Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

(Notes by his nephew, David Ryley Marshall, son of Squadron Leader J.H.R. Marshall, see this site).

Geoffrey William Macleod Palmer came from a grazier family in Mortlake, Victoria. In 1945 he married Leslie Myrma Copplestone, elder sister of my mother, June Elizabeth Copplestone (see biography on this site). He must have have met her while based at Sale air force base in c. 1943.

I do not recall him having any stories of his wartime service, except that he once told me that while still in the airforce he flew his C-47 Dakota (evidently from 37 Squadron) in the making of the Ealing Studios movie The Overlanders, starring Chips Rafferty. According to Wikipedia 'Shooting began in April 1945 at Sydney's North Head quarantine station, which stood in for the meat export centre at Wyndham in Western Australia.The unit was then flown by the RAAF to Alice Springs where they were based in an army camp. A second unit headed by John Heyer spent several weeks filming movement of cattle from the air.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Overlanders_(film).

After the war he married in 1945 and returned to Mortlake. His elder brother Frank owned Kielli, the main part of the family property, on the Mortlake-Lake Bolac road a little to the north of Mt. Shadwell. Geoffrey inherited a smaller part of 1500 or so acres on the road running east a little further north. As a soldier settler he also received a similar area, on the other side of the road that was also once family property, as well as a soldier settler's house that was occupied by their single employee. They built a new house on the family part of the block. Both houses were still there a few years ago.

After Geoffrey's death from emphysema in anout 1965 (he was a chain smoker)  Myrna (Min) continued running the farm with their one son, Simon, born 1946, who died of leukemia in February 1970. Myrna sold up and moved to Toorak, dying there in about 1985.

Geoffrey retained his pilot's license after the war and I recall him offering joyrides at a gymkana at his brother's property Kielli, in the late 1950s or early 1960s. (He did not own the aircraft.) He had a hearty sense of humour and, seeing a nice new aerodrome at Portland, Victoria, landed there. It was new and had not yet been opened, and I remember him writing a letter of apology for his misdemeanour to the Mayor of Portland.