Milesi, Angelo John (Mick)   (1904 - 1975)

His father was an Australian-born Italian who established himself in the WA Goldfields, where Mick was born.

He spent nine years as a boarder at New Norcia where he was a brilliant student.

From there he matriculated, was awarded a State Forestry Scholarship and attended the University of Adelaide and the Australian Forestry School in Canberra.

He was one of the first intake at the new School, and studied under the Principal Charles Lane- Poole, formerly Conservator of Forests in Western Australia.

Milesi was appointed Divisional Forest Officer (Officer in Charge) of the Narrogin forestry district in 1929, where his main responsibility was the management of the Dryandra and Highbury forests.

Working closely with experienced field foresters Smith and Currie, Milesi pioneered the techniques of seed collection and plantation development for brown mallet and instigated the first thinning trials in mallet regrowth (on the Wickepin Water Reserve).

He also designed and oversaw the building of Dryandra Village and of an effective bushfire management system for the Dryandra forest and wrote the first management plans for the forest. He kept meticulous records of his work; these survive in the Parks and Wildlife archives at Narrogin to this day.

Tragedy struck Milesi with the death of his wife, leaving him a single father with two little daughters.

After transferring to Dwellingup, he specialised in bushfire management, and in the late 1940s was appointed the department's Fire Control Superintendent. He held this position until he retired in 1968.

In addition to being a sound forester and bushfire expert, Milesi was a keen amateur ornithologist and an enthusiastic conservationist.

He was a long-time member of the WA Wildlife Authority and a volunteer fauna warden. Unfortunately, he did not live to see his granddaughter Michelle Widmer become a respected forest officer and bushfire specialist in south-west WA

Why was he called Mick?

When Angelo was a student at the Australian Forestry School, hisnickname was 'Michelangelo', which soon became shortened to Mick, a name to which he answered for the rest of his life. .

Source: Extracted from:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/227371042/angelo-j-milesi
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~gregheberle/AdobePDF/Forestry-Personnel-PDFs/Milesi,%20Angelo%20John.pdf
Underwood, Roger (2023) 'Dryandra Forest - A silvicultural history', York Gum Publishing, WA
Portrait Photo: Underwood's book, via the Widmer family.

Collecting localities for 'Milesi, A.J.' from AVH (2025)

Data from 22 specimens