By Peter O'Neill - December 13, 2004
The other concerns one of his passions that hasn’t been mentioned much: his love of fly fishing.
Col was an accomplished angler, learnt growing up in New Zealand, and honed, as he told me, on Wellington's Hutt River, where he would dash to catch the evening rise after his Evening Post shift. ''I'd be fishing 15 minutes after leaving the office,'' he'd say, often.
He was incredibly generous and helpful to me when I took up the sport, hauling me out to the Blue Mountains for fact-finding missions but our best trip was a jaunt to the Snowys for a weekend's fishing with a local guide, John Orr.
I had lined it up for a Fin story, secured a swag of choice Kiwi sauvignon from our wine writer Tim White and cajoled Col to come along to give the whole thing a bit of angling credibility.
Col was in his element. John pulled out a map, Col said: ''God, I love maps,'' and we were off: lakes and rivers for fishing, gold mines and hydro schemes for a bit of local colour, John spinning yarns, Col spinning back, huge lunches God knows where and wine-fuelled dinners at Cooma's finest.
It was a marvelous trip and showed all those qualities that made Col just such a bloody great bloke: he was good fun, generous in spirit, affable; he had a healthy sense of the absurd (useful when you can't catch a fish in two days of trying) and seemed always good-humoured.
He couldn't half snore, mind.
