Montage

It’s been back to the classroom and study for a small block of exams the last few days, so it’s time for a montage. I got some pictures from some of the other guys on the course so I have some material to work with.

This is Dave on the branch in front and Josh doing a fine job stopping Dave from blowing away. Behind him is Rory – also known as McCafe.

The brains trust or a handsome competition? You be the judge.


Ryan and I waiting to get our BA’s on and enter the smoke hut.


Me channelling the awesome power of the tiger.


Everyone just chilling out in the theater room.

Brad gets his very own fire truck

I felt like a special little kid today. Because I am the only recruit going to Brisbane and the only one that needs to learn the Mark 7 fire truck, I had my own tender (that’s what firemen call fire trucks) and my own driver. My job was to point the monitor (the shooty thing on top) at the plane and make it moist.

I got to shoot it heaps. In fact, despite the water restrictions here in Melbourne, I went through about 10,000 litres in a few minutes. But it was all in the name of learning how to save lives so I guess that’s OK.


The rest of the week is exams so it’s study, study, study.

Auditions

Today the instructors were kind enough to park a fire truck around the back of the classroom so we could work on our calendar poses. I got in early and started with a fairly straight forward ‘holding the truck up’ stance.

It proved to be a very poor choice, as the other guys were favouring the classic ‘look what I just killed’ pose.

Josh is an excellent poser and we all need to take a master class with him when time permits. Check out the awesome close up.


I should have really learnt something by this stage of the course. The rule is to let someone else go first and let them screw it up, then follow on and look like you knew how it was meant to be done.

Fire Hut

I promised pictures of the fire hut last week and not being one to disappoint, I have delivered. We have been at the fire hut all this week and we will be there tomorrow too. The training each day is split up in to 3 sections hoses, breathing apparatus, knots and ladders. We just rotate around each station and started adding bits from one station to another. I guess the idea is that by the time we get into the course a bit more we will just be doing everything in our drills – but enough talk here are the pictures.

Here is Luke opening a stand pipe – our favorite Canadian is photo booming in the background. He isn’t actually from Canada but while the Olympics are on he just says he is.

This is the smoke hut with a couple of guys practicing ladders and knots.

Paul carrying a hose aloft.

I would take a picture from inside the smoke hut but it is dark and smoky. Most disappointing of all is that there is no disco music to match the disco smoke – only on the bus.

End of week 2

I didn't get many pictures the last half of this week because we were a bit pushed for time.

Yesterday was real busy but real good, it was our first day over at the smoke hut. We did a bit of branch work (hoses), practiced all our knots and went into the smoke hut with the BA's on.

In the smoke hut they don't use real smoke (I think that's too advanced for us) we use what is called 'disco' smoke. It's like the smoke at a disco I guess, it makes you look all sexy when you are not. I am immune to the effects.

We did a bit of search and rescue technique which is basically hanging on to the guy in front and falling over chairs in the dark. I am assuming the assessment will be easy to pass because the instructors won't be able to see us do it wrong.

Today we spent the whole day doing advanced resuscitation, we used the oxygen bottles and defibrillators.

We will be back to the smoke hut for most of next week so I will make sure I get some pictures then.

B.A. (not Baracus)

B.A. as in Breathing Apparatus, it's like SCUBA but for firefighters, which is good because most of us are scared of water. They force air into your lungs which is kind of cool because you don't have to work to breath, it just does it for you.

Here is me in a BA kit, you can tell it is me because I am smiling.

We had to get this stuff right as this is a critical component to the course. Here is Ryan helping Richard get his head around the pressures we were dealing with.

The issued lightsabers take 3 "C" cell batteries (I have mad photoshop skillz).

FIRE!!!

The first week was long and there was lots of classroom work, but today we got to go and play. We put on all our "tough guy clothes" (technical term) and used a whole bunch of fire extinguishers.

The guy with the the yellow helmet in the picture below is my room mate Ross. He just laid the smack down on that soggy wood fire. Note that the plane in the background has a hay bail for an engine - no shit that's going to catch fire.

While we were being hero's, showing those short pieces of wood not to mess with a handful of hardened recruits with water extinguishers, these guys showed up:

Yeah, they had a fancy truck and all the posh gear. But once they were done they let us go over and have a go on the big hose, which was really cool - it was like we were actually real firemen.

My First Day - A Day 2 Perspective

Talk about sliding off the learning curve and ending up in the deep end. I decided to wait until today to write about my first day because my brain stopped working yesterday.

We meet with all our instructors on the Sunday night and they all seemed either nice or eager to teach us... All our instructors are referred to as Mr 'such-and-such' - kind of like Reservoir Dogs but without the suits and witty script.

Monday was good, but unfortunately for the instructors, not much sleep and too much paperwork makes for a bunch of slow learners. We got all of our kit including the cool stuff like helmets and boots, we did a quick tour of the Air Services area and a few lessons in the afternoon and the day was over. Seriously, unless you really want to know how to fill out a 105, 106, ASIC application or login to AVnet I won't go into it.

We all had so much booty they had to hire a ute to get it all back to Moonee Ponds.

Oh yeah, they have serious sideburns regulations here - I should have kept the mo...