Bob Brown: Career in pictures

The single-minded country general practitioner, who came to Launceston, woke quickly to green causes when he saw local anguishing over the loss of the wilderness jewel, Lake Pedder, in 1972.

Flooding of the lake to create a hydro-electric impoundment set Dr Brown on a course that saw the emergence of the world's first green party, the United Tasmania Group, and his leadership of the grassroots activist Tasmanian Wilderness Society.

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It was through the leadership of TWS that Dr Brown first became a national figure as he led the watershed campaign to save the wild Franklin River from flooding too.

This set him against industrial forces for the first time as he directed a blockade against the state's Hydro-Electric Commission.

It led to 1,217 arrests, and eventually to an end to the project under Prime Minister Bob Hawke.

Green forces emboldened by the success expanded into other causes under Dr Brown, including the long-running forests protection battle.

He also spoke out early on human rights, becoming the first local political figure to identify himself as gay.

His early campaigns also made Tasmania a proving ground for green leaders. His example served to bring like-minded people into politics, including his successors at both national and state level.

Teacher Christine Milne, who will become national Greens leader, was herself a Franklin campaigner, who went on to leave teaching and lead the campaign that halted the polluting Wesley Vale Pulp mill.

Wilderness guide Nick McKim met Dr Brown for the first time on the banks of the Farmhouse Creek protest in a defining forest protest. He is now the state leader with a ministry and a balance of power, and was speculated as a successor for the now Senator Brown's seat but rejected it today.

Bob Brown brought the Greens to parliamentary control in Australia for the first time in a balance of power with Labor in the Tasmanian House of Assembly in 1989.

Their accord survived an attempt by a local businessman to buy off the single seat majority by buying the vote of a Labor MP.

But the accord eventually fell in a dispute over Labor's commitment to woodchip quotas.

He was elected to the Senate on the Tasmanian Greens ticket in 1996, and became such a strongly recognised advocate that he was re-elected twice with ease, the local campaign sticker simply reading: "Vote 1 Bob".