australia has 89,000 military personnel to America’s 2.8 million. One death impacts a lot of people. They are a close-knit group and are all just a couple of degrees of separation from each other.

Stevens feels he’s walked in Paul’s footprints. Their paths never crossed, but they worked with the same people, both served in Afghanistan and were both in the same unit at different times.

“Paul’s mates were my mates,” Stevens said.

They know each other almost by surrogate. He feels they’ve walked side-by-side and he said he understands the “weird dichotomy” of mental health battles.

“When you’re battling with certain demons, you don’t want to die, but you’re really tired of living,” Stevens said.

Angela said Paul wanted to disappear, but he became possibly the most publicized Australian military suicide victim, shedding new light on the issue.

Stevens said he’ll make sure to “pass the torch” to his replacement at the embassy and make sure they know the importance of Saranac Lake’s Anzac Day. He emphasized that it is the village that commemorates the day. The Australian military just supports it.

“This town commemorating Anzac Day is one of the very few towns in the United States that does so,” Stevens said.

Even as someone who works at the Australian embassy, he can’t name any others that do it on their own. Places like Washington D.C., New York City and Hawaii, where there are Australian consulates or embassies do it, but none are as unique as Saranac Lake’s, he said.

Most of Australia never gets a white Christmas. The continent gets snow in the winter, but since the southern hemisphere’s seasons are on an opposite timeline as here, Christmas lands in summer and temperatures there were in the 80s this year.

Stevens said his family has never seen snow on this scale, much less seen daily life going on throughout it. Stepping out on a frozen lake was mindblowing.

Stevens and his wife Ally homeschool their children Jacob, 14 and Lilly, 11, and said it was a great learning experience for weather and science. They saw ice crystals growing on the lakes based on how the wind blows, talked about how temperature, snowfall and humidity interact, and explained how snow can actually create warmth.

Angela said she hopes to visit Saranac Lake for Anzac Day sometime, possibly in 2026.