Aviation and deer industry trailblazer Sir Tim Wallis dies aged 85

Sir Tim Wallis, an aviator, deer farmer and the founder of one of New Zealand’s biggest air shows, has died aged 85.

He founded the Warbirds Over Wanaka air show in 1988 and was the lead organiser for 20 years.

Sir Tim hailed from Greymouth and built a career which began with his family’s timber business. He set up a farm near Wanaka with his brother and after the family business was sold, spent much of his spare time hunting deer.

He was tramping in Southland’s mountains with a load of venison on his back in the early 1960s when he decided there had to be an easier way, leading him to developed live deer capture methods, now used around the world, and leading him to move into deer farming.

There were early setbacks, including a bankruptcy, but the business grew into the Alpine Deer Group with interests around the world and made Sir Tim one of New Zealand’s wealthiest businessmen.

As his wealth accumulated, he began to restore old World War II planes, travelling around the world to find them and bring them back to New Zealand.

Warbirds Over Wanaka grew out of Sir Tim Wallis’ passion for restoring World War II planes and displaying them
Photo: Flickr / Bernard Spragg

What began as a hobby grew into what Sir Tim described as “an obsession”, and became the New Zealand Fighter Pilots’ Museum in Wanaka and the biennial Warbirds Over Wanaka air show, which Sir Tim founded in 1988 as a way to share his collection.

In 1992 he told 60 Minutes his planes were like fine art paintings.

“I look upon these aircraft as basically works of art. You know, there are people that collect Rembrandt and very famous paintings, and they treasure them and they put them in collections or museums.

“All I’m doing is creating an aerial collection – except my collection flies.”

Sir Tim spent a large part of his life with physical disability. In 1968 he was left with a paralysed leg after breaking his spine in a helicopter crash and in 1996 he sustained severe brain damage when he crashed a Spitfire. Against the odds, he emerged from a coma after three months and slowly began to regain his speech and mobility with intensive therapy.

Warbirds Over Wanaka Trust chairman John Gilks said Sir Tim’s achievements had an enormous impact on Wanaka and the international Warbird community.

Pilot John Lamont, one of New Zealand’s most accomplished airshow pilots, has flown at every Warbirds Over Wanaka. He met Sir Tim at the first event in 1988, and has flown at every show to date.

He told Morning Report that his friend Sir Tim was like a whirlwind, and came up with ideas nobody had ever dreamed of, including iconic mock-warplane attacks at event finales.

“He was like a whirlwind back in the days. In fact his wife Lady Prue referred to him as Hurricane Tim, and that was a fine way of indicating just what he was like.

“He was very hard to keep up with, and given the fact that he was disabled from his first major crash in a helicopter, one leg was in a brace, it was just amazing the energy he had. And keeping up with him was – he was a whirlwind.”

A P-40 Kittyhawk, over Wanaka
Photo: Supplied/ Warbirds Over Wanaka

Warbirds Over Wanaka began as a smaller ‘fly-in’, and turned into a major airshow, Lamont said.

“He had a deep respect for what … the WWII aviators did, and he wanted to serve that event to share with other people.

“So by starting the first airshow here in 1988 – the Warbirds on Parade it was called then – by that stage he had his first WWII aircraft, a Mustang, and he had others on the way.

“His enthusiasm for it was so inspirational. We were based in Auckland in those days, and brought the aircraft down from there to add to the airshow. And then as time moved on and he collected more aircraft, he needed pilots so a number of us were fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to fly those aircraft, which we did for a number of years.”

“They’re extremely expensive to both purchase and operate and maintain, so we just were very fortunate. It was just an amazing time for us.”

Warbirds Over Wanaka has grown into one of the world’s top airshows, and the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere, and typically draws in about 50,000 people. The last of the biennial shows was held in 2018, as the 2020 and 2022 events were cancelled due to Covid-19. The next is scheduled for 29 to 31 March 2024.

Sir Tim would be missed by many, Lamont said.

“It’s a big impact on the Wanaka community, he was such a loved person.”

Two of Sir Tim’s sons, Matthew Wallis and Nick Wallis, died in helicopter crashes, both in 2018.

Sir Tim was knighted in 1994 and was the recipient of several awards for his contributions to New Zealand aviation, tourism and agriculture. He was also the recipient of the 1994 Deer Industry Award and an honorary doctorate from Lincoln University.