Farewell Bob McMahon

Inside Tasmania was saddened at the news of Bob McMahons early death. We worked with Bob on the campaign against Gunns pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. A campaign that went on for 8 years and appears to have no end point. In the beginning our opponents were the governments of Australia and Tasmania, the two major parties, Tasmania's biggest company, the media, unions and business groups. It seemed a hopeless cause. We were mostly middle aged residents who knew Gunns couldn't give a shit about ruining our lives and were using a corrupt political system to get what they wanted. We needed somebody who not only said 'this is wrong' but was prepared to take them on. Bob was that person. He coalesced opposition to the pulp mill in the Tamar Valley through the community group TAP. TAP brought scientists to Tasmania and networked, protested and agitated using every method we could to prove the government and Gunns were wrong. Bob had visited Chile and saw first hand the ecological destruction caused by the Valdivia pulp mill. He knew the same would happen to the Tamar Valley and Bass Strait. The full story of the struggle against Gunns attempt to build the worlds largest pulp mill in Tasmania has not yet been told. Opposition against the mill splintered and was used by environment groups to bargain with the government over saving forests. This is still an extremely contentious issue in Tasmania. Bob realised that opposing a pulp mill in our back yard was meaningless because the same conditions applied everywhere else in Tasmania. Conditions such as the dumping of millions of tonnes of toxic waste into the Bass Strait fishery and the destruction of most of Northern Tasmania's landscape with sterile, chemically dependent tree plantations. Unbelievably the Greens party supports this monoculture insanity.  Politicians from both sides used these plantations to help their mates avoid paying tax. It was this hypocrisy that Bob reacted to so strongly and why he was so fiercely independent. He was no political opportunist by any stretch, and if you look at the picture to the left of Bob climbing Ruwenzori on the Ben Lomond plateau you may understand that 'environment' was not just a concept for Bob but an integral part of his being. Bob commanded respect because of his fearlessness and good nature. It was a pleasure to have Bob as a leader in our time of strife. Bob's book 'Memory of a Journey' is a climbers guide to the dolerite walls of the Ben Lomond plateau. Bob did many of these climbs for the first time, named them and rated them. It is a definitive book on climbing and it's also a heavy book because Bob had it printed on a mixture of clay and paper. He also wrote 'Hollow Lands' about his adventures in places like Iceland. Bob has made his last climb and symbolically it's an ascent into cloud. We miss you Bob but your work must go on.