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President Elect Steve Giddens introduced Henry Barton as our guest speaker. Henry was born in England and came out as one of the 10 pound poms as a 4 year old. He grew up in Montrose at the base of the Dandenong's, one of 4 children and the youngest. He completed tech school with a leaving certificate. The whole family was heavily involved in the CFA and from 14 years of age Henry joined the CFA as a volunteer. Henry was originally a herd tester in Tatura for two years prior to joining CFA in 1976. He worked at Boronia, Bendigo and Geelong City before coming to Warrnambool as a Station Officer.
Henry is OIC Warrnambool Fire Brigade and 15 other volunteer stations, including a coast guard brigade, portfolios of Technical Rescue, JFAIP, Level 3 Incident Controller for bush, Hazmat and Structure working across the state as required.
Henry is married with 6 children and 10 grandchildren. He enjoys camping, sailing and family.
Henry provided a very interesting history of the Warrnambool Fire Brigade with started over 150 years ago on 6 March 1883 - see photo below of the Fire Station at Liebig Street 1870-1880.
 The Fire Brigades Act 1890 created two boards, a Metropolitan Fire Brigades Board (MFBB) for the Metropolitan Fire District and a Country Fire Brigades Board (CFBB). The CFBB officially came into being on 1 January 1891. In 1926 the Bush Fire Brigades were formed following serious bushfires. They consisted entirely of volunteer members, were administered by the State Forests Department, had only scant power to carry out fire prevention measures and received little or no financial assistance from the government.
Following serious fires across Victoria in 1939 a Royal Commission recommended a single firefighting organisation for country Victoria. The devastation of the 1944 fires emphasised the urgency of better coordination of country fire services. Legislation was passed to establish a country fire authority and the Country Fire Authority (CFA) commenced operation from 2 April 1945.
CFA has now evolved to become one of the world's largest volunteer based emergency services. There are currently 1220 CFA brigades servicing the operational areas throughout regional Victoria (except state forests and parks) and outer metropolitan Melbourne. In recent times CFA's responsibilities for responding to urban and transport risks have grown substantially.
The second photo is of the Warrnambool Fire Brigade in Maryborough, March 1903.
What is CFA Today?
Total CFA people almost 58,000 volunteers, support staff 1000. Paid firefighters 600.
Brigades 1220. Groups 143. Districts 20. Regions 8.
Protects 3.0 million people, 150,182 sq km. Turnouts 65,800. Vehicles 2,200.
Warrnambool CFA
Integrated station, i.e career staff support the volunteers.
16 staff on shift (24 hour cover) and 1 Operations Officer (OIC).
Approximately 65 volunteers (not including juniors).
Approximately 500-600 turnouts/year.
Significant increase in supporting others.
What they do when there is not a fire or incident
20% fires and incidents
40% training
20% community safety
10% station duties, maintenance
10% personal development
Henry listed a number of significant incidents and fires the brigade has attended over the years. Following his presentation, a number of questions were asked before Steve thanked Henry for his interesting talk and presented him with a certificate for a mosquito net to be given on his behalf to a needy family in New Guinea.
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Vocational Services chair Gordon Curran spoke briefly on the disappearance of some traditional occupations 
Michael Boyd formally acknowledged the work Judy Ross did to organise the name badges in a more orderly fashion. Thank you Judy.
Judy Ross sold 5 bags of lemons at $2.00 each with funds going towards Astrids "swags for the homeless" project.
