Career forged in mateship, driven by compassion

Watching footage of bushfires fills this retired firefighter with dread, because he knows how challenging it is for the crews battling to control them. This is his story.

Retired firefighter John Robinson shares memories of a career spanning 36 years. Picture: Dominika Lis

WATCHING footage of bushfires fills retired firefighter John Robinson with dread, because he knows how challenging it is for the crews battling to control them.

“Most fireys would rather have a factory fire, than a real bad bushfire because you’re really at the mercy of nature and Australia is one of those countries – it’s absolutely gorgeous and magnificent, but it can turn on you,” John explains.

The Kallangur resident faced all kinds of fires in his 36 years in the job he says was the perfect fit for a larrikin who felt good about helping others.

It wasn’t a job he set out to do, and came about when he’d returned to his home town of Mt Isa in 1981 to find there were no jobs in the mines. John thought it would do until “a real job came along”.

“Once I got in, I thought where have they been hiding this demi-paradise … It was just the right job for the right person at the time,” he explains.

“I warmed to it and didn’t get instantly good at it, you have to learn and put in. I wasn’t a natural, but I had enough brain power to work out the formulas and things we had to use then for pumping.

“I warmed to the intellectual side of things and I really enjoyed the camaraderie. That was astonishing. You hear people say ‘it made a man of me’ and it really sort of did.”

He and his family moved to Brisbane in 1993 and he worked at all of the fire stations to the north of Brisbane and many on the southside.

That camaraderie he enjoyed in Mt Isa followed him to the big smoke and continued to follow him when he retired in 2017.

Retired firefighter John Robinson shares memories of a career spanning 36 years. Picture: Dominika Lis

He and a couple of former firefighter mates, John Luhrs and Glenn Bell, started meeting for coffee at Lillybrook shopping centre regularly about two years ago.

That group quickly grew and they now catch up with about 80 current and retired firefighters, of all ranks, at Club Pine Rivers for a coffee morning every month.

They share stories from the old days, have a laugh and refer to each other by the nicknames earned on the job. There’s a tight bond forged in the flames, heat and smoke, and galvanised by banter and “Aussie humour”.

“There was always something funny that would happen at a fire. People trying to be helpful and absolutely stuffing the job up,” John explains.

While John enjoys a joke and would never miss an opportunity for banter with his mates, something stronger was driving him in each shift. He likens it to part of a music video to a song called Shine a Light by Robbie Robertson.

“There’s a scene in that that probably epitomises the great feeling you used to get not so much from saving a life, which is the main thing, or saving a house or saving a budgie … you’ve done something to put a smile on someone’s face or wipe the tears away and that was just great,” he explains.

“There’s a scene in it where you see kids turning around because there’s a fire engine going through and there’s these urban African/American blokes playing basketball who also turn around when the siren and lights go by.

“Just that feeling that you’re important and you’re making a contribution. You love it when you’ve pulled a good trick and you got a fire out in a tricky way or unusual way.”

Retired firefighter John Robinson with his son on the last job.

His son Devon followed him in to the job in 2016, and the pair worked together on John’s last job – a fire at Boondall Wetlands in 2017.

John says he knew as he was crawling through the mud on that day, he’d made the right decision to call it quits and realised it had been an amazing ride.