Bob McMahon
Passionate, creative, opinionated, rogue, historian, climber, walker, wine-lover, teacher, grandfather, activist, writer – are all words that could be used to describe Tasmanian Robert McMahon. Bob lives in the Tamar Valley where he works as an outdoor instructor, but he is also the spokesperson for TAP into a Better Tasmania, a community-based organisation that was formed in response to the proposal to build Gunns’ controversial pulp mill. An avid reader and writer, Bob approaches life with the kind of zest that you can only admire. His latest project is a walk around the coast of Tasmania, a journey he is about 1200 kilometres into. He was recently in Melbourne for a bit of R & R (an ACDC concert and some reading in the parks), so we strong-armed him for a few words of wisdom.
Interview and images Ross Taylor
I was dragged up in Tassie. I think I clambered ashore in 1950. My oldest brother is English, but the all rest of us – the other seven boys – were born in Tassie.
What formed me, as far my love for the outdoors, was my first 15 years in a little town called Stanley in the far northwest of Tassie – that little peninsula sticking out into the Bass Strait. The big cliffs of the Nut were our playground, surrounded by the wind and the sea. Wildness was in my blood from the very first.
Back then, no one had cars or telephones or television sets. I remember being taken for a drive along the north coast of Tasmania. I was probably 11, and that was my first sighting of mountains, the snow-covered Western Tiers. It had this electrifying effect on me. I had not been exposed to anything like that before in my life. I was hooked.
When we shifted out of Stanley to Devonport. We would hitchhike out to Cradle on a Friday night, just my mate and me (Michael McHugh), and we would climb some mountains and then hitchhike back again on Sunday. One night, when it was snowing like mad, we were shuffling along in our Yakka Can’t Tear ‘Ems and we got picked up by some hunters. They sat us up on the trailer on top of the dog cage – leaving us holding on in this raging blizzard as we were hurling along the gravel road. It was a good laugh.
I have poked around Iceland and I’ve been down around Tierra del Fuego, on a charter yacht through the Beagle Channel and up all the fjords and, you know this sounds a bit funny, but I think I know what wilderness is – I think I’ve looked it in the face. It was a moment in one of those isolated fjords, tucked in behind Mt Darwin. We’d moored the yacht – you run these lines ashore so that they wild weather doesn’t take you – and at the end of the day this grey fox came down to the water’s edge to look at us. I am thinking ‘This fox has never seen a human before’. At that moment, as I looked at the fox, I thought, ‘I know what wilderness is’.
The process of destruction is so rapid in Tasmania. And it’s not just the obvious – the chopping down of forest – it’s also the commercialisation of anything to do with wilderness. I work with Tasmanian Expeditions, so I am part of this business. There is wilderness still in Tasmania – not in the macro sense but more in the micro sense. We haven’t got vast, great tracts of emptiness left in the world and we haven’t got vast tracts left in Tasmania, but having said that there are still areas in Tasmania that have probably never seen the tread of human feet, even the original inhabitants. All the unknown cliffs we discovered, that was wilderness to me – the micro sense of wilderness.
It wasn’t my love of the wilderness that got me involved with the Gunns battle, it was my sense of injustice. The group we formed is a big community group, not an environmental group. What we saw happening was political corruption, manifested in socio-economic injustice, which was giving a monopoly to one company, granting them all the resources, allowing them to liquidate the resources in this generation – probably within a decade – which is our forest resource. Plus everything that has gone along with that: the debauching of parliament, the destruction of due process, the lying and the thieving that has gone on – I just couldn’t stand it. We just had to organise ourselves. It has been very powerful for the community. Tassie is chock-a-block full of alternative democracies. There are groups of people doing this stuff everywhere because democracy has failed. A lot of Tasmanians are political atheists, there are some who will always be rusted-on Greens, but I have become very much a political atheist. The power rests with the community as far as I am concerned.
What the government encouraged and then accepted from Gunns was a benefits-only study – the cost of the impacts or inputs were not assessed. When I put this point to the treasurer of Tasmania, I said that’s why Gunns can’t get the finance.
‘How do you mean?’ he said.
‘Why do you think ANZ wouldn’t touch this project?’ I replied.
‘You’d know better than me’, was his response.
You can’t possibly finance a business that has only looked at the benefits. The other three major Australian banks followed the ANZ – they couldn’t get far enough away from this Gunns’ project, and a whole bunch of financial institutions around the world have followed suit.
The inspiration for the walk around the coastline of Tasmania occurred one night when we were bivouacked out in the open up on Mt Parsons, on the Hazards (Freycinet National Park). We were looking down across Flowstone Wall. It was a full moon, the sea looked like a piece of velvet and those wonderful whipped toffee slabs dropping – what would it be – 500 metres into the sea? I just loved that freedom and I thought ‘I don’t ever want this to stop’. I have done about 1200 kilometres, up the east coast from Freycinet, across the north coast, heading down the west coast to Temma. Then the pulp mill intervened and that has consumed five years of my life. But I am about to start again in a couple of weeks.
The next stretch from Temma to Strahan is not too difficult, it is still a semi-civilised part of the world – if you can call the west coast of Tasmania and its inhabitants civilised and get away with it. The problem with the west coast, north of Strahan, is that you are in serious danger of being run over on the beach by ATVs, four-wheel drives and dickheads on trail bikes. It’s after Strahan, of course, down that incredible coastline, that things get really quite challenging. Large sections of it have been walked, but I am sure some bits probably haven’t – by white men. The stretch down from Macquarie Harbour to Port Davey is 30-days straight. The coastline of Tasmania is amazingly empty.
I taught until 1987. We always had a climbing group every Wednesday afternoon, but after a couple of years I did two colleges and two afternoons climbing. When I left teaching in 1987 I did four years of tree surgery, starting my own business. Since 1991 though, I have been teaching rockclimbing. I love the people, they are great, so appreciative. School groups are great because you are getting kids that volunteered to do it, the tourists who do it through Tasmanian Expeditions are fantastic as well. Anything that gets people outdoors is great. It’s about life. If we haven’t got a connection with nature, then it’s the end of civilisation as far as I am concerned.
There is nothing more tragic than when we forget our past – when collective amnesia sets in. In other words you can’t learn if you can’t remember. It’s so important to be meticulous in recording things, especially in relation to climbing, the outdoors and exploration.
The other day I rediscovered an old walking diary. It’s only 30 or 40 pages, but at one time I decided that I would walk every day and just take notes. I had forgotten I’d done it. I almost didn’t recognise the person who had made these observations 15 years ago. We change. How do we know how we have changed? Unless you can somehow refer back to former memories, how can you remember? So you have to give yourself these memory kicks: notes, photos all these things that really help you. I have written seven books, six are climbing guides [five of which are co-authored] and one, Hollow Lands, Hilly Lands, is a collection of adventures from around the world, including Australia. I love writing – I have a lot of unfinished writing business.
