Even before Casey Dixon became the Blayney Fire Brigade's first female retained fire fighter last year, the almost 100-year-old station on Church Street was deemed a safety hazard and unfit for purpose.
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Designed for a completely different era of fire fighting the station was commissioned when a hose, a pump and water was all there was to firefighting.
Those demands are much different now and the station has been struggling to not only provide Ms Dixon with an area to get changed and prepare, the post fire clean-ups have been rudimentary and hazardous to the firefighters.
With the Blayney Rural Fire Service occupying the sheds behind the station facing Osman Street, the announcement of a $1.25 million grant by Member for Bathurst Paul Toole to relocate the RFS and refurbish the FRNSW station were welcomed, and Ms Dixon and the entire brigade are pumped about what's to come.
"It's been a long fight over the years and pre-dates me joining the team," she said. "But having me join certainly escalated the issues."
When complete the new centre will have defined clean and dirty areas and not only will the pumps be re-housed in the RFS sheds, but the original building will be refurbished.
"The plans for the old station are to turn it into a working gym to keep up the fitness of the team, and a museum to maintain the heritage of the building," she said.
To make it all happen though the Blayney RFS needed a new location to establish their shed, and that came to being when Blayney Council approved allocating industrial zoned land on Marshall's Lane, just opposite the showground, for use by the brigade.
Operations Officer of Canobolas Zone RFS Brett Bowden said that the new sheds should be completed within 12 months.
"It will be a new four bay designed station with all the mod-cons in terms of amenities such as a kitchenette, bathroom, laundry and changerooms," he said.
"There will also be a training / meeting room at the rear of the tanker bay so it should see us for the next 30 years or so."
The block on Marshall's Lane is much larger than the original on Osman Street, and the new design will allow for plenty of expansion in the future Mr Bowden said.
"We'll be putting a 110,000 litre water tank on there and the shed will be deep enough for at least six vehicles," he said.
The new RFS shed will cost $850,000 of which $650,000 is from the state government and $200,000 from the sale of the Osman Street shed to FRNSW.
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Mark Logan
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
