Last Days of the Mill: Pete Reading from Last Days

Pete Reading from Last Days

At The Lark Distillery
Photo: Ralph Wessman

"Pete Hay giving a compelling reading of "Shit Sandwich" brought tears to my eye. Thanks Pete for sharing with us and for warming the day. At Parking Day 2012."
Text and Photo: Jerry de Gryse

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For seven decades 'The Pulp' constructed the social, economic and environmental circumstances of life on the North-West Coast. In 2011, on the last day of its operation, artist Tony Thorne went on site armed with sketchpad and camera. And writer Pete Hay came to Burnie armed with notepad and recorder, to talk to displaced mill workers. The result is this extraordinary collaboration of dramatic monologues in the vernacular voice of the mill floor and artworks of stark, confronting beauty that vividly capture the dying days of an industrial colossus.

The Poet

Pete Hay was born and raised on Tasmania's North-West Coast. He is a poet, essayist and social theorist who taught geography, politics and philosophy at the University of Tasmania until he retired to get a life. He has worked as a political minder, and has dabbled in activism and public affairs commentary, but is a refugee from all that, too. His once-endless slate of interests have now shrunk back to the beauty within language, music, cricket, football, the extraordinary cacophony of life on earth - and the marvellous stories that ordinary people carry with them. Except that he is of the opinion that no person is truly ordinary. His most recent publications are Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought (social theory), Vandiemonian Essays (personal essays), Silently On The Tide (poems) and, with the photographer Matthew Newton, the photo essay with text, The Forests.

The Artist

Tony Thorne is a Burnie boy. He is an animator, an illustrator and an artist who learned to draw on the Burnie Bond paper his grandfather would bring home from the mill. In the summers while at art school he would work maintenance shut downs at the mill.

He has illustrated books of Tasmanian aboriginal poetry and worked for magazines such as Australian RollingStone. He has animated on many feature films including several in the Harry Potter series. His art for Last Days of the Mill has been exhibited in both Burnie and Hobart and some of the works are now held in the Burnie Regional Art Gallery collection.