He died on January 31.
Born on January 6, 1966, to Alan and Noreen Jones, Michael, known simply as Mick or Jonesy to most, had dairy farming in his blood.
As a kid, he did not care so much for school, but he loved life on the family farm and would go on to buy his own farm as an adult.
As described by his family, “Farming was not just Mick’s work; it was Mick’s passion.”
But it wasn’t his only passion.
Mick was a family man through and through.
He adored his beloved wife of 32 years, Judy, as well as his parents and his siblings, Kerry, Meryl and Brendan.
He also loved his friends, his nieces and nephews, and the many young people in his life.
“As anyone would tell you, Michael was a much-loved, extraordinary person,” Judy said.
Those who knew Mick described him as kind, loving and caring, with a penchant for roguish trickery, the thrill of skydiving and V8 cars, and a deep love for the Tongala Football Netball Club.
As a kid in the late ’70s, Mick met his lifelong friend, Jim Cipriani, on a Saturday morning at an under-14s football game.
As Jim walked over to the bench, a shy and nervous 11-year-old, he recalled a skinny kid jumping up and approaching him.
“Hi. I’m Michael Jones. I’m the smallest player on our team,” Jim recalled Mick saying.
He may have been the smallest player on the team at the time but, by all accounts, there was nothing small about the way Mick lived his life, or loved those around him.
In the early 1990s, Mick took his future wife on their first date at the Falcon Hotel.
He used a voucher he earned at footy that day and $20 borrowed from his parents.
Judy and Mick were engaged in 1992 and married at St Augustine’s Church in Kyabram the following year.
Their life was full of love, laughter and farming, surrounded by the people they loved most.
They share-farmed at Nanneella for nine years before buying a dairy farm in Kyabram, where they stayed for 22 years.
In May 2017, at the age of 51, Mick was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
It was that year Mick and Judy made the difficult decision to sell the cows then, in 2020, the farm.
As with everything in life, Mick brought his all to his fight against prostate cancer, and he threw himself into raising awareness about the disease, in the hope he could help others.
Mick was a guest speaker at several Biggest Blokes’ Lunch days and other functions, and gave radio and newspaper interviews and a talk at his local footy club.
For this reason his prostate cancer support nurse, Sonia Strachan, described him as a “pin-up boy” for the prostate cancer education cause.
Mick encouraged other men to get a simple test done to screen for possible prostate cancer.
Mick didn’t have any prostate cancer symptoms when diagnosed. In 2019, he told The News, “If I hadn’t have had the blood test, I wouldn’t have known.”
A beloved fixture in the lives of many, Mick will be missed.
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