Firefighter Brian Howard’s first day on the job was his 21st birthday.
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Nearly half a century later the West Tamworth brigade captain is ready to hang up his helmet.
“It wasn’t a job it was the blokes you were with, a great fellowship, it was a boys club but there was mateship and comradeship in it – if there was a firey in trouble people would come from everywhere to help out,” he said.
His first job was in Randwick, Sydney – a car carrying five passengers had wrapped itself around a tree. There weren’t any survivors.
Back in those days the pub was the psychologists office and mates were the counsellors.
As a young firefighter just out of the Paddington training college, Mr Howard saw his fair share of horror.
He was a responder at the Granville train crash in 1977, 83 people died after a crowded commuter train derailed and was buried under a road bridge that collapsed on two of the carriages.
“It was very, very busy – we used to sleep at night on a cot mattress on the lino floor,” he said.
“I probably think of it every day, after the initial accident it was plain to see we would be there for a week.
“On the last few nights they were lifting the last of the cement blocks off the train and that was pretty traumatic.
“Nearly a week after the accident there was still a lot of people trapped, there were dead bodies still trapped in the wreckage.”
Today such an incident would see an almost immediate referral to psychological help, in those days it was just something you were expected to deal with.
It was his mates that got him through, and with at least 60 firefighters on duty at any given shift there were plenty of shoulders to lean on.
A little more than two decades after the war, Mr Howard served alongside a number of returned servicemen.
He earned $64 a week and worked “awful” shifts, but it was the resilience of his fellow men that kept him going.
“There were some tough fireys and that sticks out a lot, it’s why I wanted to stay in it – I couldn’t wait to get to work,” he said.
“We had a strong union and we stood fast, they gave us a $5 pay rise once and took it off us the next week so we went on strike for that, we went on strike to get raincoats.”
With a young family and a blossoming music career, Mr Howard moved to the country music capital in 1989 and took on a job as the announcer on the local radio station.
He worked alongside John Minson on Hoedown, a popular 2TM program credited with uniting the voices of country music.
Eventually Mr Howard decided to cut down his hours at the fire station to throw himself into radio.
”Tamworth was the place to be,” he said.
“I left it too long, I’m glad I’m going, I got left behind and out of touch – I’m just too old to do it, it’s a young person’s job.”
Now Mr Howard works on the breakfast radio program at 88.9 with a fairly demanding schedule – but he’ll always credit his 48 years as a firefighter with shaping who he is today.
“I think it makes you a good person, you have a lot of respect for your mates and the people you work with,” he said.
“It makes you a good team worker, they don’t have freelancers in this job everybody works in a team.”