” I’ve been a member of the SES for 44 years and 83 days. I was transferred from Wagga Wagga teachers college in 1970 when the teachers college opened here. It grew to the Southern Cross University. In 1990 I retired after 40 odd years as head of Dept. senior lecturer there so I was able to spend a lot more time with SES. I’ve been Controller a number of times. Once was before I went overseas with United Nations. I took my wife and two youngest children and did a stint in Sierra Leone in West Africa before the horrible Ebola hit. I made the decision for the good of the unit to step down when I turned 75 because you need contingency plans to keep the unit and encourage the younger ones. Our unit controller now is Mel and I said to her ‘You can do this job! I’ll help you. I’ll give you 12 months, you make me your deputy’ and that was 7 years ago. I’m 82 next month and I enjoy the company of the young ones. It’s a constant battle for them to take the mickey out of me.
The biggest event we’ve ever had was the October 2007 hail storm that hit Lismore. We’d only been in these headquarters since the June and it hit in October. We had 80 teams working out of here. They came from everywhere. They came from Albury, Broken Hill, Moree, just everywhere. We’ve had a lot of floods but that storm was the worst.
I was here in 1974 for the biggest flood we’ve had and we were in the old high school building which is now The Conservatorium of Music. That went under. I had put all my books and things on top of benches and the water came up past the second floor above the benches so I lost all my professional life, books, etc. We got trashed! There was a period during the 70’s and mid 80’s where every year and sometimes more we got regular floods. Last big flood was 1989 and that got to 11.2 metres from memory. The 1974 flood was 12.2 metres. In May 2005 the CBD levy was built and just after we had a flood that got to 10.4 so close to going over.
We have a reputation in Lismore as being the most flood prone town in NSW because we have 2 rivers that come together in the middle of the town which exacerbates the situation. If we get a flood that comes over the levy it will fill up like a bath tub. Although we have massive pumps, two with an incredible output, people say… ‘Just turn on the pumps’ but there’s so much water and where do you pump it? It will be like trying to empty a bath with a teaspoon. In saying that the CBD levy bank has saved 75% of the floods in Lismore which is pretty good. It hasn’t come over yet so we’ll see.
We have 55 active members and with reserves we have close on 80. Floods and storms are what we do but we get called out to assist police with searches, missing persons, forensic searches. By law we are the agency in control for floods, storms and tsunamis. We are also the secondary agency here for road crash rescue. We have a team of about 15 specially trained people with the ‘jaws of life’ and other things to assist the police in road crash rescue. My passion is floods and flood intelligence. I’ve developed many templates and records over the years. You never know with mother nature. We’ve rescued cows, race horses and other smaller animals.
We have contacts all over the area who we can call in a flood and get updates. The school bus drivers know the roads and travel everyday so they help out. The area we are responsible for spreads wide, Lismore, Numulgi, Modanville, Corndale, Clunes. One of the important things is to make certain that we don’t leave people out on the field for too long. Particularly if it’s a storm job. They’re cold, they’re wet and hungry. So we have a welfare officer that keeps check.
One of the funny things that happened was in one of the big floods, we were in the old building and we had to boat through the back water to come around and get up the stairs. There was a boat with a crew coming in for a welfare break and they’d passed under a tree where a snake had fallen into the boat. They were about to tether up and this poor old snake was trying to get out of the boat and there was pandemonium. The boat was rocking and I’m at the top of the stairs, didn’t see the snake and I’m saying, ‘Come on you fellas, stop fooling around, the cook’s got a feed up here for you.’ Meanwhile they’re abandoning ship. It was a red bellied black snake. That was the days before iPads and mobiles where you would have been taking selfies with the snake. Funny days!
It’s our 60th anniversary on the 29th December this year. We have 4 children, 3 are teachers and one is a librarian. 10 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. We had 3 girls then a break. 6 years later lightning struck and we had our son. We always say that if we’d had Paul first we would have stopped there. He was a bugger of a kid after the 3 girls. He’s a fine man now with two of his own but we laugh. He say’s ‘I don’t know where they get it from’. I was born in Casino and Ruth was born in Ballina. We met in teachers college in 1953 and we had a long distance courting . She was appointed to Sydney and I was at Gloucester so we wrote letters and here we are. I have no plans to retire while I’m healthy as it’s a good outlet and I can pass on knowledge and information. I love it here. Within half an hour you’re up in the hills, waterfalls, or the beach. We love camping and remote places. Ruth loves photography and painting. I’m trying to empty that bucket list of trips I want to do.”