Australian Dictionary of Biography

Ian Charles Miles (1924–1999), Methodist minister, air force chaplain, and Lifeline director, was born on 4 April 1924 at Ivanhoe, Victoria, younger child of William George Miles, estate agent, and his wife Elizabeth Lilia, née Sims, both Victorian-born. Ian was an enthusiastic young man with interests in cycling, bush-walking, and rowing, and was also a keen member of the Boy Scouts. Born into a Methodist family, the ‘twin pillars of family and faith’ (Coulthard-Clark 1999, 14) played an important part in his upbringing. He attended church as often as four times on Sundays, and was a church youth leader and local preacher by the age of seventeen. His faith was reinforced one day in 1939 in the Dandenong Ranges when he was part of a Young Crusaders’ camp. When he and forty-three others were trapped by bushfires they looked to prayer, and were saved by a change in wind direction. This experience convinced him that he had been ‘saved to serve’ (Coulthard-Clark 1999, 14).

From 1938 Miles attended Wesley College, Melbourne, where he was active in the Students’ Christian Movement and became a form captain. After obtaining his Leaving certificate in 1941 he worked as a clerk for the Shell Oil Company. In April 1942 he was called up for duty with the Citizen Military Forces. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force a year later, where his experience as a lieutenant with the Wesley College Cadet Corps contributed to a rapid rise to the rank of acting sergeant. He transferred to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in September 1943, and undertook basic training at Point Cook before commencing a pilot’s course in January 1944 with No. 7 Elementary Flying Training School at Western Junction, Tasmania. In June 1944 he transferred to Edmonton, Canada, to finish his training, achieving his pilot qualification in March 1945 but did not see combat. He returned to Australia in April 1945, transferring to the Air Force Reserve (1945–79).

Miles decided to pursue his religious vocation, and in 1947 entered the Theological Hall at Queen’s College, University of Melbourne, to train as a Methodist minister. There he met Gweneth May Laussen, also a student, whom he married at the Methodist Church, Canterbury, on 6 August 1949. They were to have five children: David, Alan, Robyn, Randal (deceased 1996), and Leanne. Miles was ordained in March 1951. His first appointment was to Mount Beauty in north-eastern Victoria, where he ministered to workers at the nearby Kiewa hydro-electric scheme as well as to parishioners. Contact with former members of the services stirred his interest in ministering to the armed forces, and in 1952 he became a chaplain in the RAAF Reserve. Subsequent church appointments were in Hobart (1953–57), Queanbeyan (1957–60), New South Wales, and Geelong West (1960–62), and Dromana (1962–69), Victoria. In 1958 he was appointed a part-time chaplain at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, Australian Capital Territory, and held this position until 1960.

The focus of Miles’s ministry changed in 1969 when he joined Lifeline Sydney, founded in 1963 by the Reverend (Sir) Alan Walker as an agency of the Sydney Central Methodist Mission. Miles became the organisation’s director, but clashed with Walker over the composition of the Lifeline executive and the choice of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization researchers engaged to study suicide, which Walker saw as undermining Lifeline’s Christian basis. In 1973 Miles became a full-time associate director of Lifeline Canberra. As chairman of its training committee, he was instrumental in establishing a volunteer training course. He allowed anyone of goodwill to participate, not just committed Christians as was the case in Sydney. He was acting director of Lifeline Canberra for six months (1978–79).

Miles retired from the Air Force Reserve in April 1979, and three months later left Lifeline to become minister of the Tuggeranong Uniting Church in southern Canberra, where he sought to ‘apply, in a parish context, a lot of the lessons and experience I have gained from Lifeline’ (Downie 1979, 18). He also served as the chaplain of Mirinjani Retirement Village at Weston, Canberra, and was bereavement officer of the Australian Capital Territory Totally and Permanently Incapacitated Ex-servicemen’s and Women’s Association (1986–95). In 1981 he retired from the ministry.

Despite health problems that included two heart bypass operations, Miles maintained his ‘caring, compassionate and enthusiastic approach’ (Coulthard-Clark 1999, 14) in his efforts to care for others. He died on 29 March 1999 at Gowrie, Australian Capital Territory, following an accident at home, and was buried in Gungahlin cemetery, Mitchell, survived by Gweneth and four of their children. She described him as a man of compassion whose ‘faith in God sustained him and gave him great strength and wisdom’ (Downie 1999, 11).