Whilst overseas last week, I was saddened to hear of the death of Ian Cooper
of Hobart - a great mate of mine since 1967 and a highly respect tram
historian. He was 83.

Ian died after a long illness. He was born and raised in Hobart and was
trained as a statistician. Ian enjoyed a long career in public
administration and later in the bus industry. Like many of his era, he spent
some time early in his career working in the United Kingdom. In the late
1960s he moved from Hobart to Canberra where he spent many years in senior
roles in the planning area of the ACTION bus service. He later moved on to
private bus management.

Ian was instrumental in the saving of Hobart tram 141 and through the years
wrote several titles on trams and trolleybuses in Tasmania. He was also a
regular contributor to various trams and general transport journals and
publications.

Ian married late in life and after retirement moved back to his hometown
Hobart where he had planned to research further areas of local transport
history but his efforts were cut short by the onset of a debilitating
illness. In his married life, Ian was known as Tim but almost everyone in
the transport fraternity continued to know him as Ian or sometimes among his
closer buddies by his middle name, Gollan.

I first met Ian while exploring the Tasmanian trolleybus systems in 1967. He
was groomsman at my wedding in 1975 and we remained close friends through
the following decades. We spent a day on the trams in Melbourne in 2016 and
it was clear his health wasn't the best. Ian spent his last years in an aged
care facility on Hobart's eastern shore. I visited him there in 2021. Ian
was very sick and couldn't recognise me. Sadly, I knew that would be the
last time our paths would cross.

Paul Nicholson