Axeman was champion mate

WHEN it came to swinging an axe, Jack Ayres was undoubtedly a champion.
“He was up there with the best of them,” said friend and fellow axeman Ron Young.
“… a good axeman and a good teacher; he wasn’t far behind world champion Jack O’Toole.”
Well, Jack Ayres was a champion axeman but Mr Young will tell you that to everyone who ever met him, he was a champion bloke; the type of guy who always had a smile on his face, a gentleman in every sense of the word, hard worker, all-round sportsman, loving family man.
“You just couldn’t help but like him,” Mr Young said.
Jack Ayres was born on 26 November in 1916 the eldest of Albert and Agnes Ayres’s five children.
The family moved to Healesville in 1930 after having to walk away from their butcher and baker shop at Neerim Junction during the Depression.
Jack left Healesville Primary School at 12 years old to work for his dad which included driving the old 1926 Chev. What kid wouldn’t love that?
He did farm work at Narbethong, worked with the Board of Works and helped plant mountain ash on the Black Spur after the 1939 bushfires.
His brother, Tom, said Jack had a strong work ethic and could work all day in the bush. Jack signed on for the army as a 24-year-old in 1940 with the mates he had grown up with – people like Viv and Fred Russell, George Etteridge and Dick Chandler – and they served together in the Middle East.
The special mateship forged in war stayed with him and he was an active Healesville RSL member.
In 1944, after his discharge from the army, Jack met the love of his life, Thelma (Bid) Munroe.
The couple married in 1946 and had a loving and happy marriage at home in Healesville. Bid’s death in 1983 meant he lost his best mate.
Tom said Jack excelled at sport throughout his life and loved being part of a team.
His absolute passion was swinging an axe. He competed in many woodchopping championships and was a mentor to Tom, Ron Young and many others.
He played cricket in his early years and was a good left arm fast bowler and right hand batsman.
He captained Healesville 1945 football premiership team – a sweet victory against then arch-rivals Lilydale, and was thrilled to bits when he was named in the club’s Team of the Millennium as a full-back in 1999.
Fishing with mates, picking the doubles with his friend Dot Cotton, growing vegies, catching up with mates at the RSL or with a fishing rod in hand on some river somewhere, doing his bit for his community on the board of the Healesville Hospital and being a generous and loving brother were all part of what Jack would have said was not always an easy life but was certainly a good life.
Jack was diagnosed with cancer in May last year and died on 31 December. He is survived by his brother Tom, sister Glad and their families.