Bob McMahon: The Swans are Dead

Bob McMahon, author of the 2006 paper "The Swans Are Dead" passed away at home in his sleep on April 17 2013. Bob is an exemplar of person who truly exuded a Tamar 'placedness' and someone who embraced his 'Tasmanianness' with gusto and unfettered enthusiasm. Bob's life touched many people's lives in many ways and he has left his mark on the world simply by being here which is why he was a legend.

His paper.was written early on in the campaign to stop an inappropriately sited pulp mill being built on the Tamar. Thinking back on that campaign today if Bob was still with us he wouldn't be triumphantly punching the air in celebration of the demise of the 'pulp mill proposal'. 

No, he'd be quietly reminding us that "it was never a goer" and reminding us that on the evidence it should never have been built, so to paraphrase him, what should have happened did, just a bit too late." 

Bob McMahon was passionate, creative, opinionated, rogue, historian, climber, walker, wine-lover, teacher, grandfather, activist, writer – are all words that could be used to describe Robert John McMahon. Bob's place was the Tamar Valley where he worked as an outdoor instructor. However he was also a social activist and 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 approached life with the kind of zest that you can only admire. His last project was a walk around the coast of Tasmania, a journey he was about 1200 kilometres into. He was also well under way in achieving this goal but he had completed his walk around the shoreline of the Tamar.

Of himself, Bob said "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 for 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." ..... For more on Bob click [here] • [here] • [here]

Bob's paper, "THE SWANS ARE DEAD", is in seven parts. It came out of experiences, and an issue of contention, in Chile that had resonances in Tasmania and the Tamar Valley specifically. It was published in the hope that:

1. People would spread the word and use the information freely; 
2. Tasmanians would think seriously about what’s at stake when all too little attention is paid to the ways natural resources are exploited; 
3. Tasmanians would also think seriously before allowing others to take advantage of their resources; and
4. in the whole process, pay more than scant regard to Tasmania's resources and their true value.

"THE SWANS ARE DEAD: Like many detective stories this one had a scene in a taxi. While it would be false for me to claim a detective role, I did travel to Chile especially to investigate an incident of death on a grand scale. The detective work was done by others. With few expectations, and with only one possible contact in the country, and with no facility in the Spanish language, it was a surprise when the first person I met after I got off the plane began talking passionately about the incident which had brought me here. Luis, the diminutive taxi driver, began waving his arms and shouting: “Los cisnes mueren. Los pajaros mueren.” He shouted because I was foreign and he wanted me to understand.

It was an electrifying moment. I knew those Spanish words and not many others. I was here for the ‘cisnes’ after all. The swans. The iconic black-necked swans of South America, Cygnus melanocoryphus. ‘Pajaros’, I knew meant ‘birds’. The word ‘mueren’, from the verb ‘morir’ like the French ‘mourir’ – to die.

Luis took both hands off the wheel of his beat-up taxi and flapped his arms like a bird flying. Something awful had happened here. .... CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE PAPER

The Cataract Gorge: Bob's playground
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Some additional references:

• Gunns  in Administration .... click here
• Gunns  in Voluntary Administration .... click here
• The Man Who Pulped the Pulp Mill .... click here
• Bob McMahon: My Tasmania .... click here