Memorial Service and Wake for Lindsay Tuffin

Following the passing of Lindsay Tuffin, founder of Tasmanian Times among other noteable life achievements, his family has advised of the following arrangements.

A memorial service will be held on Wednesday 22 May at Phillip Stephens Funeral Chapel, 28 Riawena Rd, Montagu Bay. The service will commence at 2pm.

A wake will be held later that evening, Wednesday 22 May, from 6pm upstairs at the Hope & Anchor Hotel, 65 Macquarie St, Hobart.

All welcome to attend.

In lieu of any flowers, donations to Dementia Australia would be appreciated and donation envelopes will be made available at the service.

As we remember him. A beautiful image by Rob Walls.

Anecdotes

Foxes brought us together. Tasmanian foxes; that peculiar breed of fox that was a myth and a metaphor for so much else that fascinated Lindsay about Tasmania and people in general.

Faithful believers, ideologs and sceptics. Skulduggery, cads and story-tellers. They all gathered to the Tasmanian fox fray.

And when the fox bandwagon set forth down a well-worn political trail, it left the average person struggling with something that just didn’t make sense.

And it was with the common man and woman that Lindsay would stick fast, as always, to give them a voice.

“The truth will come out eventually,” said Lindsay. “Publish in the Tasmanian Times or be damned,” he once quipped to me, before heading off for a date with a nice bottle of red and his much-loved wife who he always called ‘Mrs Muffin’.

Since then, I shared a great deal of correspondence with Lindsay over quite a few years.

And so I came to know him as a rare and magnificent bird. A true hybrid. Part larrikin, part lycra-clad philosopher with a big heart, but always a truth seeker.

Being accosted by the cascade of Tuffin free-thought was to visit a universe lacking the prosaic restrictions of capital letters, where the ellipsis ran free and flows of enthusiasm risked breaking the banks of dry creek beds not familiar with wild torrents of possibilities:

“Clivvvvvvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeeeeeee, Baby i was chattin about you to my dear old age mate … at a long and most adequate lunch today on the boulevard of broken dreams. We were discussing the top item today which you mention …”

And when an inroad to the truth was made in an article or wider media story spawned by Tasmanian Times, perhaps after a very long campaign, interspersed with every message was a testament to a man who’s first passion was, and always would be, with his family and friends:

“You know how much … how very much I am looking forward to this …

Meanwhile, to more pleasant issues, enc are piccies from the great Vic Alps 30th birthday party. Fuck clive it was wonderful”

In this day and age it is possible to know people intimately by the written word, but never actually meet them in person. I was planning to finally meet Lindsay this year when I visited Hobart…alas, it was never to be. I would know him only by the written word.

But I can’t remember a single occasion where we communicated on social media; using tweets, likes, selfies and other click-directed trivia. Ours was a correspondence of ideas and lively stuff to do with life, the universe and everything; especially family.

And it was hard to ignore Lindsay’s contagious enthusiasm for his own family. And from time to time to time he would prod me at a time when I was contemplating a family of my own. For there was something of a mentor about him too. He was a person who had lived a full life and was always willing to share honest observations made along the way.

From where his seemingly limitless enthusiasm and goodwill came from, I will never be quite sure. Despite the many calories put into peddle-powered adventures, there was always plenty more to spare.

I came to think of Lindsay as a journalist of oaken stuff, perhaps made in another time; fascinated by people, stories and the search for truth. Someone who refused to give up this part of his soul and swap it out, to compromise when newspapers sickened and journalists became handmaidens to self-interested business models.

As in the Valhalla of journalists, Lindsay now sits well above the salt.

He managed to pull off the rarest of all feats; a love of life, family, truth and people – to compromise not himself, nor others. He leaves a legacy, not to wrap tomorrow’s fish and chips, but one that will live on in all those who had the pleasure to know such a superb human being.

– Dr Clive A Marks

Pick any topic where we were being bulldozed by the cosy duopoly of Tasmanian political parties and their mates, you’d almost certainly find Lindsay Tuffin forever ready to give a voice to those who had a different view of what was happening.

In the early years of this century, before social media started poisoning the body politic, mainstream media had managed to suppress errant opinions that may have threatened what the dominant interest groups wanted.

But Lindsay was always available to give voice to those who were being excluded. Not just the trolls, who Lindsay tolerated. You either believe in free speech or you don’t. Lindsay was a believer.

But also anyone interested in presenting longer analyses which too often in today’s hectic time-constrained world were being crowded out.

Take two significant Tasmanian issues of the last 20 years – the Gunns Pulp mill debacle and the enrichment of a Sydney based family courtesy of poker machines. Lindsay and his flagship Tasmanian Times were there.

James Boyce in the introduction to his classic Losing Streak published in 2016 makes special mention of his gratitude to Lindsay for publishing his first pieces on how Tasmania was gamed by one family.

There are many tales like that.

We all owe Lindsay our deepest gratitude for helping keep the public discussion flowing, the very thing that helps nurture our way of life, as we valiantly try to prevent getting sucked into a morass of greed and crass self-interest.

– John Hayward, a frequent contributor to TT