This is Joff. He is the kind of guy who rocks two pairs of glasses at a time. He was big in the pottery scene of Warrandyte in the 70’s while also being a deep sea diver erecting (lol) oil rigs in Bass Straite. Joff got married, divorced and hit that mid-life crisis patch hard. But instead of buying a car, he became a firefighter and rose through the ranks over time to Acting Assistant Chief Fire Officer with the Melbourne Metro Fire Brigade to be specific. He was often on the color-box giving statements, as he also put out flames at the Big Ones: Ash Wednesday, Coode Island and Black Saturday to name just a few.
Are all firemen shredded muscle gods?
When I joined lot of them were fat-gutted lazy bastards. It destroyed my concept for a few years. But the new generation are pretty good, they’re pretty sharp.
Ok so go for the young ones. Got it. What was a fire you went out to and were like ‘C’mon, seriously?’
Smoke alarms above toasters, seen plenty of those. Thinking back on my 34 years, and without getting in to too much detail, people had a lot of things erm, stuck on themselves. Eventually we get called in. We’re talking saucepans stuck on kid’s heads. There was even a woman who said she ‘sat on the tap’ in the shower, and we had to release her from that. The fire brigade invented a ring-cutter to get washers and other bits and bobs off people’s fingers. The record was SEVEN metal washers on one man’s appendage.
What about..
Oh, also there was another guy who had an ornate twisted fire-poker stuck somewhere he didn’t want it, he said he ‘fell over’ onto it. We had to cut off the remaining length of it so he could get to hospital to have it removed.
No cats up trees?
Yeah in the 90’s we had a CEO who was fond of cats, and he legislated in our response matrix that we had to go out to ‘cats up trees’ calls. I do suspect that some of the outlaying stations would get them out with a hose.
What was the hardest thing you had to deal with?
Car fatalities were awful. Traumatising. Kids are the worst. Actually, one of the worst things we have found were people that had got into water tanks above ground. Cooked alive in the bushfires.
That sounds awful. Can you…
Oh wait – once there was a guy in Brighton (former Mayor) who was a hoarder. It took us three days to find him in the ashes, because his house was solid with everything from beer to videos to couches lining the walls. Have you heard of a hangi? It’s a traditional NZ style of slow cooking. It was pretty much that with him in it.
Oh, that sounds awful. Don’t you have nightmares?
No I don’t but many of my compatriots have been affected. There is a dark side but there is far more on the bright side.
And now?
I’ve retired from being a firey. Now I’m a cartoonist for a local paper. I also build boats and classical guitars in my spare time. I’m also in the middle of writing a book about a cottage I built on the Gippsland lakes 20 years ago. I’m married to an amazing woman named Cherry who I met when running a pottery class. We were recently crowned King and Queen of Warrandyte at the annual festival. I was dressed as Henry the Eighth, she was Cleopatra, and we rode camels down the main street.
