THE catastrophic Ash Wednesday bushfires across Southern Australia were a pivotal moment in the life of Brenton Ragless.

It was February, 1983 and the seven-year-old was home with his mum, Marcia, at Eden Hills in the Adelaide Hills, increasingly worried about losing their property.

Out of contact was his father, Leigh.

The CFS volunteer was one of thousands fighting the deadly infernos that killed 75 across South Australia and Victoria, including 17 firefighters.

“I still remember the manner and tone in which mum spoke that day,” Ragless says.

“There was no doubting there was a real magnitude about what was happening. Dad didn’t come home for several days and that had a big impact on us all.”

The bushfires made the young Ragless realise his father wasn’t immortal; it also demonstrated something more elemental — the life-and-death power of weather.

Now 43, Ragless recalls growing up, the eldest of three, in a devout Christian creationist family who were regular church goers in Eden Hills.

He took a particular interest in epic Bible meteorological stories — Noah’s ark and the Great Flood, Moses parting the Red Sea and Jesus calming the storm.

Hanging out at his dad’s Eden Hills CFS station, he also realised weather watching was a big part of a firefighter’s tools and the young lad inherited his father’s interest — he was a radar technician at Adelaide airport — in the subject.

“We’d spend our time watching planes take off and that’s when I gained a fascination for weather conditions and checking out the skies,” he says.

Twenty five years later that deep interest would help him secure a first role on television as a weather reporter.

We’ve booked lunch at Osteria Oggi just down from the Channel 9 studios in Hindmarsh Square and there’s a smile of recognition among the staff and patrons as ‘Raggy’, walks in.

At 195cm the jolly giant with broad beaming smile — and in full TV make-up — is hard not to miss, but in many regards he is not the man he used to be, and certainly not the one that weighed in a few years back at 130kg (20 stones).

He concedes his love of food, and sugar in particular, used to outweigh regular exercise despite being a keen swimmer and bike rider.

But a determined effort has seen him drop 30kg over a few years.

“Losing weight starts with the mind, not the stomach,” he says, pushing a healthy starter of a few greens, around his plate.

Even though TV claps on even more weight, vanity wasn’t the motivation.

He wants to be around, as long as he can for his kids. And he has strong genetic reasons to stay in shape.

His dad Leigh has had heart bypass surgery and his grandfather died of heart disease, before they could meet, at 63.

A fall down the steep marble steps of the Adelaide Town Hall — that nearly cost him a leg from a post-operational infection — was the wake-up call.

“I’d just finished an interview when I stumbled and fell and landed on my knees,” he says.

“I was operated on that night but got a golden staph infection and spent three months on a drip. “I used to do the weather report while still connected to the drip. The doc said my weight was a ticking time bomb and I knew I had to act.

It’s hard to see Ragless saying ‘no’ to anything … he’s bordering on over-polite and accommodating to a fault.

Losing weight could have had an added benefit as he and wife Hayley had trouble falling pregnant initially and dropping the kilos could well have helped them conceive.

They now have Edan, 3, and James, who turned one in November and, as we order mains of tagliatelle beef ragu, he says a third is very much up for discussion.

He may have presented the weather for five years but Ragless is quick to tell me he’s not a meteorologist, and certainly not a journalist, but that his life has been a rich training ground for the news reading profession.

And it’s no surprise with his background, including as media liaison officer for the CFS, it’s the big dramatic weather events where his knowledge and experience can help deliver the story.

In his decade at Channel 9 the major events have included the Pinery and Sampson Flat bushfires, record heatwaves and floods, and the natural disaster that affected more South Australians than any other event, the statewide blackout of 2016.

“That night was just amazing,” he says.

“We didn’t even have enough backup power in the studio … so we went out and did a live cross from the city. It was pitch black and I did 15 minutes from the streets on North Terrace. We were all trying to capture a feeling, a moment of history.

“There has been no bigger story in my time because it was a merger of so many things …. a big emergency, state and federal politics, issues around the energy crisis and questions around climate change.

“I don’t have tickets on myself but I feel my background and my parents’ background has been preparing me to be that person at that moment to tell those stories … not just the facts and the figures, but how this affects the entire community.”

He quotes the comparison of US news broadcaster Walter Cronkite who played a critical role in striking the right balance portraying the gravitas, emotion and collective shock the assassination of President John F Kennedy had on America.

“His entire life and career prepared him for that moment. He had all the skills to deliver that story,” he says.

“Not that I’m comparing myself with Walter Cronkite.”

He talks with ease, energy and enthusiastic and is keen not to be seen as arrogant.

In a business where egos can run rampant he prides himself on keeping his well in check.

He had a lot to be modest about as a student at Blackwood High school where he underachieved spectacularly, mainly due to a lack of academic application.

With poor marks he was clueless about a future after Year 12 in 1994.

A promotion from the check-out counter to the fruit and veg section at Blackwood Coles was his biggest career move in the next 12 months, although volunteering for the Eden Hills CFS, and as a tour guide and bus driver paid off in the long run.

He also honed his presenting skills and made a few bucks as a black-tie DJ for weddings and special occasions.

From a family of competitive swimmers based at the Marion Swimming Club he first found a talent on the microphone at 14, when a hip injury kept him sidelined for months, as an announcer behind the blocks, introducing competitors.

Those skills saw him volunteer as a radio announcer with not-for-profit community radio station 107.9 Life FM, which led to a full time role four years later voicing the stations ‘Dial-it Weather Information Service’ for Telstra.

Soon he was presenting afternoons and two years later co-hosting ‘breakfast’ with Len Firth.

Communication comes naturally to the Ragless clan with younger brother Andrew a naval officer working in Defence communications and younger sister Natalie, based in Melbourne, working in communications with the Victorian Country Fire Authority.

A few years later, those CFS connections saw him offered a casual job as media liaison officer, where he worked closely, among others, with the team at Nine News, providing commentary and background on natural and man-made disasters.

Soon he was offered a full time role and reluctantly left Life FM.

“It saddened me to leave Life FM, and especially the ‘brekky show’,” he told one interviewer.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the CFS communications was a dream job but he gave it up for the bright lights of Albury in NSW, and a two-year contract with commercial radio station STAR FM.

It proved disastrous.

He had just bought a house in the town when he got a call from the new station owners to come in for a chat.

Still under contract he was sacked on the spot … surplus to requirements.

Under the conditions of the new homeowners grant he had to live in his house for 12 months or pay back the grant — so he saw out his time in Albury applying for work all around the country and just surviving on Centrelink job search allowance.

“Mum and dad were very concerned and I’d call it the scariest time of my life but it made me in lots of ways,” he says.

He spent a week on the Gold Coast auditioning to run the Dolphin Show at Sea World, and was disappointed to just miss out.

His next job turned out to be his old job — back with South Australian CFS as media liaison officer.

Soon after he met Hayley. She was 20 and he was 28. It was love at first sight — for one of them.

“Part of my job was looking after the photographic section for CFS and I had to pop into Diamonds Camera and Video to have them processed every few weeks,” he says.

“I have to say, that wasn’t a regular thought on meeting a girl for the first time but I knew I’d met someone very special. She wasn’t at the ‘let’s get married stage at all’ and it took 12 months to really ignite.”

His love of a pun comes out when he says the couple worked hard “to develop” their relationship.

Back at the CFS, chief firefighter Euan Ferguson told him that, with a regular girlfriend and good job, it was time to put his head down and study hard — which he did, graduating with a Masters in Communication with UniSA.

He spent a year on contract with the Department of Defence in public relations, based at Edinburgh, and later in Canberra but — having just proposed to Hayley — he felt Adelaide was where he was meant to be.

It was early 2008.

Working for ABC radio as a fire and emergency reporter he bumped into senior Channel 9 cameraman Mark Hemsworth who dropped the bombshell that legendary weatherman Keith Martyn was retiring from the role.

Hemsworth suggested ‘Raggy’ should put his hat in the ring.

He had never been inside a TV studio before the audition.

“I worked with a friend to do a mock live weather cross and just kept rehearsing that for the audition,” he says.

Ali Carle (now Clarke, on ABC morning radio) was filling in and he didn’t think he had a chance.

But the news director, Tony Agars, thought he brought something different — his CFS background.

“I grew up like a lot of South Australians watching Keith Martyn and I’d buy his (SA) Almanac for my dad and grandfather. I’m sad I never got to meet Keith but he rang through on my first night on air though which was great.”

He took filling the shoes seriously even continuing the SA Almanac, the calendar of state events with a focus on the weather, that Martyn produced for 23 years.

Producing the Almanac was unpaid and took a good three months to compile.

He wasn’t too disappointed when, after three editions the venture came to a close in 2012 when Channel 9 and the publisher took different directions.

Thinking ahead he secured the domain name ‘SA Almanac’ to use for an online version but says “Google has all the answers these days.”

With the TV weatherman role in the bag, he rounded out 2008 as the best year of his life, by marrying Hayley.

Five years later, when Channel 9 bought the station from WIN-TV, Ragless became the beneficiary of some cutthroat presenting decisions when he was asked to join Kate Collins as co-host reading the 6pm news bulletin.

His first broadcast was a live cross from the Adelaide Oval on the banks of Torrens River during the 2013 Ashes Test match.

The moment had special family significance that no viewer could have guessed.

It was the exact same spot where his ancestor, John Ragless, had settled 175 years previously.

“Four generations back …. with no future in England and free passage to Australia John Ragless, then aged 20, took a five month ocean crossing on the ship Eden to get here. It was a one-way trip in those days.

“They took a bullock wagon from Holdfast Bay and camped out on the banks of the Torrens for more than a year. I couldn’t help but think of him standing there proudly that night.”

A woodcutter back in Angmering, in Sussex, John Ragless took a first job in the new colony as publican of the Woodman Inn in Grenfell Street in early 1839.

That year he bought section 343 on Main North Road in Pine Forest and named it Angmering Vale Farm where he raised 12 children with wife Eliza.

Later the wider Ragless family owned most of the suburb of Tonsley Park, where several streets are named for them, including Selgar Avenue (Ragles backwards) where they had almond orchards.

Their ancestor sees his life path as an episode of Mr Squiggle …. and even declared that on air one night when his weather charts went awry.

“My life was abstract just these lines and squiggles,” he says.

“That’s my story and I love to tell young people that they are many paths to where you want to be. It took me 15 years to become a newsreader and it’s a role I see for myself forever — if they’ll have me.”

Nine seem very keen having him fill in for Karl Stefanovic on the flagship Today Show and invited him back this year.

The first call invite came two weeks after the arrival of his second child.

“It was a big surprise, an interesting curve ball, an honour and very flattering,” he says.

He enjoyed the ‘light and shade’ and the ability to be off script that being on air for three and a half hours brings.

“It was a window into the world of television I’d never seen. Mass TV production in Adelaide was over by my time. I was working with 30 odd people on the floor and more than 50 around the country.

“For a week of it we crossed to for the Tour Down Under and I was able to talk up the state. I’m a parochial South Australian and we’ve got a lot to shout about.”

At the time there were rumours Nine was looking a replacement for Stefanovic, who had lost his gloss over a marriage split, but Ragless says he was happy to head back to Adelaide — with no bonus or pay rise — and no promise of another opportunity.

“There was lots of friendly banter about coming back which reached the newspaper gossip columns, but never more than that.”

He says he would consider seriously any offers but he’s settled in South Australia and in the news reading role.

“I see myself as a married father of two, passionately invested in this state and interested in all our stories,” he says.

“I enjoy sharing the news of the day with our viewers. And doing it in the most authentic and genuine way with concern by those impacted.

And that could be you tomorrow as Ragless meets hundreds regularly out and about in the community as a volunteer and representative for Nine.

Fame is something he’s struggled with — but has warmed to, although he much prefers being known as a ‘personality’ rather than a celebrity.

“I found it challenging for sure at first, it really hits you,” he says.

“My profile has raised steadily over the years and I’ve never felt swamped although I don’t enjoy the negative aspects of being famous …. I just can’t relate to that. I pride myself on being the same on air and off air and I never take it for granted people will know who I am.”

Far more are recognising him in the streets and that will only increase with national exposure on Today.

Other regular gigs he’s picked up over the years include as MC of the Adelaide Christmas Pageant for 11 years.

Proud of his Christian faith and beliefs, he’s also the regular host of the South Australian Prayer Breakfast, organised by the Christian Business and Management Connections (CBMC), an interdenominational evangelical Christian organisation.

During his 10-year involvement the breakfast has grown to the largest in the country with thousands attending these days.

Away from the spotlight he has several passions including the annual Bay to Birdwood motoring run for veteran, vintage and classic vehicles, sitting alongside Leigh who drives his own 1961 fire engine.

Family always comes first and he’s incorporating another family obsession with steam trains into the mix.

He recalls as a kid watching at Blackwood Station as the big locomotives took on water.

“They were loud, hissing beasts, remarkable things,” he says.

“I wanted to get my boiler ticket for my boys as it’s such a great hobby to share with your kids. Walt Disney’s passion was the railways and that spurred him on to launching Disneyland.”

He’s been learning the ropes, or more-like the shovels, on the Semaphore coast railway and trains at the National Railway Museum and intends to gain an advanced boiler licence that would see him qualified to drive trains on the Picchi Ricchi railway and the SteamRanger Goolwa Cockle Train.

Just last month he was appointed Patron of SteamRanger and an ambassador for the wider heritage transport scene.

“There’s nothing like a steam train,” he says.

“You get this cold metal beast to wake up and it takes three hours to build the pressure in a giant kettle. I love it. It takes me back to my tour guide days giving other families a great time. “

“You put on pair of overalls and a hat — and you get these people pointing and saying, ‘Do you think he looks a bit like that guy off the telly?’”

That ‘guy off the telly’ feels the responsibility of following in the steps of Keith Martyn, and legendary newsreaders Kevin Crease and Rob Kelvin at Nine but forging his own path is always the goal.

“It’s up to my generation to take on leadership and responsibility roles and I embrace that,” he says.

“But we do it in our way. You have to be true to yourself and that’s who I’ve worked very hard to become.”