
Like plenty of people who live and work in a small place, Thomas Windsor wears many hats. Unlike other hat-wearing people, for Thomas, each version has a slightly different name attached.
As Tom, he’s the managing director of Coverall Security and the president of Rural Alive and Well (RAW), a Tasmanian not-for-profit organisation focused on mental health support for rural and remote communities.
As Tommy, he is the captain of the Mobart Mo Bros – a Hobart-based Movember team raising money for men’s health every November.
To his family, he’s Dad.
“While there are different hats, the story probably started, yeah, just with one hat.” Tom laughs. “It’s weird talking about yourself, isn’t it?”
Tom grew up just south of Hobart, in a family that loved the outdoors. He spent his childhood camping, fishing, surfing, boating, and bushwalking. “I definitely didn’t appreciate that it was different, how special that was,” he says now. “It was just following Dad around a bit most weekends. I’ll sit in the dinghy while he goes for a dive, and then he’ll sit in the dinghy while I go for a surf, and I guess that’s what we’re doing again this weekend. And then you grow up and you go, ‘Oh, not everyone did that.’”
As Tom grew older and travelled more, his appreciation for his home only grew, and he stayed in Tasmania through his early 20s to study at the University of Tasmania. “I really thrived. I was playing a lot of footy; I was really close to my footy club. It was those formative years, when you’re thinking about bigger decisions, about what to do next, about growing up. It was a pivotal point in my life—and that coincided with the death of my dad.”
“We were starting to understand a bit more about mental illness and how many people it affected. Movember gave us something real to put that passion towards. That’s what we needed.”

Tom’s dad lost his life to suicide, and it shocked not only their family, but the broader community. He was a physically fit, active person. He owned his own business. He was in his mid-50s.
“You hear this so often around suicide and mental illness, but he just wasn’t the type of person I’d grown up associating with that. He was very connected in his community. His death was a huge surprise,” Tom says now. “It was really challenging. I learnt a lot from it. But the flipside was having a community that showed up for you.”
There is a look of pride on Tom’s face as he describes his friends, with a trace of disbelief even after all these years. The people who had been there for the best of times also stuck around for the worst of times.
“These guys were just 20-year-old idiots,” he smiles. “I was like, ‘You’re not meant to be here, you’re meant to be off having fun.’ It was an important time for me to grow up as a son, as a brother. As a man. We got through that time with a lot of help. And that meant a lot to my family, too. We talk a lot about it—we’ve had a pretty fortunate upbringing in relative terms, but to be able to talk about something like that positively is significant.”
Tom calls it a superpower, the knowledge that you have support around you. The value of having known someone, and lost someone, and come through the other side. The support of his friends meant the world to him, and it didn’t falter even as time went on. They didn’t just show up; they stayed.
A year after Tom’s dad died, he and a friend founded the Mobart Mo Bros Movember team. During the month of November, those participating in Movember fundraise by growing a moustache, participating in a run, or hosting events. Donations go to programs that are dedicated to improving men’s mental health, and fighting prostate and testicular cancer.
“We were starting to understand a bit more about mental illness and suicide, and how many people it affected. Movember gave us something real to put that passion towards,” says Tom, who, at the time of writing, has started growing his mo’ for 2024. “It gave us a method to talk about a horrible thing, but through something positive and fun. That’s what we needed.”
The Movember movement was just two years old when Tom and the Mobart Mo Bros joined the cause: a not-for-profit formed in Melbourne that was tentatively branching out elsewhere in Australia. Today, it’s the biggest men’s health charity in the world, with teams participating in over 28 countries. Through Movember, the Mobart Mo Bros have raised more than $1.2 million for men’s health.
“For a little social group who should have raised a few thousand bucks…” Tom muses. “As Tasmanians do, we batted well out of our crease and swung for the fences. We’ve been the highest fundraising Movember team in Australia for eight years. Against all of these other massive teams with corporate backing, this little social community group from Hobart just keeps on smashing it.”
To read the full story visit tasmanian.com.au/stories/tom-windsor/
Story courtesy of Brand Tasmania

