Robert John (Bob) McMahon
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
June 10, 1950 - April 18, 2013
Two of the people whom Exeter man Bob McMahon admired most from history were Italian Guiseppe Garibaldi and North Vietnamese general Giap.
The selection by Mr McMahon from his vast knowledge of history provided a glimpse into the complicated mind of the man who in 62 years of life came to be many different kinds of leader to many people.
Several years ago, long before his sudden death last week, Mr McMahon talked about Garibaldi, who was the Italian so stunned by the beauty of the Tasmania he saw in the 1870s that he returned to his home country to try to set up a democratic state on an island similar to this.
Mr McMahon said that Giap was regarded even by his enemies as one of the greatest generals in history after he defeated the Japanese, the French and then the Americans in what the Western world called the Vietnam War.
``I admire people who change things dramatically but don't stop to become distorted by power,'' Mr McMahon said.
Yesterday people came in their hundreds from across the state and around the world to mourn the loss of Robert John (Bob) McMahon.
Many of the 650-strong gathering were old teaching mates. West Tamar writer and historian Peter Henning, who delivered the eulogy, first met ``me old mate'' more than 28 years ago at Launceston's Alanvale College.
Mr McMahon taught art and outdoor education. Mr Henning taught history.
Mr Henning said that his friend was also passionate about history and that the Exeter home that he shared with his wife, Susie, was full of books on every aspect of it.
Peter Jackson told those at the Tailrace Centre that he first met Mr McMahon in 1968 when they both signed up as students at the Hobart Art School.
He was thrilled to discover that Mr McMahon was an adventurer who took to his own sport of rock climbing with enthusiasm as well as sharing a love for the Irish poet William Butler Yeats.
Many at the funeral were rock-climbing mates or those who had been introduced to the extreme sport by the gregarious Mr McMahon.
He ran a business based on his elite rock climbing skills from the mid-1980s.
He taught thousands of Tasmanian schoolchildren over the years to be bold, daring and disciplined on rock faces across the North, particularly in his beloved Cataract Gorge.
He also taught and climbed with adults around the world.
But he came home to his favourite places such as Ben Lomond for some of his biggest challenges.
He said that crack climbing gave him as much pleasure as history and Ben Lomond had some of the best conditions in the world. Climbers find just that - a thin crack sometimes stretching 200 metres up the face that they can get their hands into to practise the specialised techniques of crawling their way up the cliff, no ropes, just fingers.
It takes clear thinking and nerves of steel - attributes that served Mr McMahon well as founder member of the community lobby group Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill to stop Gunns' proposed Bell Bay pulp mill. Many at his funeral were friends made during TAP's eight-year battle against the mill.
Mr McMahon's death - quietly, in his sleep - nine days ago was out of character with the man whom yesterday's 650 people came to mourn.
Mr McMahon is survived by wife Susie, their children Andy and Iseult and grandchildren Rhiannon, Laurence, Leila, Xavier and Caleb.