At Otford Rural Fire Brigade, Saturday afternoon lunches are as much of an institution as the firefighting.
Every week, when the trucks pull back into the station, after general maintenance and training wrap up, the team sit down to a spread prepared by catering officer Pat Johnson.
On the Saturday that I visited, it was chicken sausages and rissoles with mango salad, an orange cake and chocolate brownies brought in by equipment officer Gary Pointon, and a rainbow sprinkle birthday cake complete with Minnie Mouse candles for senior deputy captain Peter McCallum, baked by his granddaughter. This, Peter says, is business as usual.
“This is every Saturday,” he said.
“Generally, most of the brigades in the area, they have one day a week where they do maintenance of the vehicles, and that's just making sure that they start, they run and taking them for a run to check the equipment. We’re probably one of the few brigades that then always have a home-cooked meal.
“Pat cooks lunch. He's our number one catering officer. He does so much for the brigade, not just the catering, [but] fundraising.”
“And Gary cooks cakes, biscuits and brownies,” said station officer Paul Marshall, who’s volunteered with the brigade since 1985. “We're well catered for.”
Peter emigrated from Scotland to Otford just a few months before the eastern seaboard fires hit the Royal National Park in 1994. Wary of the impending threat to his new home and village, he joined his closest neighbours in signing up to volunteer.
Paul, who moved to Otford in the early 80s, remembers a notice reading ‘truck driver wanted’ as his cue to join.
While both men registered with the purpose of defending their homes, it’s the lifelong friendships they’ve formed that have kept them devoted for decades.
“We're all best mates here,” Paul said.
“[We’re] pretty like-minded, we’re into motorsports, motorcycles, and a lot of us motorcycle and go away on rides.
“In the last 10 years, we've been to the Isle of Man [Tourist Trophy races] twice as a group, travelled around Scotland and the UK and Wales.
“I don’t know if you'd get too many other brigades that are as tighter-knit as we are.”
Otford crews have responded to many emergencies, including bushfires close to home in 1994 and on Christmas Day in 2001; multi-day fire and flood deployments to both ends of the state; train crashes, car crashes and even the miraculous rescue of a pup at Kellys Falls. They’ve become friends first and foremost and both Peter and Paul say it’s made them better firefighters.
“I think you know how everybody reacts,” Paul said.
“You can trust, rely on them, you know their capabilities.
“Even though you're in [a dangerous] situation, you don't panic. You're there with your mates, you know how capable everybody is.”
“One of the key things to being an officer is you've got to know the personalities of your members,” Peter said.
“The closer you are and the better understanding you've got, then you know how to handle these situations, because when you're fighting a fire, it's not just a steady line – there’s lots of peaks and troughs – and as long as, at the end of the day, everybody understands why they were shouted at or not, everybody gets along.”
The brigade has 18 active members but is on the lookout for new – and younger – recruits.
“We need younger members, definitely,” Peter said.
“We need to generate that next generation of people to come together, and like anything, it's a lot more enjoyable if you're doing it where [there’s] people you know, friends and stuff, rather than [joining] as individuals.
“If you're new to an area, you can certainly meet new friends. If you join together as a team, just like what a school does, where people have kids and they tend to then start up new friendships through the school, well, the brigade and the village is similar to that.”
“It helped me get to know a lot of people in the village after I came down here,” Paul said.
Not only will new recruits be well fed on weekends, but highly valued too, with opportunities to climb the ranks.
“We sort of pride ourselves [on not being] an old type of brigade where the older people dominate or want to dominate,” Peter said.
“We're a brigade that encourage our younger deputies to actually take over and take charge. Even if we go to an emergency, we'll allow the younger deputies to take charge of it and the older ones will just sit back and just really observe.
“If you want to have a career in the RFS, we are certainly a brigade where you can go through the ranks a lot quicker than probably some of the others.”
If you’d like to find out more, follow the sound of sizzling sausages to the corner of Otford Road and Domville Road at midday on Saturdays. The door will be open for a chat.
“We'd like to see any new members come on board, [but] it's all always welcoming to see people come in that are a lot younger and fitter than us,” Paul said.
“If they would just give it a go, I'm sure they would certainly enjoy it.”
To volunteer, visit the RFS website.
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