For thirty years or more Tom McCoy actively snared areas in the upper Mersey Valley. Tommy was a farmer with property in the Gowrie Park and Lorinna areas but he was also a skilled hut builder, a savvy bushman and his local knowledge was often called on as a guide to bushwalkers.

Although he ranged far and wide, the Pelion Plains were his chief hunting grounds and every winter he returned to the plateau to snare in order to provide for his large family which numbered ten children.

He kept company and snared with the likes of the Lees brothers,  Paddy Hartnett and Bill Steers and Bill’s young son Basil, just to name a few.

Tommy McCoy is credited with building huts from the Pelion Plains to the Never Never and his assistance was also called upon to build and maintain huts on the Overland Track including Old Pelion Hut and Pelion Chalet. In 1945 he built a snaring hut complete with skin shed on land he leased in the vicinity of Lake Ayr in the shadow of the majestic Mt. Oakleigh.

McCoy family members and MHPS felt strongly that Tommy McCoy should be remembered and honoured for the remarkable bushman that he was and, as a result, very early in January 2011 several MHPS members walked to the Lake Ayr region to visit the site of McCoy’s Reedy Lake Hut. The ruins were photographed and a site chosen as a suitable location for a proposed memorial plaque.  A detailed application was then submitted to PWS and in mid-May 2011 authority to have the project listed as a partnership agreement with PWS was granted.

PWS agreed that “Thomas McCoy was a major contributor to the history of snaring and bushwalking in the Upper Mersey Valley as well as having built a number of the heritage huts found within the area”.

In January 2012, just twelve months after the initial on-site inspection, several MHPS members once again returned to the Lake Ayr site of the hut ruins to re-evaluate and plan for the future installation of the memorial plaque.

In April 2013 MHPS members successfully attached the memorial plaque to a large rock at the site of the ruins of Tommy McCoy’s Reedy Lake Hut.