Pat Hunter was still.
His eyes flecked with amber light, glowing like fireflies in the blackened sky. The air around him was non-existent, not even so much as a gentle kiss from the breeze blessed him.
Normally, he and the other fireys would be hoping for a strong wind on their tail – something on their side to repel the flames. They’d had it only moments before.
But now, nothing.
As the thick, black smoke mercilessly smothered the sky above, the Marysville township could only stand in the silence together as the inferno towered above them, casting its hellish light against their faces.
A lone volunteer firey’s voice finally sliced through the silence.
“I haven’t got a home to go tonight,” he said to Pat.
Marysville had narrowly avoided the devastation of the Black Friday fires of 1939 by a mere five miles. But 70 years later, the rage of the Black Saturday bushfires had all but consumed the entire town, ravenously feeding on anything that laid on its path. 45 had lost their lives.
And Pat was right in the middle of it.
They were trapped.
For hours, the township could only watch from the safety of Gallipoli Park as the fire engulfed Marysville.
“As a firey standing there and you’re watching the town burn, and you’ve got one of your own standing beside you, yeah, it’s probably one of the tough calls of the time,” Pat said.
But among the devastation, there lay something important for Pat. A belief so firmly engrained in his experienced mind, no matter how trying the circumstance. He had carried it with him from his beginnings as a volunteer firefighter back in Eildon in 1999.
“The one thing you should do at the end of each job, is to learn one thing. Just take something away from it,” he said.
Now, eight years after Black Saturday, Pat instils this staunch belief into all the new recruits coming into the Country Fire Authority.
As part of the CFA’s Leadership Team, Pat is tasked with delivering leadership training to CFA volunteers, and has done so for the past ten years.
Volunteer firefighters come from all walks of life, and it was only a chance encounter that saw Pat join the CFA in 1999, when he was getting a hot water system repaired by a volunteer firefighter at his Eildon holiday house.
“It depends on where you are, it really does. Those who volunteer see their sense of community there [at the CFA]. It’s my role now to mentor those and train them and bring them on,” he said.
In addition to being involved in the CFA’s Leadership Team, Pat is the First Lieutenant at the Dandenong Fire Brigade. The most senior volunteer on-hand at the station, Pat is currently in his first term of service under this role.
But the future is already in mind for Pat. Not only for himself, but for the volunteers under his respected tutelage.
“I want to be able to in that point of time then to have mentored someone else to then take over. And then I’m happy to sit in the background and be a mentor, continue to train, continue to bring on the new guys and new recruits,” Pat said.
“Once you become part of the CFA, you’re welcome anywhere at any fire station.”
The spirit within the CFA headquarters captures the very essence of this community. Even when Pat walks into the jam-packed CFA café in Burwood, he is greeted with a resounding series of cheers. Some of them grizzled, others fresh-faced – but all show their gratitude when he enters.
“They’re all vols,” he said. “Known them all for years.”
But this sense of community could all soon change.
The Victorian State Cabinet has recently proposed a bill which will see the “splitting up” of the CFA. Paid CFA firefighters will come together with members of the MFB to form a new body, known as Fire Rescue Victoria. The CFA in the future will consist solely of volunteer firefighters.
In the suburb of Eltham, tensions between volunteer and career firefighters have purportedly become so toxic, they are unable to work with each other. Now, the Eltham volunteers are urging the State Government to prevent the sale of their old station, in order for them to avoid interaction with career fireys.
“I’m only going to speak on behalf of Dandenong, [but] we have a really, really good relationship with our staff and we intend to stay in the same station together,” Pat said.
The Dandenong Brigade is the largest and busiest CFA station in Victoria. The $13.2 million facility is outfitted with six trucks and a command vehicle, and is manned by 80 career staff and 58 volunteers. Annually, Dandenong responds to 2500 calls.
Pat pauses, deep in thought. A seasoned hand strokes his salt-and-pepper beard; a visual sign of his many years of experience. The other weathered hand swirls the remaining dregs of coffee that sit in his cup, before the soft clinking of china marks the end of his pondering.
“We couldn’t stand alone by ourselves. Dandenong does 2500 calls a year, so there’s no way known I could come around and ask volunteers to cover 2500 calls.”
Despite presenting at the parliamentary inquiry in Traralgon, the imparting of knowledge to the new generation is at the forefront of Pat’s mind.
“I’m not one of these crusty buggers that just wants to argue the point of everything,” he said.
“I work on the philosophy can you control it, can you influence it? If you can’t do either of those, let it go. ‘Cause all you’ll do is end up in a stress ball.”
Pat still carries his mantra with him – he’s always taking something away, continually moving forward and passing his knowledge on.
And it’s this spirit which keeps the flame of the CFA burning.
Comments