Tambellup volunteer fire service member Laurie Hull’s life was derailed by a motorbike accident when he was a teenager, but he hasn’t let a disability stop him devoting more than 50 years to volunteering.
Mr Hull grew up on the family farm in Tambellup, and started helping his dad fight fires on the property when he was a youngster.
He was officially enrolled as a volunteer firefighter when he was 15 years old, and has continued to volunteer with his local brigade for the last 50 years.
Just before his 18th birthday, Mr Hull had a motorbike accident on the farm that left him a paraplegic.
He remembers being blinded by the sun and coming to on the ground beside his bike, unable to move his legs.
Doctors told him he would never walk again.
But despite that bleak early diagnosis, Mr Hull re-learnt how to walk and went back to work on the family farm.
“It was a huge change for me, as before the accident I was young and fit and able — I played hockey, tennis, basketball, but the accident changed all that,” he said.
“Coming back on to the fireground, back then I was walking without the aid of a walking stick.
“Most people accept it for what it is, and even these days I don’t go on the hose anymore, so I drive the vehicles to the scene and I work on ground control for the water bombers.
“It was a case of changing the angle, doing a side step and cutting across where every normal walking person would go straight down.
I just had to reanalyse my situation and start again.
It was this never-say-die attitude and Mr Hull’s ongoing commitment to volunteering that earned him an Australian Fire Service Medal in 2014 — an honour he said he was surprised and humbled by.
“I just didn’t worry about it until the president of the Volunteer Firefighters Association rang me up and congratulated me,” he said.
“I said ‘it’s just another gong’ and he said to me, ‘No, it’s was something you should have been recognised for’, and then he proceeded to go through the process of how the nomination went from here to Canberra.
“There were only six of us in Australia who received it that year, and I was one of, I think it was two volunteers that got it.”
Mr Hull has been on the ground at significant bushfires across WA, including at Roleystone, Margaret River, and in the Great Southern following cyclone Alby.
He has also attended his fair share of serious road crashes and been part of the Gnowangerup State Emergency Service team for several years, lending an experienced hand to assist in rescues throughout the Great Southern, including at Bluff Knoll.
Mr Hull moved away from his home town of Tambellup for a spell but moved back later in life, starting his own contract spraying business and joining the town’s volunteer fire brigade.
He said the comradeship found in emergency services volunteering was a big part of the reason he had continued with the work for so long.
“You become a family after a while. The team becomes your family,” Mr Hull said.
“I don’t think about my disability often, and a lot of my team members don’t even see it anymore.
“Helping out someone that’s in trouble, whatever the situation may be, whether there’s fire on a property, or someone’s caught up in the Stirlings, they’re lost in the bush, their family is stressing out — you try to get a good outcome for them, to look after them and help them out.
“We get a call, we down tools and off we go — it costs me $1000 a day if I come out here for a rescue.
“I own my own business so I shut down whatever job I’m doing and get on the road . . . I don’t even think about the cost, time, or even why I’m doing it. It’s just something you do.”
May 18 marked the start of National Volunteer Week, a time to recognise the contributions of dedicated volunteers across Australia, and Mr Hull said volunteering was something anyone could take on, regardless of their physical abilities.
“We all do it for different purposes,” he said.
“For me, National Volunteer Week is recognition for what we do and the hours we put in.
“We spend thousands of hours up here on the Stirlings and on the firegrounds, and we don’t do it for pay or rewards.
“I think a big part of it is that farming background, the code of the bush of helping each other out when you need it.
“It’s just something you do, and you just get on with it.
“I’ll keep doing it until I can’t anymore.”
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