Mr BAYLEY (Clark) - Mr Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about the life and passing of Hillary Bennell. When I got involved with the Wilderness Society in the early 2000s, Hillary was one of the first people I met. Even back then, she had the aura of an elder; calm, wise, passionate, nurturing and present, seemingly ever present. In reality, she was an elder. She was a lucky one, introduced to the wilds and wonders of Tasmania remote south west wilderness in her youth and crossing paths with people now legendary in both the Tasmanian story and the central place wilderness holds in it.
During uni she met Deny King, climbed Federation Peak, Mount Anne and other sublime peaks in the deep south west. It was on these trips that she glimpsed the distant pink quartzite beach of Lake Pedder, and so began a love affair that lasted her life time. An affair that had the euphoric highs of being there and desperate lows that came with the tragedy of Lake Pedder.
Hilary first walked into Lake Pedder in 1968, at a time she herself described as being in love with life. She led repeated trips to the lake, back then camping in flawless Japara tents erected with pole cut from the forest and cooking on fires on the beach. A different era.
The proposal to flood Lake Pedder was on the table, and while the campaign to save it had begun, there was still a disbelief that something so spectacular, something seemingly sacrosanct and inside of the then few Tasmanian national parks could be lost. In Hilary's words, 'The lake was moody and glorious', and she did not believe they would lose the lake. However, Hydro industrialisation marched on and the Serpentine Valley and Lake Pedder was in its sights.
By the 1970s, when the conflict over Lake Pedder was at its peak, Hilary knew Melva and Olegas Truchanas and attended many of Olegas's famous slide shows. She tells a story of teaching at Rosetta High School, in a classroom dedicated to Pedder and festooned with posters and student projects. One day after attending a talk by Olegas, the whole class, unprompted and unsupervised walked to parliament in protest of the flooding. The next day the classroom was trashed, posters torn down and Hillary reprimanded. We all know the story and history shows that the lake was lost.
Hilary spent time at Crumbledown camp, bore witness to the flooding, and after all was lost, left the state for three years to travel to some of the most remote corners of the world. Of her travels and the memory of Pedder, Hilary reflects:
I have travelled to some amazing places. I thought there would be better places in the world but nothinghas ever, ever, compared, possibly some moments in Antartica or Greenland but nothing really as blessed. It was a blessed place.
The blessed nature of Pedder drove Hilary to one day see it again. In 1993, thanks to improvements in technology, the deployment of a submersible camera over the side of the Lake Peddr beach beach confirmed the resilience of the beach itself and sparked renewed belief in the restoration of Lake Pedder. On this, Hilary was a champion. Together with childhood friend and fellow wilderness warrior, Helen Gee, Hilary formed the group and vision, Pedder 2000, and began beating the drum, making the case and unpacking the science behid the options to drain Lake Pedder, and restore the landscape to its original glory. They recruited the support of Aboriginal Elder, Aunty Ida West, and a myriad other important voices to reinforce the moral, engineering, environmental and social case for restoring Lake Pedder. In 1995, they achieved the establishment of a federal inquiry to investigate the feasibility of restoring Lake Pedder, with the inquiry ultimately finding that the task was technically feasible.
Restoring Lake Pedder remains feasible today as does the campaign to achieve it. Lake Pedder Restoration Inc has taken over from Pedder 2000 and the urgent and expensive upgrades to the two dams retaining the Pedder impoundment compromised by being built on fault lines, highlight the opportunities before us.
Hilary will neve see Lake Pedder again. Hilary passed last week after a short but brave battle with an aggressive brain tumor. I want to conclude by digressing from a life well lived to a passing well managed. Not long after our early October get-together, Hilary's trajectory turned and her health, quality of life and prognosis rapidly deteriorated. Always one with a vision and an eye to the future, Hilary had accessed the recently established right to take control of her own passing by opting for voluntary assisted dying. With a terminal brain tumor and no chance of recovery, Hilary chose a dignified death, at least in part on her own terms.
To those in here who supported the voluntary assisted dying legislation, to likes of now Senator Nick McKim, who was the first to move this kind of bill in this House in 2009, to Mike Gaffney MLC who led the successful passage of the legislation Hilary used, thank you. Hilary's choice reinforces the importance of this option for terminally ill patients.
I will conclude with some words offered to me by her daughter, Jo:
After seeing how important it [VAD] was to Mum, it has made us hugely appreciative of having the option. In fact, to not have the option would have been unthinkable as Mum was so keen to proceed with it. We would like VAD available in more circumstances. The doctors and voluntary assisted dying coordinator could not have been more supportive.
Vale Hilary. Thank you for your vision, advocacy and friendship. May you rest in peace and find a way back to Pedder.
