STORIES OF HEALING AND HOPE: celebrating an Aussie bushfire legend
When fire ravaged eastern Australia last summer, Shane Fitzsimmons was the steady, resolute, compassionate voice that saw us through. Samantha Trenoweth meets the former NSW RFS Commissioner and his family on their very personal quest for resilience and r
Last summer’s bushfire season broke Shane Fitzsimmons’ heart. And then broke it again, and again. The fires started early – ridiculously early, in July – but the first truly devastating news came in October, when four separate blazes tore through far northern NSW, fuelled by drought and dry lightning. Then, in the tiny rural outpost of Coongbar, two people lost their lives.
When news of the casualties broke at NSW Rural Fire Service headquarters, the Commissioner got in his car and drove the 680 kilometres to Casino to be with local volunteers.
“Gwenda Hyde and Robert Lindsey weren’t just names on a fatality list,” Shane says, with that characteristic mix of steadiness and empathy. “They were known to the local RFS members, they were known in the community. And it doesn’t get harder than when our colleagues and friends and neighbours lose their lives.”
It was a brutal summer. The casualties didn’t stop. Seven people lost their lives in the NSW fires in November, another five in December and 11 in January – many of them
RFS volunteers. On December 19, Geoffrey Keaton and Andrew O’Dwyer were killed when their vehicle was hit by a falling tree in south-west Sydney. On December 30, Samuel McPaul lost his life when his truck flipped in what was described as a fire tornado near Albury. And three American firefighters were killed when their air tanker crashed in the Snowy Monaro area in January.
“There were periods during the season that were truly heartbreaking and I mean that in its absolute definition,” Shane says. “My heart was broken and it hurt – it still hurts.”
Yet he persisted. Day after day, month after month, there he was on the nightly news: at the control centre; on the fire front; briefing the Premier; reaching out to devastated, displaced Australians in blackened towns.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison was off in more tropical climes, and yes it was poor form, but no one believed it made a material difference, as long as we had the Commissioner’s steady hand on the tiller.
In the midst of it all, in December, Shane’s grandmother died. “But we were able to get to her,” he says simply, “and hold hands and say a few words, and she knew we were there because she looked up and she squeezed our hands.”
And then it was back to the control centre, back on the road. Within days he was comforting the families of two lost fireys long into the night.
“There’s no doubt that was the most difficult but also the most necessary, most significant role I played in all my time in the RFS,” Shane says. “Being present and listening, and genuinely caring and trying to give comfort in whatever way you can in people’s darkest hours … There is something to me that will be forever very sacred about those interactions.”
Shane and his family – his wife, Lisa, and their daughters Lauren, 23,
and Sarah, 20 – have invited The Weekly into their home, in a suburb surrounded by bushland on the far northern outskirts of Sydney. Here, memories of fire hang in the air like those clouds of smoke that stung the eyes and throats of east Australians all summer. And for the first time in their 27-year marriage, Lisa says, she was worried about her husband last fire season.
“This was the first time I was frightened for his health,” she admits. “One night, he’d just turned the light out when the phone rang. He hadn’t slept. Those two firefighters had lost their lives. So he got straight out of bed, he drove down there, he was there all night. He spent time with both those widows. He then went to the office and did a press conference, and I didn’t see him again until 11 o’clock that next night. I don’t know how he did it.”
On the way back to town that morning, Shane says, “I remember ringing Lisa and I was a mess … After going to see Sam McPaul’s wife and getting back to Sydney in the early hours of the morning, I rang Lisa then, too, and she knew it was me because the phone showed that, but I couldn’t even get words out.
“So, I know she was worried, but on those nights, you realise that you’ve got that role and you’ve got that sort of team where … to me, in crisis leadership, when things are going wrong, presence is the number one rule – being present, being accountable, backing your people. It’s not risk-free, there are consequences, but doing nothing is not an option.
“And no matter how bad a day you think you’re having, someone, somewhere is having a worse one. If you’re part of something that helps people get through their bad day, then that’s got to be your focus. In those bushfires, I had a role to play, along with many others. Every day we were calling up thousands of people to come back to help fight the fires, and I was going to make sure I was present as well. I wasn’t going to be asking people to do anything I wasn’t able to do.”
Shane is in his kitchen, brewing mugs of morning tea and coffee. “I might be a commissioner at work,
“My heart was broken and it hurt – it still hurts.”
but when I walk in this door, I’m in charge of nothing,” he says with a grin, “except the dishwasher and the coffee machine.”
The rest of the family has gathered in the lounge room. Even elder daughter Lauren, a nurse who is currently stationed in the COVID-19 clinic at Broken Hill, has beamed in today via FaceTime. She admits that this was the first year she feared for her dad as well.
“I was concerned,” Lauren says. “He’s not someone who shows his emotions. He wants to be that strong shoulder everyone can lean on, but sometimes that shoulder needs a shoulder to cry on too. I think this year we definitely saw that.”
Then she and Sarah, a vet nurse in training, have a good laugh about the practical jokes they sprung on their dad to distract him from the pressures of the job. There’s a bit of laughter, too, around the fact that even though, “when things are really bad, Dad can be counted on to remain calm,” he’s the first of them to cry in a movie.
“I’m hopeless,” Shane concedes. “I’m one of those people who gets really engaged with the characters and the story. I cry in movies really easily.”
There’s an easy banter here, a lot of joy, and a sense that everyone in this family feels very comfortable sharing what’s in their heart and on their mind. Family is the most important thing in the world to Shane.
“From an early age,” he says, “I had aspirations to get married and have a family. A big focus was to have a stable family and healthy children.
The most significant days in my life were the arrivals of Lauren and Sarah. And I’ve always wanted to do my very best as a parent.”
Shane’s own childhood was not always stable. He and his sisters,
Petah and Jodie, started life on a series of rented acreages, where their parents agisted horses, just up the escarpment from Sydney’s northern beaches.
Shane’s father, George, was a decent, well-meaning man when sober, but when he’d been drinking, he could be violent – to his wife and his children – and Shane remembers the arguments
and the injuries to this day. When Shane was seven, his mother, Carol, summoned the courage to leave. “I think she was a remarkable woman,” he says. “To make a decision to leave your husband back in the
’70s and become a single mum was a big call. Mum was an independent person. She was independent of thought and she never wanted to rely on anyone else for handouts. She was a pioneer in many ways – she was smashing through barriers in the ’70s and ’80s.
“Mum found work at the Flemington fruit markets at a time when to be a woman on the stand selling produce was just unheard of – and she could hold her own. Mum worked extremely hard … extraordinary hours. Monday was the busiest day and she would leave home at midnight on the Sunday and start at one in the morning. On a normal day, she would be at the markets by four in the morning and get home around five in the afternoon.”
The three young Fitzsimmons kids made their own breakfast, often their own dinner, and got themselves off to school.
Shane doesn’t remember his mother taking many holidays but, once a year, she’d put the kids on the overnight coach to Tweed Heads, where her parents lived, “and we would spend the school holidays at Nan and Pop’s. They were some of the best times ever. My cousins would turn up as well. Mum just kept working because, during the holidays, people wanted more fresh produce than ever.”
At least once a month, Shane and his sisters spent a weekend with their dad, and he’d make an effort to be on his best behaviour. There was usually a trip to the zoo or a special treat of one sort or another. Shane insists that George was a good man and a good father when he wasn’t drinking.
“He was a complex man, but he had a good heart,” he says. “My dad was a generous man, a community focused man and he would do anything for anyone. But alcohol was a problem … Also, Dad grew up in an era when there wasn’t open expression of emotions. You didn’t say ‘I love you’ or ‘How proud I am of you’. That just wasn’t part of the way men behaved. There were strict gender stereotypes: boys shouldn’t be emotional and cry, they should be strong and firm. I think that was part of the problem, too.”
It was George’s involvement in volunteer firefighting that initially piqued Shane’s interest. He joined the Duffys Forest brigade as a teenager and found a sense of camaraderie and purpose. He also found the love of his life.
George was working for the local council as a bushfire prevention officer, and his boss, Keith Simpson, was also involved with the RFS. Keith had three kids – Paul, Lisa and Robbie, who was living with both cerebral palsy and an intellectual disability. It was Robbie with whom Shane first struck a bond.
“I was 13 when I met Shane,” Lisa recalls. “He was 15. George would come over to see Dad, and Shane would be in tow. He and Robbie became best mates. Shane took him up to the brigade at Duffys Forest, and he and his dad helped Robbie get through basic training.
“Robbie couldn’t read or write, so George made models to show him what to do. For Robbie, to be accepted for who he was meant so
“It doesn’t get harder than when our colleagues and friends and neighbours lose their lives.”
much. He didn’t go out and fight fires, but in terms of hazard reduction and anything around the station, he was absolutely involved. And yes, I think that did impress me. Shane was never embarrassed by Robbie. He never sidelined him. He spent a lot of time with Rob.”
Shane’s first attempt at taking his relationship with Lisa a step further was not, however, a resounding success.
“At one stage,” he remembers, “when we were pretty young, I asked her if she wanted to go to the local dance and she just bluntly said no – trashed me in a moment. I think I asked her a second time and she still said no. Her mum had words to her afterwards and said she’d been pretty brutal.”
“It started out as a good friendship,” Lisa says. “He was easy to talk to. He had two sisters, so he was quite happy hanging out with a girl. It developed as we got older.”
Shane remembers taking Lisa and Robbie to the movies on one of their early dates. “I used to take Robbie everywhere in my car,” he says with a grin. “So when I started dating
Lisa, there were arguments about who would get the front seat.”
“Eventually,” Lisa says, “it was agreed that I would have the front seat going there, and Robbie could have it on the way home.”
The young couple talked about Robbie being best man at their wedding, and about one day providing a home for him when
Lisa’s parents were no longer able.
But before any of that could happen, Robbie was hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing one morning as he walked to work. He didn’t survive.
“It had a huge effect on Shane,”
Lisa remembers. “Robbie was his mate and he felt lost when he was gone.”
At 19, Shane became the youngest person ever elected as captain of his brigade. Then, at 24, he tied the knot with 21-year-old Lisa. Within five years, he was appointed Assistant Commissioner of Operations for the RFS.
Many things have helped hold their marriage together through 27 summer fire seasons, but, Lisa says, “coming from an RFS family has helped.
“Once Shane became Commissioner [in 2007] there was a lot of time away. Some women wouldn’t stand for it or understand the pressures. In a fire season, the volunteers come first – their safety comes first, their needs come first. I don’t know any different because I grew up in an RFS family. My dad was a fire control officer and an assistant commissioner. That’s how my mum lived, that’s how we lived. My dad wasn’t home for a lot of Christmases. So that is my kind of normal, and it’s now my girls’ kind of normal.”
Lauren was born in 1997. “I remember it so vividly,” Shane recalls. “When Lauren arrived, I knew our world had changed forever. I rang my mum and I was so emotional, I couldn’t get my words together.”
Sarah was born in 2000 – the same year Shane lost his father when a controlled burn went horribly wrong at Mount Kuring-gai. Shane knew his dad was in the area and tried to call, but he didn’t pick up. Finally, word came through that George hadn’t made it.
Now, with distance, Shane says he’s just thankful he and his father had reconnected before his death, after five or so years when he’d had enough of the bad behaviour and refused to see him. They’d made contact again when Lauren was born. His dad had settled down and, Shane says, “he was really chuffed about being a grandfather.”
The next two fire seasons were intense, and Shane barely saw his young family for months. “For a long time, I didn’t see Sarah,” he recalls. “By the time I got home, she was always asleep. And after a while she wouldn’t come to me. That’s when we decided we had to dedicate more family time, and have set holidays.”
Since then, the Fitzsimmonses have taken annual holidays every winter, and have become pretty sharp skiers as a result.
“When we first started going to the snow, Dad didn’t actually have phone reception, so we’d have him all to ourselves,” Sarah says. “We’d play Scrabble and Scattergories and ski, and it was nice being able to spend time as a family.”
“Mum and Dad would always say it was quality time over quantity,”
Lauren adds. “So when we were together, we’d make sure we were all very present. I think it made us appreciate our time together more; it stopped us taking each other for granted.”
After 35 years in the service, and 12 as Commissioner, Shane resigned his post at the Rural Fire Service earlier this year.
Initially, he was going to leave before that last fire season. The plan, which he’d discussed with his family and flagged with government, was to return from his winter break, tender his resignation and give the RFS time to recruit a replacement before the summer fires kicked in. But there was no break.
“Already my phone had started going while I was away,” he explains. “We were averaging over 1000 fires a month during winter in NSW. And that just intensified as time went on. So I talked to government and said, ‘I’m feeling uncomfortable about this. This season is going to be busy. It’s just not the right thing to leave now.’ We had no idea it was going to be as bad as it became, but we knew it was going to be bad.”
“It was the hardest decision of his life,” says Lisa, to finally leave as those last flames were extinguished. “The RFS had been like family to him … But, I honestly didn’t want him to do another fire season.”
Then, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian requested he head up a new executive agency, called Resilience NSW, to help communities prepare for and recover from the full gamut of disasters – drought, fire, flood, pandemic, and anything else life might hurl at us.
It’s hard to imagine anyone better qualified for the position of
Resilience Commissioner than Shane Fitzsimmons. And he believes Australians are a resilient bunch, too – perhaps even more so after all we’ve lived through these past 12 months.
“I think there is a resilience that underpins the Australian culture,” he says, “and it’s in our ability to pull together and to lend a hand to a mate. This has been the worst fire season
I’ve ever been involved in, with communities razed to the ground and lives lost, but to counter that, we’ve seen the very best of humanity.
“We saw crews standing up again and again, day after day, month after month, no matter how relentless the weather, no matter how uncontrollable the fires. We saw an outpouring of love and support. Whether that was to neighbours, to families, to complete strangers, people gave enormously and generously. People came together, both volunteers and paid people, all working shoulder to shoulder. There was this overwhelming dominance of love and compassion and support.”
“You know,” he adds finally, “pride is a massive word in capital letters that comes through for me. I was very proud to be part of the NSW community, very proud to be an Aussie. In our darkest hour, we saw the very best in people.” AWW
“I think there’s a resilience that underpins Australian culture, and it’s in our ability to pull together and to lend a hand to a mate.”