Warbird Information Exchange

Mate's fond memories of a loveable rogue

Tony Wright
November 19, 2007

LAST time I went flying with Geoff Milne, he suspended me upside down, high above north-east Victoria, in a frayed harness in the cramped cabin of his Wirraway, one of three Australian-made World War II fighter planes still flying in the 1980s. He laughed gleefully at the terror he heard from me over his headphones, the waters of Lake Hume, outside Albury-Wodonga, a few thousand feet below our heads.

Geoffrey Milne never lived life at half pace. The son of a well-known north-east Victorian family, he skied the Victorian Alps at full tilt (his cousin, Ross, a legendary downhill skier, had died doing the same thing in Europe in 1964). He flew war-birds every chance he got, he ran pubs and bars in Albury-Wodonga, Bright and Falls Creek and he poked life and the staid in the eye every chance he got.

We were, for a magic decade, close mates. His youngest son, Donald, was born to his then wife, Vicki, on the same day in 1981 as my own daughter Jessica, and he made me a member of his band of larrikins at Falls Creek known as the Mongrels Club, which involved large amounts of vodka and dangerous skiing. Once, without warning, he paid the Wodonga pipe band to march into my living room late at night to celebrate my birthday.

He was, everyone agreed, a loveable rogue. The rogue part still rankles with some people with whom he dealt — he fell afoul of the law and actually did a stretch in the slammer before redeeming himself in business — but he remains the only bloke I know who ended up close friends with other people who had been shortchanged.

His generosity knew few bounds. When another of my daughters was born, the renovations on our house were incomplete and I was faced with bringing home a wife and new child to a home without windows. Milne owned the Carriers Arms Hotel in Wodonga those days and he emptied his business partner out of the hotel's apartment to give us a place to stay. Recalling the gesture leaves a fellow searching his life for reasons why we hadn't been in touch for more than a handful of moments over the past decade.

Flying always gave Milne a charge. He flew everything from his beloved warbird to crop dusters in New Zealand, and the business of being separated from the Earth lent him a splendour. It appears to have been the end of him when he, his wife Mathilde, his eldest son Anthony and Anthony's girlfriend, were lost somewhere between Melbourne and Merimbula during the weekend.

Such bitter irony: Milne was casual with everything but flying and his family, whom he loved and cared for desperately. His daughter Stephanie was heading home from England last night to grieve with her brother, Donald.

The world, in the opinion of one who shared his company, is a poorer place without wild men like Geoffrey Milne.

Tony Wright is national affairs editor of The Age.

Here are a few shots taken on the Monday after the races. That must have been him getting strapped into the back seat. That whole time he had the biggest smile.
Very sad…… Blue Skies.