From Bridges to Bushfires - Pete Sherriff

Three months on Flinders Island was meant to be a quick posting. Nearly 60 years later, Peter Sheriff has lived enough working lives for a whole town: postmaster on a manual phone exchange, farmer through collapsing wool markets and soaring interest rates, builder and cartage operator, local manufacturer of concrete bridges, council warden negotiating airport funding, shipping advocate, and fire brigade captain coordinating communications during the 2003 bushfire.

Jamie sits down with Peter to talk through the small details that reveal the big picture of remote Australia. Peter remembers Whitemark when sealed roads were scarce and the hospital supplied the town power. He explains how the old PMG system really worked, including night shifts on the exchange and outpost radio that connected outer islands when phones were few. From there, the story widens into family life and community culture, where neighbours swap kids, gear, and help without a second thought.

The later years show what island resilience looks like when it is tested. Peter describes the economic pain of farming during market shocks, then the practical pivot into carting, building, and even moving a whole house across paddocks to find dry ground. We dig into the leap from fence posts and troughs to building 32 concrete bridges, the fight to avoid a “tax on isolation” when regional airport funding is on the line, and the hard-won improvements to shipping that keep livestock and freight moving. We also revisit the 2003 fire and why clear map references and good radio discipline can save time, property, and lives.

If you care about Flinders Island, Tasmania, volunteer firefighting, or what real community leadership sounds like, you will get a lot from this conversation. Subscribe, share it with a mate, and leave a review with the moment that stuck with you most.

If you'd like to provide feedback on this podcast, we'd welcome your comments at crew@furneauxcollective.com

Transcript

Welcome To Latitude 40

Intro 0:03

Welcome to Latitude 40, brought to you by the Furneaux Collective. This podcast celebrates the heart, soul, and history of the Furneaux group, told by the people who call these islands home. Here we share stories of island life, of resilience and connection, of land and sea, of old ways and new beginnings. From the windswept shores to the heart of our communities, each episode captures a piece of what makes this island life so unique. So islanders and visitors alike, settle in and join us as we explore the stories that shape the spirit of the Furneaux Islands. One voice at a time.

Jamie West: 0:48

Welcome to Latitude 40. I'm your host, Jamie West. Thank you for joining me. My guest today has been part of Flinders Island life for almost 60 years, arriving in 1967 for a short-term postmaster role and never really leaving. Since then, he's been involved in just about every corner of island life: farming, firefighting, local government, bridge building, transport, communications, and community leadership. All while raising a family, alongside his wife Pam at Memana, and then later in Lady Barron. Peter Sherriff's story is one of hard work, adaptability, and deep commitment to community. And today we're looking forward to hearing some of the stories, challenges, and memories from a life lived fully on Flinders Island.

Early Years And Meeting Pam

Jamie West: 1:40

Welcome, Peter.

Jamie West: 1:41

Peter, you were born in 1945, just as the war was ending. What do you know about those early years and your father returning home from service?

Peter Sherriff 1:51

Well, as you said, I was born in 1945 and dad didn't get home from the war until 1946. So I was a bit over 12 months up and walking around before the old man seen me. He he made up for it later with the size of his boot, obviously I can't remember those early years, but no, it was a totally different world, what we live in now.

Jamie West: 2:17

That's right. And and originally you're from the Northwest Coast.

Peter Sherriff 2:20

Yeah. I was born at a place called Roland, just out of Sheffield, and Pam my wife, she was born in East Devonport. Yeah, it's a country life we had up there, and we had our own ferrets and rabbit, kangaroo shooting, all that sort of stuff. Just a normal kid, yeah.

Jamie West: 2:34

And of course, you met Pam on the Northwest Coast.

Peter Sherriff 2:38

Yeah.

Jamie West: 2:38

Tell us the story about meeting Pam. I believe there was a little bit of matchmaking involved.

Peter Sherriff 2:44

A fair bit of matchmaking, I think, because I didn't have nothing to do with it. I was just told by my brother that we were going up to church, and they were bringing him and his girlfriend of the time, now his wife, and bringing this other girl along too. So that's that's the first time I've seen Pam and I've seen a fair bit of it since then, yeah.

Jamie West: 3:07

Yeah, for quite some, and it's a lovely thing too.

Joining The PMG And Moving

Jamie West: 3:11

So what led you then into telecommunications and the postmaster general department?

Peter Sherriff 3:18

Well, I finished school in 1959 or 1960. At that stage, that was the first time in the Australian economy had been over downturn since World War II. All the rebuilding that went on. I wanted to be a carpenter. And Dad was working on the railway, and he said, no, he says, you're going to get a government job, they can't sack you, things go bad, you only you won't get sacked. So then I tried to go into the PMG, it was called in those days, Postmaster General's Department, which is subsequently split up into Australia Post and Telecom. Anyway, I tried to get in the technician's technical side of it and found out I was colourblind, so that stuffed that up. So then went into the postal side and went through that working in the down the northwest coast there for six or seven years. I was asked if I wanted to go to Flinders Island for three months, relieving over there until I filled the position. So we said yes to do that.

Jamie West: 4:13

So it was in 1967 you came to Flinders Island for what was meant to be a short post.

First Impressions Of Flinders Island

Jamie West: 4:19

So what were your first impressions of Flinders Island? And did you ever imagine that three months would become nearly 60 years?

Peter Sherriff 4:28

No. It was three months, and then I'd applied for the job, and I was appointed to the job, which is in those days was a three-year term to remote areas around Australia. PMG was obliged to relocate after three years if you wanted to.

Jamie West: 4:45

And your first impressions?

Peter Sherriff 4:47

Well, it's totally different from Georgetown where we came from. The only sealed road on the island was from the airport into Whitemark. Lagoon Road was sealed, Patrick Street was sealed down to the municipal hall. The town power was supplied by the hospital. There used to be a power station, but that got burnt down a bit beforehand. The PMG had its own generators to keep exchanges going and the post office and those sort of things. White mark was probably about half the size it is now, apart from David Henning's house. There's nothing on the eastern side of James Street. There's no Housing Commission houses down past Martin Street. All that was wasn't there. On the Esplanade, there's only the old bakery where Donger lives now. That was the bakery. And there's Bull Wilson down on the corner where Colin Wilson lives now. Whitemark was just a little, very little place.

Jamie West: 5:49

Its fair to say in some ways alot has changed But in others, kind of not a lot in terms of its layout. But certainly we've moved on from, you know, predominantly gravel roads.

Peter Sherriff 5:58

Oh yeah. And also then the only milk you get, you have to have to grab the Jeff Walker's dairy to get your milk. That's where the kunzea distiller is now. Take your billy out there in your fifty cents and get your billy full of milk and your cream if you wanted some Walkers supermarket was still up where Dog Nichols is on Memana Road. They'd moved their garage into White mark, and the supermarket part was still being built. The Butter factory was still going down the Butter factory road.

Jamie West: 6:27

So dairy was kind of it was still very much still prominent. Only you were at the time you were the dairy.

Peter Sherriff 6:36

Yeah 12 or 14 dairy farmers operating then. That closed down in the early 70s, mid-70s because health department regulations just precluded it from being upgraded to the new standard and all those sort of things.

Jamie West: 6:48

Well, that's my understanding, is that there was a lot of timber in terms of the mechanisms supporting dairy, timber built into the machinery, but there was this requirement to go stainless.

Jamie West: 7:00

Just going back to your years of being postmaster, tell us a bit more about that role. You

Running The Post Office Exchange

Jamie West: 7:07

know, it involved much more than just sorting mail.

Peter Sherriff 7:10

So yeah, yeah, that's right. The PMG was probably the biggest employer in Whitemark at the time, bigger than the hospital, I think. Outside there was five linesmen. In those days everything was overhead on copper wires. There's no cables around the island. There was four technicians to maintain the exchanges around the place. There was the Whitemark Exchange, Ranga, Lady Baron, Lakrana, Memana, Emita. So they were kept fairly busy, and Mount Tanner, of course, and Walker's Hill. All those things had to be maintained. There's manual exchange in Whitemark, about five or six telephonists working there. As the postmaster, I was working during the day and every second week used to have to sleeping at the exchange and do the night shift on the exchange.

Jamie West: 8:00

And why the night shift?

Peter Sherriff 8:02

It was a 24-hour service. They had a supply, had a little camp stretcher and used to sleep in there and there'd be an alarm on. So when everyone rang up, the shutter go on the alarm to go off, and you'd wake up in answer to the call. And another thing that was peculiar to our area was we had a thing called the Outpost Radio. That gave access to the outer islands. They could call in by radio to into us at the exchange, and we could pass messages on like Roo and Chesty, and I'd be on an Island doing cattle work and they wanted to get a hold of Athel and Brynworth, and they could call us up and we'd pass a message on like that, and vice versa. There was to there, and also to Harry Lovett at Ned's Point, Waterhouse Island, Long Island, and a couple of other islands when the mutton birds were in season. Yeah.

Jamie West: 8:55

Was there any one particular phone call that you took? I'm trying to actually understand the exchange. You've got the message, and and I think that there was one occasion where was it something to do with trying to get some message through to the hospital?

Peter Sherriff 9:12

It my first night on the exchange on the night shift, and it was the first call I answered, the shutter come down, number one, two nine, I remember it was. And this bloke said put us through to the hospital please, I said, What's the number? I don't know. He says, You're the exchange, you should know the number, anyway. He said, I'm trying to find out what me that woman of mine's doing, she's been in there all afternoon, she hasn't done anything. She's supposed to be having a baby. Anyway, turned out later Jimmy Grace and Betty was in there having Darren.

Jamie West: 9:41

Darren, otherwise known as Bill to most. Yeah, right.

Peter Sherriff 9:45

And that was must have been two nights before Christmas. He was born Christmas Eve, I think.

Jamie West: 9:50

What do you think younger generations don't realise about communications on the island in those days?

Peter Sherriff 9:57

Well, it was certainly different than what it is now. Everyone's got a mobile phone. In those days it was either just the hand crank phone or the exchange, if you're on the automatic exchange. Then two-way radios come in. That was a great boon, particularly for fishermen and that sort of stuff.

Jamie West: 10:16

There's no doubt you've certainly seen a rather transformative time of telephone exchange through to the advent of mobile phones where a lot of people don't even have landlines these days.

Peter Sherriff 10:27

Well, that's right, yeah.

Family Life And Island Community

Jamie West: 10:29

Peter, what has family life on Flinders Island meant to you?

Peter Sherriff 10:34

Well, it's been a terrific place to bring up a young family, no doubt about that. It was a very a caring community. Look, everyone looked after each other. Kids would be swapped around over the place with my have. The Campbell kids or the Grace kids at our place for a while, and we kids would be hooing around on little trikes and all that sort of stuff. And vice versa. It was a safe place. Our children, well we will go back a little bit after three months, then we got into three years and we said, Oh well, we'll stay here until the kids start school, and then we'll go and they start the school and we're still here, Oh well we'll stay until they start high school. We're still there.

Jamie West: 11:19

Yeah. Your daughter Maree, she says that there's a lovely sense that although you had no blood relatives here, island families adopted you. And, you know, you just talked about that sense of community that was being established. That was that's that sense of being made feel welcome.

Peter Sherriff 11:37

Yeah, we're all welcome. Yeah, I mean, we used to go out to various farmers and do a bit of work for them at the weekend and that sort of thing, go around shooting with the with their boys and that sort of stuff, and fishing and everything else. It was it was good.

Jamie West: 11:53

Well, your children certainly concur with your account of events they state that and describe a very warm and stable upbringing. Memories of sheepyards, fishing trips, camping, horses, tractors, mini-bikes. So obviously they had a full suite of things to occupy their time meaningfully.

Peter Sherriff 12:13

Yeah, but most of the stuff we had was secondhand. Hand me downs, that was another great thing over when we had young kids, another soldier settlers because all had young families in those days. There'd be a lot of clothing swapped as one family grew out of those clothes, they'd go to the next family, that sort of stuff.

Jamie West: 12:33

Yeah, I'm not sure that that happens so much anymore. I know that the tip shop these days plays a bit of a role in in kind of redistributing clothes. I think that we're becoming increasingly conscious of trying to repurpose things like furniture and and clothing in the city. It's a good thing to see that we're now focused on that and reducing our waste footprint here on the island.

The Leap Into Farming

Jamie West: 12:55

Peter, going into the 1970s, you took a leap into farming at Bendermere. What factors were at play that made you decide to go into farming?

Peter Sherriff 13:05

Well, I always had a hankering to do something. I was getting sick of being inside all the time. And while I was still in the post office, I used to work for John Bowman of the weekend, slashing Paddocks and doing a bit of fencing for two dollars an hour. It was the time. That was good money in those days. And then in 1973, I think it was, there was an accident on the island, and I had a young bloke named Fred Midsen working with me. He was a bit of a bit of a story to Fred too. He'd been in the post office at Westbury, he got into strife over there got in with the wrong mob. And the bosses in Launie rang up and said we got a bloke over here he's not a bad little boy, but he just got the wrong mob. Would you mind taking him over there and see what happened to him? So Fred came over to us and he ended up marrying a local girl, Lynette Mold, and her brother Wayne, Billy Martin was his nickname. Wayne was the butcher, apprenticed to Tom Wing at the butchers. And the Sunday before Christmas, Wayne was at this stage, Wayne was either engaged or very about to be engaged, the one that Primo and Lisa Bergiman's daughters. So Fred and Wayne went out there to kill the beast on the Sunday and done the beast and they're coming back into White mark, and they had an accident at Ray Rand ers corner, they both got killed. And stuffed that Christmas up completely. That sort of got me to thinking that no use going life thinking about doing something. Get in and bloody well do it. So I think that's what really pushed me to go a bit further.

Jamie West: 14:54

You know, life's not a dress rehearsal for the real thing. This is it.

Peter Sherriff 14:59

No use going through life wishing, get in and do it.

Jamie West: 15:02

That's right. However, farming wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination. There was a period there where it was very high interest rates and changing wool markets. So they must have been incredibly difficult to, you know, work through. How tough were those years?

Peter Sherriff 15:22

They were tough. When we first bought the farm, the cattle prices was on the way down. One of the neighbors down the road sold out, and I bought 110 cattle, cows, and small calves and the bull. Bought them all for $332. Which is unbelievable these days, but that was the market rate at those days. Then in the 1980s, inflation took off and interest took off. We got paying 22% interest rates in the mid to late 80s, and that was

Jamie West: 15:55

That's unimaginable.

Peter Sherriff 15:56

It is, now, but that's what it was. You were selling a bit of land to keep keep the rest of it afloat. 1990s, I think it was, they disbanded the the floor price on the wool. You were guaranteed to get something for your wool. If you weren't in sheep, the banks weren't interested in you because they were they knew they were going to get something if because there was a price there. Anyway, they disbanded the wool price scheme. That means sheep are virtually worthless. Well you're paid to shoot sheep. They were didn't cover their cost to go off the island. Joe Mills. He lived opposite where Steve and me are Maree there in Lakrana and he dug a big hole with his bulldozer and he put twenty twenty odd thousand sheep in this one hole. One day he'd got sheep expand with gas and they the hole exploded.

Jamie West: 16:53

I really find it difficult to wrap my head around how heartbreaking that must have been for so many of our farmers on the island at that time.

Peter Sherriff 17:01

Yes. Yeah. It doesn't do your psyche much good when you've got a stand there and look at shooter, get over a pen and show bang, bang, bang, shooting all the sheep.

Jamie West: 17:12

Yeah, and I know that while that's going on, you're still trying to find ways in which to, you know,

Peter Sherriff 17:17

Get money to the table.

Jamie West: 17:18

Yeah, make a change, be afloat. And so during that time, you you seem to be able to find other things to do alongside farming. You had multiple jobs running at once. Stock carting, building, farming, doing what you simply had to do to survive. Can

Surviving With Extra Work

Jamie West: 17:36

you just explore a little bit more about those other things that you were doing alongside farming?

Peter Sherriff 17:40

Well, when we first bought the farm, there we had a truck and a cart license from Teddy Trelore. And for six or seven years I had a cartage business that was carted everything from livestock, wool, hay, and a bit of gravel, all that sort of thing. All days it's all square barrels in the hay in those days, and the best year we had was 75,300 square barrels we carted in the one season. Kept us fairly busy. One stage there, I'd probably get home nine o'clock at night and I said to Pam, Can you tomorrow night, can you keep the kids up? Why is that? I haven't seen for ten days because I was home after they went to bed and up and gone before they got out of bed. So yeah, those sort of things. And then I sold the cartage business and to young Bruno Perry in about 1980, I think it was. Then I started doing a bit of a bit of shed repairing and then Steve's come on the scene.

Jamie West: 18:42

That's Steve Crawford.

Peter Sherriff 18:43

Steve Crawford, yeah, yes. He was rouse abouting in those days and he hadn't started shearing and apparently Murray Boyes said well, I can get your job out of Sherriffs if you want to. He's got three daughters out there. So he came and he snaffeled one daughter. After that, he's a qualified builder and we started building shearing sheds together and that sort of stuff. Yeah, and then we the house we were in on the farm, it was in a real boggy place. Gosh it was wet. During the winter time, it the water flowed through the fence on one side of the foundations and out the other, and really wet days after piggy back the kids from the back door over to the road so they could go up the road to the bus stop. It got that wet the foundations were rotting and the septic tank had rotted. We decided to move the house across the farm. So Kevin and Roy Peddle came and gave me a hand and we jacked the house up, put a couple of condemned hydro poles underneath it, hooked the bulldozer at the one end and a bulldozer at the back, and pushed it across the paddock to a a dry place on the farm. Two-thirds of the way across that day, we got bogged near the cattle yards a bit of an angle, and we didn't take any furniture, nothing out of it.

Jamie West: 20:02

So let me just get this right. You never contemplated building another house. You just simply looked at this house and said, This is just too wet where this is. We're just gonna move it. So how far did you move it?

Peter Sherriff 20:15

Oh, yeah, four or five hundred yards, I suppose. And across the paddock where the hydro poles look like a big sledge. The ground is that hot you couldn't put your hand on it that much friction on it. Anyway, you got up near the caddy house and got bogged trying to turn the corner and we couldn't get in the doors to get to bed. So we had to open the window up and climb in through the window to go to bed for the night.

Jamie West: 20:37

Most people, when you think about moving house, it's like you leave one house and you go to another. But in this case, you actually moved the house.

Peter Sherriff 20:45

Yeah, we were like a crab, we took a house with us.

Jamie West: 20:48

And my understanding is, Peter, is that because of that experience you were able to inform other house relocations on Flinders Island.

Peter Sherriff 20:56

Yeah, we've done a couple of others, yes.

Jamie West: 20:58

Yeah, so your sons.

Peter Sherriff 20:59

Yeah, Mick's, we done his. We moved that one, that'd be 10 or 12k. That was a bit different. We had a we had the mobile crane in there. We were modern those days.

Jamie West: 21:08

Over the time that I've been here, I've heard of other stories of people having their houses moved. I know that Alison and Jon Hizzard have a soldier settlement house that was relocated there. So I mean you can probably think of others I don't know about.

Peter Sherriff 21:20

Oh yeah, probably the first house to move I can recall was the the district medical officer in Whitemark, which is where the the little garden is on the corner near the multi-purpose centre. A bloke by the name Bert Bye bought that and he moved it out to Lakrana Road where Lorna Rochford lives.

Jamie West: 21:41

Yeah, I'm familiar with those buildings and where Lorna lives and familiar with the story. They're lovely little cottages, and think that all those years ago they could be relocated from White mark all the way down to Lakrana is quite amazing.

Peter Sherriff 21:54

Yeah, yeah, those sort of things, and then yeah, it worked out alright. And

The beginning of WASP

Peter Sherriff 21:59

then after that. Wellsy, Dale Wells and all I was out there doing building something for him. And one of us mentioned concrete and thought we might make some concrete posts. Because Markana Park. Jeff Albers and Alan North had just done a lot of fencing up on Markana Park, and they'd use these pre-cast fence posts that brought them in from the mainland and we thought we could probably make them here.

Jamie West: 22:24

And that was the beginning of WASP and bridge building.

Peter Sherriff 22:27

Yeah, that's Wells and Sherriff Precast. We started off at

Jamie West: 22:30

So how did you go from concrete fence posts and troughs into bridge construction? Tell us about that.

Peter Sherriff 22:37

It was after I'd been warden of the council, the council engineer Bill Lawson from Hobart, " There's bridges here on the island due for replacement." He said, Well why not go into concrete bridges, you've got a bigger lifespan and that sort of stuff. And also at that stage, a lot of Tasmanians get locked up in forest reserves, and there wasn't access to the good bridge timbers that they used to get previously. So the consensus of the island at the time was that you couldn't make good concrete on Flinders Island because there's no aggregate, no three-quarter inch aggregate to go in it. Therefore, you couldn't get the strength into it. Bill questioned that so he took some samples of our local sand down to the Hydro testing laboratories, and in those days, if you wanted to know anything about concrete in Tasmania, you asked the Hydro because they'd build dams everywhere. Anyway, they'd done tests on it, and it came back that with a bit more cement in it than normal, the concrete here could be just as strong as anything made in Tasmania. So that was the start of it, and then the council advertised for expressions of interest to run a cast to do something. So Wellsy and I put in for it, and we were the only ones who put in for it, I think. So we had to start from scratch in Whitemark, we had to put down their own casting bed and stressing rocks and everything else. We made gantry cranes out of the old airport luggage terminal at the airport. And we started off from there and ended up doing 32 bridges on the island. We made one and sent it down to Bothwell, it's still going down there. And we made probably I reckon we've made over a thousand water troughs around the island.

Jamie West: 24:30

That's an amazing contribution.

Peter Sherriff 24:32

Well, no one knew it was going to work, but it did.

Jamie West: 24:35

You have a go.

Peter Sherriff 24:36

We had a go.

Jamie West: 24:36

You did some learning.

Peter Sherriff 24:37

Yeah.

Jamie West: 24:37

Did some learning

Peter Sherriff 24:39

My word we did some learning.

Building Bridges From Local Concrete

Peter Sherriff 24:40

learning, yeah. Yeah,

Jamie West: 24:40

And then

Peter Sherriff 24:41

no failures, so.

Jamie West: 24:43

That's amazing. The bridges are still standing.

Peter Sherriff 24:45

Still standing yeah,

Council Life And Airport Funding Fight

Jamie West: 24:46

You mentioned beforehand that you joined the Flinders Council in the mid-1980s and at some stage you became warden. What motivated you to step into local government?

Peter Sherriff 24:59

Well, it was a bit like our courtship. I was pushed into it. Alec Foster was the in those days there's three wards on the island, North, South and Central. And Alec Foster had just sold his farm and he was in the council. And he rang up and said to me, You're gonna take over from me in the council. I said, What? Norm McQueen's gonna come down and give you the nomination form to sign, you signed it, and I didn't disagree with it. Anyway, short of it was I got elected to council in 1986, I think it was.

Jamie West: 25:32

It didn't sound like you needed to do much of a campaign.

Peter Sherriff 25:35

Probably not. There was Margaret Wheatley and I don't know who the other candidate was, but anyway, I got in on preferences, and then about twelve or eighteen months later they made me deputy warden, and then in 1989 Peter Blundstone resigned as warden and I took over and kept on doing that for four years.

Jamie West: 25:54

During your time there, you were heavily involved in negotiating airport funding. Can you explain what was at stake for the island?

Peter Sherriff 26:02

Prior to that, well, before about the Second World War, I think, Department of Civil Aviation, the DCA, that ran the airport. It was all federally funded, of course, and then the government in the 1990s, they're gonna decide they're gonna divest themselves of any responsibility for regional airports in Australia. All they want to do is the big fellas. So they got rid of all the mainland ones like Mount Gamber, Hamilton, Mildura. The only two left by the time they come down to us was there's only King and Flint's Island left. These two bureaucrats come down the charter plane from Melbourne, and they'd arranged for us to have a meeting in the afternoon. And give us the chance to be offered the package to take the local airport, and we are getting out of this sort of thing. And as a gesture of our goodwill we will offer you $330,000, I think it was, for new terminal buildings. They are pretty old now, and we'll give you money to put up a new terminal building. He said, Me and Bernard will go out of the room and you can discuss it, and we'll come back. They came back in and we decided no, we weren't going to accept it.

Jamie West: 27:09

Not enough money.

Peter Sherriff 27:10

Not enough money. And he came back and said, You're ready to go, gentlemen. And I said, no, we're not, we're not going to accept your offer, and he said, Everyone else says and said, No, but we are not. You're putting a tax on our isolation. Everywhere else in Australia, you've got the federally funded government highways, you've got the railways, you've got we've got nothing like that. This is our only way we can get. Oh, that's disappointing. Anyway, he said, we've got to go now, King Island at half past 4. So they took off. After that, we Charles Day of the Council Clark was called in those days near, called him the general manager. We started negotiating with Canberra and we got this and we got that. And it got to the stage where we just couldn't go anywhere. So Senator Michael Tate organised it, Senator Bob Collins, he's the Federal Minister for Transport. He came down to Hobart and Shirley Holloway as the deputy, and we went down and seen him. And he was from the Northern Territory. He was not a bad bloke. We put our case to him when the King of Flinders Island are the only two islands around Australia, mainland area of it's solely and air transport. He said, No, you're not. Tiwi Islands are Bathurst Island. They only got airport and said, No, they haven't. They can go over the barge. We can't. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right. Anyway, he came back on the extra $700,000 to put into the kitty to make it bit worthwhile. Then we got the airport lighting out of him, the hazard lighting on top of the hills and a few other things. The total package ended up with about $1.3 million.

Jamie West: 28:43

So one million dollars extra through your advocacy and standing firm on what this island needed versus what was being offered. That's what you helped achieve.

Peter Sherriff 28:54

Yeah, I guess that is it. Yeah.

Jamie West: 28:56

You know, your advocacy for Flinders Island didn't stop there. You also advocated strongly around our shipping services. So why were those issues so critical

Saving The Shipping Service

Jamie West: 29:06

for Flinders Island and how did that come about?

Peter Sherriff 29:09

Well, the Flinders Island Shipping Company operated out of Whitemark, two, sometimes three vessels. The Flinders Trader, the Lady Jillian, and the Catika. They were all old. They're getting past their serviceable life. And the government had various liberal and labor governments that said, Oh, we're going to address the Flinders Island Shipping Service. I'm going to give you good service. Nothing ever got done. So Ray Groom, was Premier at the time, wrote to him and said it's time to do something. We can't put up with this. We're being held back by our shipping service. That didn't go down too well. I even had a bureaucrat ringing me up and telling me he wanted me to withdraw the letter because they can't deal with it with this stage. That letter's staying.

Jamie West: 29:54

I was going to say, but again, you held firm.

Peter Sherriff 29:55

Yeah. Anyway, the government called expression to interest. Initially there were three, the Burns felt from Queensland. They put a they come down and had a look and went back and done nothing. Tank Bayles from Bridport and the local shipping company. Those two put in expressions of interest to the government, and the government in this wisdom decide on Mr Bayles from Bridport. He used to operate out of Bridport into Lady Barron. He wouldn't go to Whitemark because it was tidal port, even though he came out of a tidal port. Anyway, the government went with him and they put in the roll-on office facility at Lady Barron and it went from there. Wasn't playing sailing.

Jamie West: 30:37

You gave them a bit of advice, didn't you, really, around out and organised their operation to a degree.

Peter Sherriff 30:42

Well, I did a bit because Tank built boats and that sort of stuff. We didn't ever run the shipping system, particularly in order to livestock. If he originally was going to do it all in trailers on the boat, which to our way of thinking over you was wrong because you'd bring the general cargo on a normal trip, then you'd have to go back to Bridport and get the trailers, come over, load up. And by that time it could be blowing 60 knots and the boat wouldn't go. And also they're very difficult to keep an eye on the cattle when you're on the top deck sort of thing and they wouldn't get to them.

Jamie West: 31:18

So what advice did you give him?

Peter Sherriff 31:19

I told you put in the pens like the old boats, pens they can stay on the boat. Cattle could walk on, they can be looked at every couple of hours, stockman can go through and make sure they're all in good condition and all that sort of stuff.

Jamie West: 31:32

So just to clarify, the advice given was introduce collapsible stock pens so that they could be pushed out of the way when general freight was coming to Flinders Island and then introduced so that cattle could go onto the boat for the return. So there was no wasted time.

Peter Sherriff 31:52

Yeah. And it it worked well. And got that way that Tank nickname, he had Peter the poison pen. All the letters I've been writing down to Hobart and that sort of stuff. He was a bloke funny to deal with. You'd ring him up sometime and he'd say, "Oh, talk to somebody who really cares" and just throw the phone down. But we respected each other in the finish, anyway it worked okay.

Jamie West: 32:13

So just at this time in your life, and just to make it clear about what you had going on, you were farming, you were the warden, you were running a concreting business, and obviously you were involved as a family person as well.

Fire Brigade Leadership And The 2003 Fire

Jamie West: 32:31

And and if that's not enough, you actually also during this this time of business became the Memana fire brigade chief. I mean, albeit back in 1979.

Peter Sherriff 32:42

Yeah.

Jamie West: 32:43

Tell us a little bit about how your involvement in the fire brigade started.

Peter Sherriff 32:48

Well, there's another I was pushed into that too in 1979.

Jamie West: 32:53

Did you not know how to say no?

Peter Sherriff 32:55

Probably not. Yeah, probably isn't a fair answer.

Jamie West: 33:00

Fair, but but look, yes, okay, so

Peter Sherriff 33:03

Yeah, and God rang up Ian Beadle, he was the fire brigade captain, he sold his farm. His nickname was God, not to his face, but everyone else knew him as God. He rang up and said, Can you come to the fire brigade and meet him? We want you to be the next fire brigade captain. You're the youngest farmer in the area, all the rest of us are getting too old. So I just it just happened, yeah, took it on.

Jamie West: 33:24

And you didn't have much equipment, is my understanding.

Peter Sherriff 33:26

Oh, got in there. No, we had nothing, really. Our tanker was a cut-down truck chassis with a 250-gallon or thousand litre tank on the back of it, and no brakes or nothing like that on it. Yes, there was Briggs and Stratton motor they went sometimes. A rake hoe, a shovel, and one knapsack. And that was about it. If you had to go to a fire, it was dangerous. The trailer up to my Land Rover or HiLux, because that much weight was about six ton in the trailer altogether.

Jamie West: 34:00

Oh goodness me, that is dangerous.

Peter Sherriff 34:02

It is. So it either had to be a tractor, or yes, and we went very slow. We didn't get our first four-wheel vehicle until God. Mid-90s, I suppose it was.

Jamie West: 34:12

Right. And rolling forward a little bit from the mid-90s, and there was a huge fire here in 2003.

Peter Sherriff 34:20

Yeah, that's right.

Jamie West: 34:21

Can you tell me a bit about your role coordinating communications during that time?

Peter Sherriff 34:29

Yeah, well, as you pointed out, it started from a lightning strike and then it went berserk. I'd done a shift up on Holland's Gap Road and got home by two o'clock in the morning, and seven o'clock in the morning the phone rang, and Jimmy Grace said, get into White mark, we they need you in there, otherwise we're gonna have a revolt. They don't know what they're doing. Anyway, I went in there and they put me on the radio. I was in there for nearly a week, I suppose it was, and I didn't get home. Yeah, it was pretty full on time, and Jimmy Grace was the group captain, and he'd done a fantastic job until he burnt himself out. He ended up spending a few days in hospital.

Jamie West: 35:08

Oh goodness.

Peter Sherriff 35:09

And then I had to take over from him outside, and yeah, it was pretty full on, but, I think that's that really showed the community spirit.

Jamie West: 35:18

Yeah, it did no doubt did. You know, my understanding of your role was it somewhat of interpretation between visiting firefighting specialists and our local firefighters.

Peter Sherriff 35:31

Yeah.

Jamie West: 35:31

And it highlighted probably the need for further training as a result of. and I'm talking training in terms of being able to convey to people that don't live here exactly where you are on the island, so they you can call in the resources. And I'm remembering you're talking about the war bird being called in. Can you tell me Tell us a lot about

Peter Sherriff 35:53

Firebird

Jamie West: 35:53

Or Firebird, was it? Sorry, yeah.

Peter Sherriff 35:55

Yeah, they had this big helicopter. You've called Firebird one, that's what he's called song on the radio. And anyway, the fire was coming towards down towards the airport and Bunker Dargaville's place. And Jimmy Grace rang up caught up on the phone and said, get that Fire bird there, get him up to Bunker's place. And I said, Oh, I'll have to get the coordinates for him. He said, Oh, don't bugger about the coordinates. Just tell him it's come to Bunker's place. And I said, Well, Jimmy said, I said, this pilot comes from Carnarvon in Western Australia. He doesn't know where Bunker lives, but he can read a map. But the converse of that, of course, that's why I went in there, because they get these mob that sent over from the mainland. It was called an incident management team. It's one of the first they'd ever tried it in Tasmania. They had people from forestry and parks, state fire emergencies to lead the firefighting effort. They all worked on grid references, and then our boys they had no idea what map references were. And also they sent these blokes over sort of team leaders, the one bloke could go with Lakrana and with Memana and feeding them. Some of them, they put their boys at risk, lives at risk. And it didn't get to revolt, but by gosh, the things weren't very happy for a while.

Jamie West: 37:15

Your story reminds me or makes me reflect on my own training as a volunteer firefighting, and of course, being understand a grid reference and being able to communicate where you are or where the fire might be.

Peter Sherriff 37:27

And what you need, and when you need it, yeah.

Jamie West: 37:29

It's really important. And I think my understanding is that as a result of your role in enabling effective communication during that fire in 2003, you were nominated for an Australian of the Year award.

Peter Sherriff 37:46

Yeah, that was totally out of the blue. Still haven't got a clue who nominated me, but apparently each state has a a board you can nominate. There's no restriction on how many people can be nominated from each state, but then these state committees have got uh narrowed down and they submit probably a dozen names from each state to go into Australia of the year. And I'd been selected as one of the twelve or whatever it was to go for Tasmania. I didn't get Australian of the year. Steve Waugh got it that year. Yes, it's a nice, yeah.

The Missing Finger And Tall Tales

Jamie West: 38:21

Peter, on a slightly lighter note, I've got a few questions I want to ask you. In preparation for this interview, I did say I'd try to dig up a bit of dirt on you.

Peter Sherriff 38:32

Yeah, yeah.

Jamie West: 38:33

It's important that our listeners have a laugh, as well as our fellow community members.

Peter Sherriff 38:37

Yeah.

Jamie West: 38:38

So is it true your little finger being chopped off by a fence post driver was the best thing that ever happened to it?

Peter Sherriff 38:45

Yeah.

Jamie West: 38:45

Can you explain why?

Peter Sherriff 38:47

Well, it had arthritis and it used to just stick out and get caught on everything. So after the post driver had finished with it, it's even things up a bit.

Jamie West: 38:56

The finger that you didn't need.

Peter Sherriff 38:58

The finger that didn't I need, yeah.

Jamie West: 38:59

Goodness me. And also tell me, what's the story behind the crop of Irish chewing tobacco?

Peter Sherriff 39:05

Oh, good god.

Jamie West: 39:06

You purportedly tried to grow in the front paddock.

Peter Sherriff 39:09

Yeah. I used to quite regularly put a crop probably of rape or turnips or something like that in it. Anyway, the row paddock, I piled that up and got a crop going, and we had a working bee up at the Emita hall putting the boozer on the side of it we were. Billy Cook was there and Kevin Haynes and Joey Pincini, and one of them asked me, What do you put in the front paddock? And said, Oh it's, the university rang me up and wanted to know if I'd put in a experimental crop for them. Oh, what isn't? I said it was Irenaeus Pasicatus. Oh, what the hell was that? Commonly known as Irish chewing tobacco. Oh, good, what do you do with that? I said, the best source of omega-3 acid in a vegetable plant. Oh, good. Oh, yeah, that'd be interesting. Steve's come home, Steve Crawford, him and Maree are still engaged in this day. You come up for tea one night and he came in and said, what do you got growing in the front paddock? And I said, Oh, it's Irish chewing tobacco. And Pam here come round, give me the real teapot hand on one hip, finger at the other. How come I'm the last person to know around this place to know what's going on here? So that was the story of the Irish chewing tobacco. Yeah.

Taking Concrete Skills To The Top End

Jamie West: 40:34

Peter, I want to go back to your time in concreting just for a moment because as a result of your experience in concreting, there was a moment whereby an opportunity presented itself to both you and your wife, Pam, to take what you had experienced and learned to the Northern Territory. Can you tell our listeners how that came about?

Peter Sherriff 41:03

Well, it came about through Bill Lawson, who was the council engineer. He was also in the involved deeply with the thing called the Beacon Foundation, which the reason for operation was to try and help young people get into occupations and employment for the opportunities. And he was involved somehow with an Aboriginal association, Kununurra, which is in up on the Ord River scheme, Northern Western Australia. Anyway, I'm just gonna start work on the wharf at Lady Barron and put a new wharf in down there. And got this phone call and Bill Lawson here how you going?. Interested in doing the job for six weeks to start with. I said, Where? He says, Kununurra. Do you know that? I said, Yeah, right, right. Wanted to go up there and I got an Aboriginal employment program. He want me to go up there and start the program to build concrete houses for the Aboriginals. Sorry I can't do it at the moment we are calving. He said, when you finish calving, I said middle of September, yeah alright. Middle of September he ranging me up, did you finish calving yet? And I said, Yes. I've booked your plane, you can go bring Pam too. You're going up there for six weeks.

Jamie West: 42:15

Yeah, just another job that you were told what to do and pushed into a but.

Peter Sherriff 42:19

I think why he picked me. Is because we started here for nothing, and we'd just done it. And he said, if you done it there, you can do it up here. It was not quite the case. We went up there for six weeks the first time, then the next year we used to go up in the dry season, and then the next dry season we went up for five months, I think it was. Then the following year for twelve months to build these concrete houses. We had to build our own casting bed and all those sort of things and form work they hadn't got their plans for the housing deals finalised, so that we made them make a bridge and a causeway across between Kununurra and the lakeside suburb. It was an interesting job. The last time we were up there, we had to replace all the cattle gates with grids on the old Darwin road between Wyndham and Kununurra.

Jamie West: 43:09

That's such an amazing story, too. You know, to have pretty much been self-taught in all things concrete, and then get an invitation to go and teach people at the other end of the country to do it. And clearly you must have had time as an employer, teaching people here on Flinders Island concrete and it eventually led obviously to the transition of the business to your son, Michael. Are there any employees in particular or stories about employing local people that you wish to share?

Peter Sherriff 43:44

Yeah, well, the crew will know what I'm talking about. Bunker. The Dargaville's. James Dargaville, I employed him. He was a part of my hay carting gang in the 70's, and then his son Nugget Daniel, he'd left school and he'd, had trouble keeping employment, we'll will say that.

Jamie West: 44:03

What did he do?

Peter Sherriff 44:04

Well, he had done a bit of cray fishing and all that sort of stuff, and sometimes he'd turn up and sometimes he wouldn't, apparently. Putting the new Harley's bridge in whether it got burnt down during the fire, and Nugget said could have given him a job and said, Yeah. Anyway, he started with me. And he'd work like a trogan, by gosh, you could he was a good worker when he was there. Trouble was him and Chris MacQueen and young Coley, they're all mad surfers, Friday afternoon turn up and Nuggets say, what are we doing Monday, Pete? Oh, not a real lot, well surf's gonna be real good at the Pot boil over the weekend. Queenie and Coley and I were gonna go out there surfing. I might have to stay Monday as well. I said, Oh, all right, as long as you're back with me, right. That'll work sometimes. The next time he mightn't come back for a fortnight. Then he'd turn up to work and start working again. Anyway, this time he hadn't worked for about nearly ten days or so, and was walking past the pub and he came out of the pub and said, Oh, I'll good day Pete. I'll be back at work on Monday, and I said I don't need you anymore. Oh no, Micks home, I don't need you anymore. Oh. Anyway, that's where he ended that stage. Then you met Gina and they got married, and he grew up both ways in family values and then everything else. And he come back to the island and asked for a job again, and I said, Yeah, but won't be nothing like it was before. He started working nine to five, eight or five, whatever it was, five days a week, probably. One day there we were working stinking hot, it was head down doing something on a bench. He looked at me and said, You know, I must have been a proper bastard to be employed when I was here before. And I said, Yeah, you were.

Jamie West: 45:50

It must be satisfying to see both Mick and Nugget take on that side of the business and still be and continuing on with it, offering an absolute essential and vital service to the island through whether it be footpaths, driveways, you know, building construction. I mean I probably haven't done it justice in terms of just describing those elements of the operation.

Peter Sherriff 46:13

Yeah, I think you summed up there pretty well. It does give me pride to know that they're doing a pretty good job. But you're talking about the Irish chewing tobacco. I'll get back at Mick on this one. When he was going to school in about grade two or three, he came home one night and he asked, What's a harth? And Pam said to him the thing in front of the fire. No, I mean a harth. And said, She took him into the lounge room and go, There's the hearth in front of the in front of it, it stops the sparks coming out and getting on the floor and burning the floorboard. No, no, it can't be right. She said, Why not? He said, Well, I was a school day, and Robert Fern said to me, if I didn't stop fighting, he's going to kick me up the harth.

What A Working Life Leaves Behind

Jamie West: 46:58

As we've heard today, Peter Sherriff's story is really the story of a generation of island people who simply did whatever needed doing. Over nearly six decades on Flinders Island, Peter has moved between occupations, industries, and community roles with a quiet determination that reflects the resilience of island life itself. From communications and farming to transport, firefighting, local government, construction, and community leadership. Like so many people living in remote communities, employment here was never just one job title. It was adaptability. It was long hours. It was stepping in when something needed fixing, building, or protecting. And through it all, Peter's contribution has helped shape both the infrastructure and the spirit of this island community. And perhaps what stands out most is not only what Peter achieved professionally, but the way he and Pam raised a family, built relationships, and became woven into life on Flinders Island. Peter, thank you for sharing your memories, your stories, and your reflections with us today. It's been an absolute privilege to hear about a lifetime of contribution to island life. Thank you.

Peter Sherriff 48:16

Thanks Jamie

Outro 48:19

We acknowledge the ancient history of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people as the first people of Lutruwita, Tasmania. This episode is recorded on the lands and waters of the Furneaux Islands. We recognise the continuing spiritual and ancestral connections of Tasmanian Aboriginal people to these islands, and we honour the strength, resilience, and living culture of Aboriginal people today.