This website is a dedicated to Wayne Alan Bulmer and has been written by his wife Cindy. Contact the family here.
Wayne was killed 27 September 2000 at the age of 32 years, in a helicopter crash in The Great Dividing Range in Victoria, Australia. Three months later, much to my horror, the autopsy report showed he had been suffering from Non-Hodgkinsons Lymphoma and had a large tumor in his abdomen.
Three weeks prior to the accident Wayne was suffering pain in his abdomen. We went to an accident and emergency department where tests were performed. Wayne was diagnosed with pleurisy and we were given anti inflammatory’s and released. He seemed to get better though tired, went back to work after taking sick leave. Wayne left Canbera to collect a Hughes 300 helicopter from Melbourne, for a new helicopter charter/training business being set up in Braidwood, NSW.
Wayne never returned.
There was a seven day air and land search, the largest air search in Australian history. The wreckage of the helicopter was found on Mt Skene by a search and rescue helicopter with two bodies, Wayne and his passenger Aaron. I was called by search and rescue and advised over the telephone my husband was dead. Ironically Wayne’s ultimate goal was to be a Search and Rescue Pilot.
After a funeral service in Canberra I bought my husband home and had a service for his friends and family here where he is buried at the Akatarawa Cemetery north of Upper Hutt, Wellington.
Wayne was 6ft 1.5 inches tall, athletic build, black hair and blue eyes. The most vibrant, positive person with a magnetic personality who had never ending energy. If you were to say cancer and his name in the same sentence you just wouldn’t correlate the two. He had the largest heart of any man and would do anything for anyone and flying helicopters was his passion. Wayne was a fully qualified commercial helicopter pilot and a ‘C’ category flying instructor with over 1,200 flying hours.
Wayne was born in Stratford, Taranaki, 30 June 1968. When Wayne was three, his Mother left the dairy farm in Taranaki with Wayne and his sister Sharlene, and moved to Upper Hutt where Wayne grew up and went to school.
I met Wayne on 21st April 1989 whilst he was completing his electrical apprenticeship in Upper Hutt, Wellington, where he worked extensively with and specialised in Liebherr cranes. As an electrician he worked for GEC Avery servicing and repairing petrol station fuel pumps and refueling aircraft at Wellington Airport. He also worked for Electrix where he worked on the construction of the Majestic Centre in Willis Street, Wellington. Wayne registered Wayne Bulmer Electrical Ltd and worked for himself, during his stint of contracting to AJ Beck & Co Ltd they offered him a partnership in AJ Beck Wayne had already decided he wanted to fly.
Wayne and I married on 21 February 1990 in Tauranga while on holiday there.
I was working for the BNZ in their data processing centre at the time and won a $15,000 7 day trip to Paris for two. Wayne and I spent our first wedding anniversary in Paris 21 February 1991. We extended the trip to five weeks and flew to Singapore then to Paris, travelled around Europe skiing in Austria and staying in the UK with my relatives. We flew home via Hawaii where we stopped for three days before returning to Wellington.
While Wayne was working for Electrix he studied electrical engineering for two years then decided to pursue a career in flying in 1994, after the birth of our daughter Georgia on 6 September 1994. Wayne went for a trial flight with Cathy Penney the first female ‘A’ rated helicopter instructor pilot at Heli-flight Wairarapa and was hooked. Wayne graduated with his Commercial Helicopter pilot license in 1995 after only 5 months with Heliflight. We had sold our house in Wellington and moved to Carterton close to the airfield and Heli-flight while he was studying. We then moved to Inglewood, Taranaki where Wayne worked for Helicopter Services an agricultural air fertilising company. We lived in the Waitoriki Schoolhouse Inglewood were our son Matthew was born 16 December 1995.
The next couple of years were moving in search of flying hours for Wayne. We lived in Tasman, Motueka (where Wayne obtained his flying instructor rating), Gore, Bunnythorpe, Papamoa and then over to Canberra to fly for Virgin Helicopters’. Wayne was in the process of applying to the Australian Air Force as a pilot. He was booked to have the Air Force psychological testing in Sydney just four days after he was killed. We knew he was going to be accepted.
We had a marriage made in heaven and we told one another we loved each other every day. We were truly one another’s soulmate. There is never a day that goes by that I do not think of him and I miss him constantly. Sadly both our children are painfully aware of their loss, with Matthew only having vague memories of his Dad. Matthew was only four when his Dad was killed.
Wayne was a wonderful husband and a fantastic father and loved his family with all his heart.
How Wayne & Cindy met
We both heard a morning radio bungy jumping promotion and called up to enter and both got in for the bungy jump on the Friday morning. I needed to leave fairly quickly, to get to work so they put me as number two after a guy called Neil, I was asking people if they were Neil as by this time I was very nervous.
One of the people I asked was Wayne. After my bungy jump he came up to me and asked for my number to take a bungy jumping trip up north to Ohakune with a whole group of us. I raced off to work.
Wayne had a really bad day and after work thought to himself “what would make my bad day better? I know, I will call Cindy I met this morning” He was looking for my number and then remembered that his friend he had with him that morning had my number in his bag and he was leaving to go away for the weekend. So he quickly drove down to the train station and they searched his friend’s bag. They found my number just as the train was starting to leave and his friend jumped aboard.
Wayne called me and asked me out, we then started dating...
