Noel Jackling was born in Albury, and lived next to Ian Harrison (!) but  was only there until the age of three. War-time meant family removal to Melbourne when his father Stan Jackling joined the RAAF. The family unit never returned to Albury, leaving Stan with a law business in Albury and a family in Melbourne, a disjunction that he resolved by becoming a weekly commuter between the two cities. For Noel, with grandparents in Albury and Wodonga, Albury-Wodonga became a wonderful holiday venue in his younger years. Following the death of his father in 1994 he donated his father’s Albury Choral Society and ABC International Celebrity Concert programs to the Albury LibraryMuseum and wrote a book to interpret them. In 1998 Noel became executor of the deceased estate of a former Albury Choral Society chorister Ruth Whyte, whose residuary estate of $1.2m was equally divided between the Albury Wodonga Regional Art Foundation and the Charles Sturt University Murray Conservatorium of Music, a bequest that remains the largest cash donation to the Arts in Albury. In the late 1960s, Noel became the lawyer for Arthur Newnham, the ABC radio 2CO announcer who called on cars to go to the Albury Racecourse to illuminate a landing strip for the Uiver. As a result of this connection, Noel has in recent years developed a keen interest in the Uiver, an interest that has led to him securing major donations of Uiver-related objects for the Albury LibraryMuseum, and with others, to ensure that Albury’s memorial DC-2 Uiver remained in Albury for restoration here. Noel successfully advocated for the Uiver collection at the LibraryMuseum to be nominated for heritage listing and in August 2017 it was added to the Hetitage Register of the State of New South Wales.

Noel is a retired lawyer who has also worked as a University-based instructional designer.