“I was born in Wollongong in 1968 and lived there until 2012. When I left high school I worked in the Public Service with the local courts, Legal Aid and the Independent Commission Against Corruption. It was fine but I was bored. I saw a lot of public servants just going through the motions for the next 25 years and I didn’t want to be like that.
I bit the bullet and went to the Police Academy in September 2000. I graduated and went to Wollongong where I stayed for a long time. In 2010 I went to Kings Cross which was extremely challenging but I had a really good time and worked there for 2 1/2 years. It was one of the best times I’ve had in the force. I made some wonderful friends who I still have today.
My wife and I got sick of the rat race so we took a posting at Ivanhoe which had a population of 117 at the time. I did my tenure there for 2 1/2 years. It’s called the Golden Ticket in the Police force. Once you work in a special, remote place you can work anywhere you like so we decided to move to the best place in NSW close to a jail. We wanted half country and half city. My wife works in Corrective Services so the best place was Lismore. We are really happy we chose Lismore. We moved here Australia Day 2015. Five years later, this Australia Day I won the Citizen of the Year award which was so lovely.
I’m also very proud to be in the rural Fire Service. I joined in 2014 in Ivanhoe where there was only one big fire then I transferred here. I was lucky to get in a brigade with Captain Steve Garbutt who is the best Captain in the state. My wife and kids are also in the brigade. We are an RFS family like a lot of families around here. We just got back from Nerrigundah who’s town got destroyed and on Saturday I’m off to Canberra on another strike force.
We were at Rappville and that was really tough. That was a really bad day. We saw the whole town destroyed and it was extremely difficult. We were lucky we weren’t killed. Thanks to Steve we saved the school and at least 45 lives who were sheltering in the school. If the school had burnt we would have lost all these people. The school was surrounded by fire, there was nowhere to go. We held the fire back. I got an ember in my eye with first degree burns. We couldn’t stop for several hours and it was one of the hardest experiences in my life. I know everyone who was there that day is a different person now. It was horrific. I haven’t been back and I’m not keen to go back. It was hard but it was good leadership from Steve that stopped the school burning down . We lost all of the trees and fences around it. I counted 12 houses burnt. So many animals on fire, birds and animals falling dead from the sky. I could hear animals inside houses screaming for help and we couldn’t do anything about it. We used rake hoes and put ourselves between one of the houses and the fire. The flames were hitting us but we put it out and eventually saved it. A few hours later it burnt down anyway. That was a rotten day. I went out to Cabargo and it’s like there’s been missile strikes on that whole town. Almost the whole town has been destroyed. We saw one fly and one kangaroo in about 10 hours. Everything was dead. There is definitely more than a billion animals gone.
Times like that are extremely difficult but over all you have more good experiences than bad. I thoroughly enjoy the RFS. I would encourage anyone to join. My youngest is 16 and she’s in it. She’s a smart kid and we are very lucky to have the best training team here in the Northern Rivers. All of the skills kick in when you’re on the ground. We have people in their 80’s who are in the RFS.”