Life Member Profile – Geoff Honey
Geoff Honey was yet another of the dairy farmers from the hinterland of Kiama who joined the fledgling Alpine Club in 1958 and went on to make a considerable contribution to its evolution. He became one of the ‘active patrons’ who invested heavily in the club’s ambition of building a lodge at Thredbo, and he was made a vice-president at the inaugural club meeting. The following year, when Keith Young stepped down from the presidency (an early club rule, eventually changed, was that presidents serve only one-year terms), Geoff took on the top job. Thereafter he served on the committee for four years before taking up the reins of president for a second one-year term. He was to hold a committee position until 1977, sometimes as a vice-president and on occasions as the publicity officer. Skiing for the first time at the age of nearly 40 he understandably never became highly proficient on the snow, but he maintained a keen involvement in the club’s affairs and his children and grand-children became competent skiers. Especially noteworthy in the early days was his involvement in club working bees in Thredbo as an organiser and as an active, hands-on figure. He was still participating in working bee endeavours in 1984, when the members made a huge effort to complete a major reconstruction of the lodge and fashion the outside landscaping. New members found the enthusiasm of Geoff and the other long-standing members, many of whom who were frequent attenders, to be infectious, and the working bees helped bind the old and new members together in a spirit of shared endeavour as they created the club’s new and much modernised home. He was made a life member of the Kiama Alpine Club during the early 1980s. This was a fitting recognition of many years of service in several capacities. Geoff Honey died in 2014, having attended club events including AGMs right up to his passing.