Local CFA heroes honoured

LAST Saturday, the Tooborac community gathered to celebrate its firefighters.

In the first award ceremony since 2015, 58 certificates and medals were presented to past and present Tooborac Fire Brigade members.

Among them were 65-year and 60-year Life Medals presented to Phillip McHarg and Hec Hagan.

Brigade Captain Jason Hagan said the night was a good opportunity to thank all of the brigade’s volunteers.

“They put in countless hours over the years to help serve their community; it’s an important role our volunteers play and it’s just well-deserved recognition,” he said.

Mr McHarg has been a CFA member for over sixty-five years and said it was his fellow firefighters who had made the experience special.

“It’s mateship and friends, good people who are proud of wearing the yellow overalls,” he said.

“Joining as a 14-year-old I was among mainly older men, but the way they welcomed me in was wonderful, I admired those men they were good people.”

Mr McHarg said CFA volunteers supported each other through difficult situations.

“We’d to go to fires and we’d go and have a few beers and talk about it,” he said. “Most of the time we’d forgotten where we’d been by the next day.”

He said modern firefighting equipment had made the work much safer and easier.

“When I started off we had older trucks, the fuel would vaporise and the pumps would stop,” he said.

“Now the modern trucks, there’s no chance of them stopping through vaporisation and the communications are great too.

“Air support is unbelievable, it means you can easily get into spots where you used to try and get to with trucks but you’d catch them on rocks and timber.

“It’s all hilly, rocky country here and air support is terrific for this area.”

Being part of a collective effort was ultimately what made Mr McHarg’s time as a firefighter so special.

“In your yellow overalls you’re one team, when you meet people anywhere with your overalls on, you’re not arguing oh you’re Collingwood, or you’re Carlton, you’re all one mob,” he said.

In addition to his 65-year Life Medal, Mr McHarg was awarded first, second, third and fourth clasps for a National Medal already received in 1984.

For fellow long-time firefighter Hec Hagan’s community service has been a big part of his life.

The 77-year-old retired sheep and cattle farmer was awarded a 60-year Life Medal by the CFA, but he said his experience went much further back.

“I would have officially joined up when I was 17, but I was riding on the back of fire trucks long before then,” he said.

“My uncle was brigade captain and we even garaged the fire truck on our property, so every time there was a fire my cousin and I always went along too.

“As kids we loved it, carrying knapsacks on our backs, and it was a bit different in those days to what it is now.”

Mr Hagan agreed that changes in technology had helped firefighters enormously.

“I think the air support has been marvellous,” he said “the vehicles, the pumps and all that sort of thing are much better than they used to be.

“We never had fire shields around the back of the truck, it was just a unit on the back of an ordinary truck and I fell off many a time.”

Mr Hagan is a member of a multi-generation farming family in the Tooborac area and said that personal connections had helped build and sustain the brigade in the previous years.

“In the past, farmers sons used to all stay at home and progress onto the fire brigade but nowadays the young ones go elsewhere,” he said.

“There are not as many young fellows around the district now as there used to be.”

Mr Hagan has also been awarded a National Medal with first, second, third and fourth clasps.