Farewell Pete Gray, 1980-2011

This is the obituary published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Friday 20 May 2011 for Pete.  Many of the words are taken from the eulogy given by George Woods at his funeral last week.   They omitted my favorite line of hers: "Oh.  What a star.  A sweet, soft-centred, chocolaty star."

I want these words to be visible past the moment of their news worthiness online and to share his short story with others who might stumble upon this blog.  I met Pete in 2003 when we were both volunteering for the Wilderness Society in Newcastle.  We did a few trips out to the bush, 'green policing' State Forest coups and on a convergence of the Western Woodlands in NSW.  I remember his swag most of all: a canvas roll mat with modest sheep skin and blanket, not nearly long enough to cover his whole body.  Despite what looked like to me a very rough sleep , he was always the first up and into it.  A great listener and speaker, a humble rogue and cheeky devil.  In a letter I wrote to Pete, I told him I remember thinking on that trip he didn't seem to need his body to drive his action.  No amount of hardship would inhibit his idealism and grace in fulfilling his passion for the planet.

And now as his body has been returned to the earth, this strength and grace is his legacy.  I thank you Pete for this <3 and wish Naomi peace in her new journey.  

Peter Gray's name might not be immediately recognisable but most people will remember the man who threw his shoes at John Howard on the ABC's Q&A program in a gesture of contempt for Howard's decision to embroil Australia in the war in Iraq.

In October last year, Gray, in the show's studio audience, asked the former prime minister two questions about Australians fighting overseas. When he didn't like the answers, he threw both his shoes (missing both times), in the manner of the Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who famously threw his shoes at American president George W. Bush in 2008.

Explaining his actions, Gray said: ''I had an opportunity to express something that I believe many of the victims of the war would have wished to express themselves - and I felt a moral responsibility to do so.''

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Peter Robert Gray, who has died of bowel cancer, was born on May 10, 1980, in Newcastle, one of five children of Bob and Lyn Gray.

He went to Merewether High School then divided his time between study at the University of Newcastle (which he left with a bachelor of arts, majoring in classics) and the defence of biodiversity in the forest.

Those who have been part of the struggle to protect the vanishing old-growth forest and remnant woodlands of eastern Australia may remember him from some of the places he defended: the Otways, Badja, Copeland Tops, Jilliby, Myall River, Moira and Millewa. Most of these areas are now protected from logging thanks to the activists who campaigned for them.

Gray was an activist who was not content to merely throw himself in front of bulldozers but would always seek to understand the legal, administrative, biological and strategic background of the areas that were under threat.

As one of the more swashbuckling members of Newcastle climate change action group Rising Tide, Gray brought that same spirit of restless scepticism to the coal-mining and export industries to highlight climate change's role in accelerating global warming.

One day Gray would be leaping joyfully from a self-made pirate barge in a mass flotilla blockading Newcastle's coal port, then the next, he would have his head buried in a 12-volume environmental assessment for

a coal mine.

In the midst of all this action in the Hunter region, Gray met Naomi Hodgson. They became partners in July 2005 and were married in Chichester forest last November.

In 2006, Gray challenged the NSW government's environmental assessment for the infamous Anvil Hill coal mine (now renamed Mangoola) in the Wybong area of the upper Hunter.

In a landmark ruling, the NSW Land and Environment Court found the mine had not been adequately assessed because the government had not considered the greenhouse gas pollution it would cause when the coal dug out of Anvil Hill was sent to Asia for burning in power stations.

As a result of the case, all coal mines in NSW are now assessed for their ''scope 3'' greenhouse gas emissions and the public is better able to understand the contribution the NSW coal industry makes to climate change globally.

Gray was driven by honour, duty, idealism and an instinctive anti-authoritarianism bordering on the larrikin. He was an anti-establishment traditionalist, a shoe-throwing pacifist and a pleasure-loving intellectual.

After completing his degree, Gray worked as an archivist in the University of Newcastle library, adding pieces of Newcastle's and the Hunter's history, including the history of its environmental activism.

Gray could be remembered by the words of Marcus Aurelius: ''In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself.''

Before Gray died, he asked the ABC to auction the shoes (which had not been returned) to raise money for the Red Cross.

Peter Gray is survived by Naomi, his parents, Bob Gray and Lyn and John Brattan, and siblings John, Sharon, Gideon and Katherine.

George Woods with Harriet Veitch

And in Pete's word, I hope you all "have a beautiful day..."