Henry Drew was a family man who shared his life with his wife, Jenny, his three sons, Barry, Lawrence, and Phillip, and also his dog Moja (thumbnail), whose name means 'One' in Swahili. Henry lived a full life in Africa and England before settling in Australia, where he was an agricultural advisor. He died in a vehicle accident, which Moja survived and remained at Henry's side.

When Henry did not return as expected from a Thursday 06 Aug. '09 business trip to Gympie, Queensland, he was listed as missing on Friday. There were no witnesses reporting the accident, but on Saturday a woman heard a dog barking on the Bruce Highway at Curra, and upon investigation found Henry's crashed utility vehicle hidden down an embankment with man and dog.

We offer our condolences for their loss to Henry Drew's family and friends..

Moja and Henry Drew join a tradition of dogs who have remained with their humans after death. In 1805, Charles Gough died from a fall or exposure on Helvellyn, a mountain in the English Lake District. Gough's dog Foxy was discovered beside the body several months later.

The incident caught the imagination of the Romantic Movement, and became the subject for at least two poems and two paintings. William Wordsworth ('Fidelity') and Walter Scott ('Helvellyn') climbed the mountain together — with Humphrey Davy, whose thoughts on the incident we were unable to discover — and each produced a poem. Edwin Landseer ('Attachment') and Francis Danby ('Precipice') used a visual medium to each produce a painting.

Those artistic works have not all and always been recognized as admirable, although they seem to have passed the longevity test. Even at the time of their first publication or display, the works had their detractors. Modern interest has been historical rather than appreciative. In 1932, Scott's biographer S. Fowler Wright wrote acidily:

"Scott made the mistake here that he and Wordsworth made together at a later day. A man died on Helvellyn, and a dog was found long afterwards watching beside his skeleton. The subject was utterly unsuitable for a poem, because anything worth saying about it could be said in a single stanza. They both tried, and they both failed. They wrote the kinds of verse which were natural to either when he had nothing to say. Scott climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn, and Wordsworth asked anxiously, What is the creature doing here? Neither poem is worth reading, and, had they been the work of unknown authors, neither would have been remembered for a week. They are not so much examples of how not to do it, as what not to attempt to do."