Forty South Tasmania - Issue 119

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FROM THE EDITOR: One evening in May 2025, a large function area upstairs in a Hobart pub started getting smaller as it filled with people. By the time the speeches started, it was hard to breathe, let alone get to the bar for a refill. But nobody cared, and by the time all those speeches – about the quiet bloke with the big moustache looking like he’d rather be somewhere else – had finished, and the space had started to empty, they all knew they had been part of a special event celebrating a special life.

I was there, and having soaked up the atmosphere, the accolades and, indeed, the love, I was glad that I would have the memory, because no-one, surely, could ever re-create what happened in that space that night.

Then James Dryburgh contacted me and said he wanted to try. And this wonderful writer had the support of a wonderful photographer in Matthew Newton, and together they have moved heaven and magic and gently put Pete Hay on the pedestal he will occupy long after he ceases watching Tasmanian sunrises.

It is my great privilege to call Pete Hay a friend. And it is my great honour to publish this edition’s lead feature, by James Dryburgh and Matthew Newton, showing the world why knowing Pete Hay is a privilege.