Boosey Creek Fire Brigade volunteer Mr Grinter said the time had gone by “very fast”, but his journey firefighting began long before he officially joined the CFA.
His father was involved in the local fire brigade even before the CFA was formed in 1947, and from an early age Mr Grinter would watch him head out to fires.
“It was fairly basic then,” he said.
“The farmers would just get together and go and put out the fire, but they didn’t have the equipment that they’ve got today.
“They had wet bags, and no real way of quickly getting water to the fire, so it was mainly just good luck I’d say that got them out.”
Watching his father respond to fires sparked an interest that would eventually turn into a lifetime of service.
“I remember looking at the back door one day at home and there was this massive fire in the next-door neighbour's place, and I said to Dad, ‘Can I come too?’” he said.
“I would have been about six, so obviously it was a no.
“Then it just sort of went on from there and when I got old enough to be allowed to go to fires, I started going.”
Mr Grinter was about 15 when he began attending fires and didn’t formally join the CFA until several years later.
“Dad would have been in the fire brigade going to fires all his life, and I just followed him,” he said.
“My wife was the secretary of the brigade for quite a while and her father was a fireman in Katamatite.”
Over the years, Mr Grinter has watched firefighting evolve from basic equipment and limited resources to modern trucks and communications systems.
Among the many incidents he has attended, the Black Saturday bushfires remain etched in his mind.
“It was an awful day,” Mr Grinter said, recalling the aftermath of the fires near Seymour.
“We didn’t get called on the day, but we went down the next day and everything was just black, and it was a perfectly calm day.
“We just drove around all the roads in the morning, and we put out a few smoking trees in the afternoon.
“They gave us these boxes of apples, and they said, ‘As you drive around, throw these apples out and if there’s any wildlife still alive, they’ll have something to eat.’”
Mr Grinter said he had made many life-long friends and still enjoyed volunteering.
“You go home, and you think to yourself, ‘Well, I’ve done a bit of good today,’” he said.
10°C