Ivan Trayling

The Honourable Ivan Trayling OAM
Member of the Victorian Legislative Council
In office 1972–1982
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Preceded by	Jack O'Connell
Succeeded by	Barry Pullen
Constituency	Melbourne Province
Personal details
Born	Ivan Barry Trayling Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Political party	Australian Labor Party
Spouse(s)	Thelma Gwenneth Oberin (m. 1957) Bernadette Simmons (m. 1977)

Ivan Barry Trayling OAM is a former Australian politician.

Ivan Trayling was born in 1936 in Hobart, Tasmania, the son of Ronald George Trayling, Chief Clerk of the State Superannuation Board of the State of Tasmania & the state Labor Party auditor, and Gwendoline Florence Iles.

He went to A.G. Ogilve High School in Hobart, Tasmania and was a star athlete. Trayling broke a school record on 25 March 1952 which had stood for 14 years when he won the boys' 880 yards championship at the A. G. Ogilvie High School athletic sports, clipping 2 seconds off the previous record set in 1938. He followed that up the next day with winning the open 100 (in a record 10.1 seconds), 220 and 440 yards, giving him that year's open title. He was in the Australian Army Cadets for 5 years.

In his first marriage, to Thelma Gwenneth Oberin, a descendant of immigrants from Germany, Scotland, Ireland, and England, he had two children, Sue and Richard. In 1977, after his divorce, he married Bernadette Simmons (daughter of CDR JB Simmons and Dr Charlotte Simmons), who was descended from a noble Portuguese family traced back to Braz Fernandes (1791–1865), Knight Commander of the Order of Christ and the first ever Vice Consul of Portugal in Bombay. They had one son, Mark.

He is a graduate of the Australian Department of Defence Industrial Mobilisation Course.

Trayling joined the St. Kilda West Branch of the Labor Party in 1964 and campaigned for the need for a library, a child minding centre, as well as a range of other issues. A 31-year-old Marketing Manager at the time, Trayling became a Councillor for St Kilda in 1967 after defeating the sitting West Ward Councillor, Bill Bush, who had not been opposed before. His campaign was managed by Brian Zouch, a fellow Labor Party member and news editor for the Southern Cross, who made sure that all householders who had agreed to vote for Trayling did so by ticking their names off on the roll on polling day, then sending cars to fetch those who had not appeared so that they could vote as they had promised before voting closed.

There had been community support for the creation of St Kilda Library but prior Councils had been consistently refusing to establish one. The council agreed to reverse their decades-old position when Trayling was elected, seeing the large community support behind his campaign. Trayling headed up a Library Sub-Committee as Chairman in 1969, with the Foundation stone being laid by him in 1972 in his then capacity as Mayor of the City of St Kilda. Although the creation of St Kilda Library is considered his biggest achievement in local government, he also delivered on his other promise of setting up a child minding centre.

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