The man known as the “Mayor of Montague”, Boyd Hastings has passed away in Canberra after losing his battle with pancreatic cancer.
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Boyd was diagnosed with cancer not long after he arrived and purchased a property in Emerald, Queensland where he was going to be spend his retirement engaged in his other love of fossicking for gems and minerals. He passed away at Canberra Hospital on April 11.
In 2015, he retired from a long career with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, including 27 years living and working as a field officer on spectacular Montague Island just off Narooma.
More than a quarter century rehabilitating the island’s ecosystem, earned him the informal title of “Mayor of Montague”. His first shifts on the island began just after the island’s herd of goats was shot.
He assisted with the elimination of rabbits and rodents and started working on the re-vegetation. When Kikuyu grass became an issue and Seabird Habitat Restoration Project was instituted to specifically assist the little penguins, petrels, shearwaters, terns and other birds that nest and breed on the island.
Weed spraying and even burn programs saw Boyd and the other field officers taking on the introduced grass. This was then backed up with the planting of native species such as lomandra grasses and Banksia trees.
His usual shift on the island was nine days on and five days off, although that sometimes stretched out to two weeks when rough weather prevented safe passage off the island.
Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Boyd was the eldest of four boys. He came to Australia at the age of 20, fell in love with the Australian bush and never left.
His ex-wife Kay Hastings said he lived for many years in Braidwood where he spent the weekends gold panning and going around the sites of old homesteads with his metal detector.
While in Braidwood he worked planting pine trees, then as a house painter and then for the local shire where he worked on the bridge gang, helping to construct the bridges on the Nerriga and Goulburn roads, before taking on a job with National Parks that brought him to the Far South Coast.
Boyd had two children, Christopher and Rachel, and four grandchildren.
The family is planning a local memorial service at the Narooma Cemetery overlooking Montague Island on Sunday, May 7 at 12noon with all his friends and colleagues welcome to attend.