Tributes flowed at the recent Yass River–Nanima brigade AGM as members celebrated one of the brigade’s longest-serving captains, life member Peter Clark, for his services to the brigade.
See also Rain drowns out 2023 AGM
Peter’s wife Shirley, their daughters, Belinda and Samantha, and their grandchildren were there to see Peter presented with a framed certificate of life membership. He was also presented with a plaque marking his 31 years of service with the brigade and the RFS.
Group 4 Captain, Ron Hardy, presenting the RFS plaque, recapped Peter’s long career with the brigade before touching on the changes in RFS structure that saw our brigade move from Group 2 to Ron’s Group 4, a move in which Peter was significantly involved.
Ron spoke of the many years he had worked with Peter, noting how our brigade “gradually became my ‘go-to’ brigade,” and commending Peter’s reliability and professionalism in all circumstances. He has previously referred to Peter as “a quiet and humble leader who had led the brigade forward in many ways”.
Presenting Peter with the certificate of lifetime membership of the brigade, captain Neville McMartin recalled the first time he met him: “It was a day or two after we moved in, Peter rolled up in the cat 9 and put a printed form under my nose to sign. It was a membership form.”
Once Neville had joined the brigade, “Peter was very supportive and made sure I was contacted if an incident was on even though I was a new member and still working in town,” Neville said. “And he routinely offered me a ride to training.”
Neville also referred to an incident that is vividly remembered by a number of brigade members. “One night while training Peter and I were tasked with operating the quick fill trailer at a very large dam. I realised things had gone quiet. I looked around and Peter was standing in the water with a fishing rod.”
It rained continuously the night of the AGM, Saturday 29 April, but despite the noise of the drumming rain threatening to drown them out, many speakers took the opportunity to express their regard, respect and affection for Peter.
Max Hedges, formerly Group 2 Captain (currently G2 Deputy Captain), who had worked closely with Peter for many years before the brigade moved from Group 2 to Group 4, endorsed Ron’s remarks, speaking of Peter’s easy-going, easy–to-get-along-with manner.
Deputy Rick Mumberson said that, “Even recently, Peter could be found fixing pot holes on our roads and has been barbecue captain at training up until recently”.
Former captain Virginia Rawling congratulated Peter, saying the night’s acknowledgements were “extremely well-deserved”.
“During the late 80s/early 90s, when you first joined the brigade, it was on the brink of big transitional change, with many new volunteers coming on board,” Virginia said. “Together with Ian Oldfield and Stuart Burrows, you were one of those younger, highly capable members who stepped up to became deputies. You were a wonderful deputy and senior during my time as captain.” (1993–1995).
Gareth Ellem, current Senior Deputy, said that Peter “changed my life without my knowing”, by encouraging him first to join the brigade and then demonstrating by example how to do the job, so that “I learned all that was needed almost without knowing it was happening. For instance,” he said, “how to always make the most of each opportunity, such as using a short lull in training on the fast-fill trailer to drop a fishing line into the water”.
This incontrovertible evidence of the fishing moment appeared in the video screening on the night, which also contained pictorial memories of many other moments throughout Peter’s history: from a snap of one of the several trail rides he and Shirley were instrumental in staging as fundraising events in the early 1990s, to one of him sweeping out the water that had flooded the brand new fireshed just an hour before the 2005 Christmas party was due to start.
The video included photos from some of the more recent fires Peter had turned out for, although two of the biggest fires he attended, the Mt Ramsay fire and the Corrigan’s Rd/Thompsons Crossing fire, happened in his early years with the brigade.
Peter was quite emotional at all the plaudits, thanking everyone for the plaque and framed certificate and their kind words, saying how much he had enjoyed his many years with the brigade and how proud he was of it and the members he had spent so much time with. His daughter Belinda stepped up beside him in support.
Peter walked back to his seat amid thunderous applause that even the heavy rain on the shed’s tin roof could not drown out.
Peter’s service to the brigade
Peter and Shirley arrived in the Yass River–Nanima district in the late 1980s, joining the brigade almost immediately. Only a couple of years later, in February 1991, one of the biggest fires in the brigade’s history to that time broke out: the Mt Ramsay fire.
That fire is seared on Peter’s memory, and not only because it threatened his and Shirley’s house. More than 20 years later, during the brigade’s 60th anniversary year in 2017, he still remembered it vividly.
“Shirley stayed and took care of the animals, can’t remember what happened with the kids. And I went off to help fight the fire,” he said.
The fire was in difficult terrain and inaccessible to trucks for several hours until it came out into the open.
“I ended up with Kim Fenely driving a brigade bulk water truck,” Peter recounted. “it was a very difficult truck to drive as it was a 16-speed road ranger gearbox with no syncromesh.
“I will never forget driving toward the fire from Warrambui through a big cutting at night. The wind was howling toward us and we had no idea where we were going. We ended up behind Neil and Fiona’s [Yarrh Winery] in Neil Hall’s place.
“We got to the fire front and I can still see the firefighters battling the blaze. I thought they must be crazy, they didn’t seem to have a hope in hell of stopping it,” he recalls.
But stop it they did, although it took several days before the fireground was declared black, due to the difficult terrain and amount of timber alight. The fire had burnt out about 250 hectares, threatened a number of properties and overrun several firetrucks in sudden wind changes. Fortunately, no crews were injured.
Decades later, in 2014, Peter took brigade members on a training drive over Mt Ramsay, explaining how this days-long fire had behaved, pointing out how difficult the terrain was. “Crews had to wait until the fire came out into the open before they could tackle it,” he said.
Elected deputy, then senior
At the 1991 AGM a few weeks after the Mt Ramsay fire, Peter was elected deputy captain for the first time.
He declined nomination for senior deputy in 1993, remaining a deputy for a further two years. He accepted the nomination for senior in 1995 and went on to hold that role continuously until 2003.
Less than two years after becoming senior, in December 1996, on a hot high-risk fire day three days before Christmas, Tom Kelly was at Peter’s place when the call for the Corrigans Rd/Thompsons Crossing fire came through. “After we got the call,” Peter recalled, “we went out to look and couldn’t believe the smoke.”
Tom and Peter were one of the first crews on the scene but “there was little hope of holding the fire in the conditions,” Peter said.
The fire eventually burnt out 3,000 hectares, destroyed stock and took 3 weeks before it was declared black. It was much more extensive than the Mt Ramsay fire and entered the record books as one of the district’s biggest fires, ranking with the fires that shook our community in 1975, the most devastating fire year in the brigade’s entire history, even today. In those fires, houses, sheds and fencing were destroyed, stock losses were high, and the brigade had to request a Coroner’s inquest into the cause of a fire on a Keirs Road property.
Energetic fundraiser
In addition to fighting some of the district’s biggest fires, Peter, with Shirley, has always also been closely involved in raising funds for the brigade. In the early 1990s, they were the main organisers of three highly successful trail rides, netting the brigade funds that would be considered respectable today, let alone 30 years ago.
The funds were needed, big expenses were on the horizon: for new trucks to replace the original fleet, which was ageing beyond repair and, within a few years, for a permanent fireshed for the brigade. The brigade didn’t have to find all the funds for these purchases, but was liable for significant contributions towards them.
Constructing our first independent ‘home’
In 2000, former member Denis Hussey had initial discussions with shire fire officers about a establishing a permanent fireshed for the brigade. Peter then became deeply engaged in the 5-year-long negotiations with the RFS, Yass Council and Warrambui to secure the site for our shed, raise the funds needed, and get it built, culminating in the first event in the newly built shed, the almost washed-out 2005 Christmas party, recalled so vividly at the 2023 AGM presentation when water again flooded through the shed.
A few years later, shire boundary changes forced restructuring within the RFS and, as Ron alluded to at the presentation, Yass River–Nanima was to move out of Group 2 and into the newly formed Group 4.
“The brigade was very dubious about this move,” Peter recalls. In addition to the many practical changes to be accommodated, including joining with brigades they didn’t know and having a group captain they didn’t know, there were financial considerations for our brigade in this move. Peter spent long hours helping to put the new structure in place and ensuring we were not disadvantaged financially.
Some time later he was to say, “As history has shown, it turned out to be a very successful merger and we couldn’t be happier than to be in Group 4 and have Ron as our Groupy.”
Elected captain in 2003
At the February 2003 AGM, before the merger with Group 4, Peter was nominated captain unopposed, going on to hold the position continuously until he stepped down in 2017 – when the took up the role of president, holding that office for the next four years until he chose to step away from all leadership roles at the 2021 AGM.
Peter’s first election as captain followed a month in which the greatest demands that had ever been placed on our brigade occurred. There had been two fires in our district before Christmas 2002. Then, over 15 days between 15 January and 2 February 2003, we send out crews virtually every day and night to fight the network of fires that threatened Yass shire and, eventually, Canberra. These were the so-called Canberra fires.
Canberra fires
During those 15 days, the brigade provided 30 crews with 20 people, stretching its resources to the limit. Many members did multiple shifts, but the one who did the most was Peter, turning out 11 times in 15 days. On the day the fires broke on Canberra, Peter and Stuart Burrows had been on the McIntyres Hut fireground all night, getting to bed about 9 o’clock in the morning.
Peter was up again a few hours later, answering the urgent call to protect Canberra. “Shirley woke me about 12.30 and said ‘you had better get going’ as Canberra was under threat,” he remembers. “We went to the Mullion and you would never experience worse conditions for firefighting.”
“Anyhow, we did what we could and then we got a call to say there was a massive fire to the west in Yass shire near Wee Jasper, Black Adder area, so we toddled of to it and spent I don’t know how long there.”
“We didn’t have the shed then,” Peter said. “We used to change crews over at Al and Margo Lustenberger’s place mostly, or we would drive over to the Mullion to change crews.”
Peter is quick to acknowledge the other members of the brigade.
“The 2003 fires were quite huge,” he said. “Yass River did a magnificent job considering the number of active members we had”.
In those days before ACTIV or BART, crews were recorded manually and the secretary, John Hodgson, always worked closely with Peter on this. During the Canberra fires, “John and Alison were kept busy as they monitored the movement of all crews coming and going at all hours of the day and night,” Peter said.
Fighting some of the biggest fires the brigade had ever known, renewing the vehicle fleet for the first time, overseeing the construction of our fireshed, moving out of Group 2 into Group 4 and adopting a new constitution in 2001 were all major brigade milestones on Peter’s watch.
In all this, Peter led by example, a skill that Gareth still marvels at, as he attested to at the AGM. Peter was always the first to start on the job, whether by picking up the broom to sweep out a flooded fireshed, getting in with a rake hoe, being first on scene for many of the smaller fires in our district – and the biggest, the Corrigans Rd/Thompsons Crossing fire – or, as with the Canberra fires, doing the most shifts.
In all: 4 years as deputy captain, 8 years as senior deputy captain, 14 years as captain and 4 years as president – 31 years in leadership roles in the brigade.
Devotion to the brigade
From his earliest days in the brigade, Peter has dedicated many hours of his own time not only out on the fireground locally and on deployment, but also maintaining, improving and repairing brigade assets. He also traversed the district’s roads many years, updating contact details for the brigade register and introducing himself and the brigade to new residents.
The current captain, Neville McMartin, attests to Peter’s non-firefighting efforts, “In addition to signing me up as soon as I moved to the district, while I was equipment officer Peter was always willing to assist with mechanical repairs or give me a ride to Yass to pick up or drop off a truck for maintenance.”
“He helped with the build of the new quick fill trailer, spray painting it RFS red,” Neville said. “The bare trailer was painted black when Stuy Burrows and I picked it up.”
Neville also commends Peter’s vast knowledge of the area. “Peter enjoys driving the brigade access trails while I map them with a GPS. He knows the brigade area intimately and just about every landholder.”
Both Peter and Shirley have given countless hours towards fundraising for the brigade, through the many trail rides, raffles and their participation each year at the Murrumbateman Field Days.
A BF in her own right, Shirley also spent many hours as trusted note-taker for Peter on the fireground.
An effective, diplomatic leader
At the 2017 AGM, when Peter stepped down as captain, outgoing president Kane Fillingham commended Peter’s service, saying that he “was a very effective, diplomatic leader who had been captain since 2003, and had played a big role in getting the brigade to where it is now”.
At the 2021 AGM when Peter stepped down as president, declining any further leadership roles, outgoing captain Stuart Burrows proposed that Peter be accepted as a life member of the brigade “in recognition of his outstanding devotion and commitment to the brigade as president, captain and as a volunteer fire fighter for over 30 years”. This proposal, received with unanimous acclaim, was the precursor to the celebration on 29 April 2023.
As always, crediting others
In his final president’s address to the membership at that 2021 AGM, Peter summed up his leadership times with the brigade, saying in part:
“[The brigade] has been a big part of my life and I have really enjoyed every piece of it… the brigade [has grown] into what it is today…because of the members wanting to have a first-class brigade and it has been achieved by the hard work of all members…
I could not have achieved so much without the support of my wife Shirley who has stood by me through the good times and the difficult times. “
His sentiments were the same as he thanked everyone for the presentation made to him at the 2023 AGM.
Sally Kaufmann
July 2023