Barry Osborne died aged 69 at Albury’s Mercy Centre on Saturday afternoon after having been diagnosed with cancer in April and having subsequently undergone chemotherapy.

Cr Osborne was first elected to Hume Council in 1987, and her husband supported his wife’s recent successful bid for re-election.

“Anything Barry did he put his heart and soul into it, I could not have gone into local government without him,” Cr Osborne said yesterday.

“He was just a wonderful man. He was interesting, he kept me on my toes and he was just so supportive.”

Cr Osborne, who has been mayor of Greater Hume since 2006, rejected moves by the shire’s management to defer tomorrow’s council meeting at Holbrook which will see a leadership vote.

“I don’t think you should postpone a mayoral election for somebody,” Cr Osborne said.

“I will nominate to be mayor but I don’t have much chance, my support base is pretty much gone and I haven’t talked to the new councillors, that’s not the most important thing on my mind at the moment.”

Cr Osborne met her husband on a blind date in April 1981 and they married on December 18, 1982.

It was a second wedding for both, with each of them having three children from their first marriages.

The Osbornes moved to Jindera in November, 1983, and remained in the same home.

Mr Osborne was born in Melbourne and was in the army, working as a projectionist and filmmaker, before moving to Albury and being employed at the Borg Warner gearbox factory as a security officer and in the canteen.

After retiring in 2003, Mr Osborne pursued his hobbies and joined the Rural Fire Service’s Jindera brigade, becoming an honorary station officer.

Each day during the fire season he posted a saying outside the Jindera station, always deliberately misspelling a word to rile a teacher friend.

His colleague, Jindera brigade captain Graham Yensch, paid tribute to Mr Osborne with his own sign stating “If I only had time. RIP Bas” set up on Sunday morning.

“If I only had time” was a phrase regularly used by Mr Osborne and Bas has been deliberately misspelled.

“It’s something if he was about he would get a kick out of, Baz had a great sense of humour,” Mr Yensch said.

Cr Osborne added: “He just became a total institution in the brigade in just three years.

“They are going to send him off with gusto on Friday with all the tankers leading the procession.”

Mr Osborne’s funeral will be at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church at Jindera from 1.30pm Friday.

In addition to his wife, Mr Osborne is survived by children Malcolm, Ken and Katherine, stepchildren Kylie, Gareth and Donovan and 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.