“I joined when I was 16 because my elder brother was in the brigade,” the Pyramid Hill resident said.
“I remember jumping on the back of the truck (ex-Army vehicle) and going out to grassfires.
“They’d give me a beater, which was a stick with three bits of canvas hose attached, to beat the flames out. I think I fanned the flames more than anything, but soon I was upgraded to a knapsack.”
When he first joined the CFA, Mr Carroll never imagined he’d one day be recognised for 70 years of service.
“It’s a funny thing, at one meeting some chap got a long-service medal for being in the brigade 12 years and I remember thinking I’d be lucky to be here for two years.”
But one year turned into two, and two turned to five — and we all know how that goes.
The fire Mr Carroll remembers most was the 2001 blaze in the Pyramid Hill post office and cafe.
“It was a great save really,” he said.
“The fire was in the cafe and newsagency but we stopped it from going into the IGA supermarket.”
Another fire memory was when his own workplace nearly went up in smoke.
“Around 1950 or ‘52 the Pyramid Hill butter factory caught on fire. They had an ice works inside the building and the ammonia they used to freeze the ice had combusted.
“The firemen kept dropping because of the ammonia and the doctor said the best antidote was beer but the pub was closed.
“The fire started at 7pm and the pub closed at 6pm. The publican wouldn’t open to the firemen so in the end the police had to order him to give them a beer.
“We didn’t have breathing apparatus back then. I remember being at the fire, so I must have just started.”
But the memory that trumps them all was the Pyramid Hill junior fire brigade team’s 1984 win in Mooroopna.
“I started the junior fire brigade in 1980 and within four years we’d won at the state demonstration,” Mr Carroll said.
“It couldn’t get any better, to win it and have your name in the records ... it was the making of the brigade I feel, because you are training firemen.
“They compete in running out the hose, coupling up and other things — it gives them a good start.”
Mr Carroll continued to coach and travel with Pyramid Hill’s junior brigade until 2003.
The junior brigade (which includes an under-14 and under-17 team) won again in 2005, but it slowly petered out as adults couldn’t find the time to run the brigade for the children.
“The kids I think are still interested, but you’ve got to have the adults to look after them,” Mr Carroll said.
“When we had the junior brigade going it gave us (the senior team) great strength because you knew they were coming up through to support the brigade.”
Out of the many junior teams he coached, Mr Carroll can list four boys off the top of his head who still work in the firefighting services.
One (who happens to be Mr Carroll’s son) now works as a fireman in Darwin, another also works in Darwin as an airport fireman, a third is in the Portland CFA and the fourth is a CFA regional officer.
These days Pyramid Hill has less young families and more retirees, but Mr Carroll said the local brigade had managed to keep up volunteer numbers thanks to the Filipino population.
“We are lucky to have the Filipinos working at the piggeries and around town,” he said.
“They are involved with everything in the town really ... but they might work 10, 15, 20 kilometres away and you can’t expect them to drop everything and attend a call out.”
At 87 years of age, Mr Carroll is still a CFA volunteer, with his own pager attached to the fridge.
“I can’t participate with the pumps and jump on the truck any more, but I’ll support them how I can and I attend all the meetings.”
Living in town, Mr Carroll often has the shortest trip to the station.
Last year he had an extremely short trip to a fire when the house across the street from his caught ablaze.
“It was shocking but we were lucky that two trucks had just come back from a job.”
In the Carroll house, there is a wall of trophies in the lounge room, dust-free and perfectly presented.
Most of the trophies were collected by Mr Carroll’s five sons over their childhoods, but the newest bit of gold belongs to their father.
Brought all the way from Melbourne and personally delivered by the CFA chief officer himself, the plaque commemorates the seven decades Mr Carroll has given the CFA since he joined at the young age of 16.
When asked why he never left the CFA, Mr Carroll had this to say: “When that siren goes, someone is in trouble and they are asking for help.”
