Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land
Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced, the Galligle people of
Speaker 1: the Urination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
Speaker 2: It's December twenty nineteen and we're in the Blue Mountains,
Speaker 2: just outside Sydney. At this time of year, tourists usually
Speaker 2: flock here for the stunning scenery and well renowned bushwalks.
Speaker 2: But this summer is different. This is black summer. Across
Speaker 2: the country, seventeen million hectares of land are burning. That's
Speaker 2: almost the size of France. The fires have been raging
Speaker 2: for months and there's no end in sight. Greg Mullins
Speaker 2: has dedicated his life to fighting fires, and he's doing
Speaker 2: his best to help the residents, wildlife and homes under threat.
Speaker 2: It's midnight and he stares up at the fifty meter
Speaker 2: high wall of flames. He's been here for sixteen hours today,
Speaker 2: his uniform is charred. His mind starts to play tricks
Speaker 2: on him. Deep down, he knows that the rain will
Speaker 2: come one day, this will be over. But what if
Speaker 2: it doesn't end. What if it just keeps burning until
Speaker 2: next summer, until there's nothing left to burn. I'm at
Speaker 2: Middleton and this is head game today on the front
Speaker 2: line in one of the nation's most catastrophic bushfires. Now
Speaker 2: I'm super excited. I have the firefighter Extraordinary Greg Mullins
Speaker 2: in studio with me. Now, Greg, after your name, you
Speaker 2: have multiple initials, so it goes Alpha, Oscar, Alpha, Foxtrot, Sierra, Mike,
Speaker 2: so af s M. Could you just break that down
Speaker 2: for me, mate, because I know you're someone super important
Speaker 2: when you've got all of those initiative.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lots of letters. Yeah. AO is an Officer of
Speaker 3: the Order of Australia, So it's the Australian honors system.
Speaker 3: That's the second highest one. And the a SM is
Speaker 3: the Australian Fire Service Medal, So that's that's I don't
Speaker 3: know how many years. There's not that many a year
Speaker 3: given out Australia wide to people in the fire services.
Speaker 2: So I got it right, Firefighter extraordinary. Now, fascinating career.
Speaker 2: But where did it all start for you? Mate? When
Speaker 2: did the did you think to yourself, right, I'm going
Speaker 2: to become a firefighter. This is what I want to do.
Speaker 2: Your father was a volunteer firefighter. Did it all stem
Speaker 2: from him?
Speaker 3: Oh? Look, pretty much. We lived in an area in
Speaker 3: the north of Sydney, beautiful area but surrounded by National Park,
Speaker 3: and every summer there were fires and you just look
Speaker 3: out over the hills and the bee brown smoke and
Speaker 3: at night orange glowes, and so you were really tapped
Speaker 3: into the fire danger. If it was hot and windy,
Speaker 3: you knew, you know, it's really dangerous today, and Dad
Speaker 3: will probably take off on the fire truck. But I actually,
Speaker 3: I think the day I decided I needed to be
Speaker 3: a firefighter was when I burnt down my sister's cubby
Speaker 3: house when they were both at school and in the
Speaker 3: backyard of our house, and it scared the hell out
Speaker 3: of me.
Speaker 2: Take me back at that moment, Were you like me?
Speaker 2: Did you like to play with matches?
Speaker 3: Look? Yeah, I think I was only about four years old,
Speaker 3: and I was My sisters had built this magnificent cubby
Speaker 3: house in the backyard, but it was made out of
Speaker 3: dried leaves and grass and branches and things, and I
Speaker 3: was just playing with some matches and it caught fire
Speaker 3: and Dad was at work, and yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3: But I just remember looking at the flames up in
Speaker 3: the tree tops, and the lady next door and my
Speaker 3: mum getting buckets of water because there was no reticulated water.
Speaker 3: We helped run water tanks and I it scared the
Speaker 3: hell out of me. And then when my sisters came home,
Speaker 3: I just remember I thought they're going to beat me up,
Speaker 3: my older sisters, but no, they just cried and I thought,
Speaker 3: I felt so bad. So I think, actually that's maybe
Speaker 3: it's about four years old. Wow, and you felt you
Speaker 3: felt I better put these things out, not light them,
Speaker 3: because it's not and jail's not a good trajectory. I
Speaker 3: don't really want to go there when I get older.
Speaker 3: But look, my first big fire was actually I was
Speaker 3: twelve years old, was not in seventy one, as I
Speaker 3: said before. Dad was a volunteer firefighter. The fire station
Speaker 3: was just over the raid from our place, but there
Speaker 3: was a big fire. Dad wasn't on duty that day,
Speaker 3: but my older brothers called during the afternoon and I said,
Speaker 3: we're home alone, my sister and I. This big fire
Speaker 3: is coming towards us. What do we do? And Dad
Speaker 3: just said, come with me. I jumped in the car
Speaker 3: and off we went. And I thought my first big fire,
Speaker 3: and I was hooked. It was really scary.
Speaker 2: But I love how you just came out of that.
Speaker 2: I fought my first fire when I was twelve years old. Wow,
Speaker 2: talk about that being in the blood and you know
Speaker 2: that being your destiny or your your career. Take me
Speaker 2: back to that moment. Did were you scared? Were you
Speaker 2: were or were you panicked? What was going through your mind?
Speaker 2: Because it takes a certain state of mind, doesn't it
Speaker 2: to be able to run towards something that's burning rather
Speaker 2: than what the majority of people do, and probably rightly
Speaker 2: so is run away from it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, a bit counterintuitive, but I was. I think
Speaker 3: from that early age, I was fascinated by fire and
Speaker 3: I used to watch how fire was burnt. And we
Speaker 3: used to do burn offs in our backyard because we're
Speaker 3: in the bush and we had to protect ourselves from
Speaker 3: summer from when summer fires came. And I knew quite
Speaker 3: a bit and I'd read about it. I was really fascinated.
Speaker 3: I was a bit of a fire nerd by age twelve,
Speaker 3: and I was just excited. I thought, Gee, Dad's taking
Speaker 3: me with him. And Dad was so calm, you know,
Speaker 3: And over the years I went to many many fires
Speaker 3: with him, and you'd know, in the military, you know,
Speaker 3: you've got some commanders who scream and yell and make
Speaker 3: everyone panic, and Dad was just one of these calm
Speaker 3: people who just calmed everyone around him down. And so
Speaker 3: I had no reason to be scared because of Dad's
Speaker 3: just calm, collected way went around about it. And even
Speaker 3: when you know, we had twenty meter flames coming towards
Speaker 3: us and sparks setting the grass a light under our feet,
Speaker 3: they just said, okay, move over here and just all right,
Speaker 3: and if it gets too bad, we'll go in the
Speaker 3: house and if that catches fire, we'll wait till last minute,
Speaker 3: then we'll come out under the burnt stuff. And it
Speaker 3: was just, oh, okay, this is normal. But I yes,
Speaker 3: there were some frightening moments, but not for a moment
Speaker 3: did I feel like it was unsafe, because my dad
Speaker 3: was there.
Speaker 2: And it was from that moment that you knew. Was
Speaker 2: that a turning point in your a decision making moment
Speaker 2: where you said to yourself, I want to be a firefighter?
Speaker 3: I think so. I think that was the day I
Speaker 3: just thought, this is you're against the elements and you're
Speaker 3: helping people, and it ticked all the boxes and it
Speaker 3: was exciting. But there was an adrenaline rush as well,
Speaker 3: and it was really challenging. You had to actually work
Speaker 3: out what's going on here. The fire is going to
Speaker 3: go quicker uphill, but it's flat here, so it'll slow down.
Speaker 3: Then we can go on and attack it the intensity
Speaker 3: or die down. But then it's going to come at
Speaker 3: us from the back, so I've got to be ready
Speaker 3: for that. And it was really mental gymnastics working out
Speaker 3: what's happening and oh, I can't see now, there's too
Speaker 3: much smoke out.
Speaker 2: Smile the flames. Ultimately, aren't you they one step ahead?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it was intellectually stimulating. You know, you've got
Speaker 3: your strategies and your tactics and then your tasks and
Speaker 3: all everything sort of led to the same outcome you hoped,
Speaker 3: but halfway something weird would happen, a new fire would
Speaker 3: break out over there, and you'd have to start again
Speaker 3: and change it all, and so you had to be
Speaker 3: flexible and it was just a really really interesting thing
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: Love it. So when did you actually join the fire service?
Speaker 2: When was the day that you thought, you know what
Speaker 2: that's going let's do what I do best.
Speaker 3: Yes, So look nineteen seventy one, that big fire and
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two, I remember a friend at school said,
Speaker 3: do you want to join the bush fire Brigade down
Speaker 3: here at Duffy's Forest, And I said, well, I live.
Speaker 3: They were adjoining suburbs and I asked that if I
Speaker 3: could join legal and he said you're too young. You
Speaker 3: need to be sixteen before you get on the truck.
Speaker 3: And Terry Hills and so I was able to join
Speaker 3: this other bush fire brigade and as someone pointed out
Speaker 3: to me it was actually my brother. He said, that's
Speaker 3: because they'll take anyone. They're desperate. That's why they've taken
Speaker 3: you pass.
Speaker 2: So they made you feel special.
Speaker 3: Then, yeah, yeah, thanks Terry. But that was that was
Speaker 3: a good grounding. And then a couple of years later
Speaker 3: I did join up the local brigade, which was just
Speaker 3: over the raid from US, and lots of fires through
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies, mainly bushfires but also occasional house fire
Speaker 3: and car fires, car accidents.
Speaker 2: I suppose when you join up, especially in Australia, you
Speaker 2: know you're going to see active duty. And I called
Speaker 2: it active duty because there's exactly that you know, weekly,
Speaker 2: if not daily.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, look, And I became a full time firefighter
Speaker 3: as soon as I left high school. When I was
Speaker 3: I was eighteen and nineteen seventy eight, nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: and I worked in the city here where we are
Speaker 3: now and that city of Sydney headquarters here. What we'd
Speaker 3: do fifteen thousand calls a year or something. It was
Speaker 3: just constant. You're back into the station, you'd go to
Speaker 3: another one, and a lot of them were false alarms,
Speaker 3: automatic fire alarms, but lots of chemical spills, car accident rescues,
Speaker 3: building fires, weird things, and it was just constant. And
Speaker 3: if you're in the suburbs in summer, you were going
Speaker 3: to a lot of bush and grass fires and the
Speaker 3: objective was keep them small, get to them quickly, keep
Speaker 3: them small, and on hot, windy days we'd double the
Speaker 3: response so we'd get there quickly and be able to
Speaker 3: round them up. But some of them just got away
Speaker 3: and you could fight these fires for weeks. So it
Speaker 3: was yeah, and fire services these days. When I joined,
Speaker 3: it was mainly just fire, but then you know the
Speaker 3: chemical spills and the rescue the first day helping ambulances. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So it was and again such incredibly rewarding work and
Speaker 3: the people you worked with just salt of the earth.
Speaker 3: You know, they put their lives on the line for
Speaker 3: something they've never met without, and they'd put their lives
Speaker 3: on the line for you. And you know a couple
Speaker 3: of situations I was in, I thought I'm done. Someone's
Speaker 3: grabbed me and dragged me out. So and you think, wow,
Speaker 3: what a privilege working with people like that, men and
Speaker 3: women who give their all.
Speaker 2: It's the first situation that you actually found yourself in
Speaker 2: when you were like, wow, I'm in deep hair. I
Speaker 2: need the team. You know, I'm not going to get
Speaker 2: this alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well I do. And so it was a
Speaker 3: bushfire locally, well it was actually it was a hazard
Speaker 3: reduction burnoff, but the weather forecast was wrong and Dad
Speaker 3: was in charge of this group. There's about ten of
Speaker 3: us down in a valley with just hand tools to
Speaker 3: cut fibers, and term is overrun. We were overrun by
Speaker 3: the fire. So it went flames were three four meters high.
Speaker 3: They suddenly went to ten fifteen meters high, and I
Speaker 3: just again it was Dad's calmness got us out of that.
Speaker 3: He got us onto a rock shelf and we a
Speaker 3: lot of sparks. We got some burns and a couple
Speaker 3: of got smoke inhalation, but we got out of it alive.
Speaker 3: But I think without someone as calm and as experienced
Speaker 3: as my dad, there would have been panic. And so
Speaker 3: that was pretty hairy. But look, I had quite a
Speaker 3: few over the years. I was at a building fire
Speaker 3: on my twentieth birthday. I remember it well, and in
Speaker 3: North Sydney. There's about three stories on fire and I
Speaker 3: went into one level with a line of hose and
Speaker 3: the roof came in and knocked me. I was pinned
Speaker 3: by a big beam, but I had a bree thing
Speaker 3: upright a cylinder on my back, so that saved me
Speaker 3: because it would have broken my back and I was stuck,
Speaker 3: but it was all burning around me and I couldn't
Speaker 3: find the hose. The blake who was with me, I
Speaker 3: don't know what happened to him later on he got
Speaker 3: separated from me. But I was able to crawl out,
Speaker 3: worked my way around the walls because that's the strongest
Speaker 3: bit and there was still stuff collapsing, and there's fire
Speaker 3: up above me and around me, and made it to
Speaker 3: the balcony and everyone's digging. What's happening. I said, there's
Speaker 3: young blake from thirty six station trapped under there, and
Speaker 3: I thought, oh no, it's a blake I was with.
Speaker 3: So I started digging and I said, who is it?
Speaker 3: Who is it who's trapped and they said Greg Mullen
Speaker 3: said no, no, it's me wo And look, I remember
Speaker 3: I had a really good boss at that time, and
Speaker 3: he took me aside and he said he didn't do
Speaker 3: anything wrong. We sent you in there and we didn't
Speaker 3: realize it was ready to collapse. But that's you know,
Speaker 3: the thing five fighter is you've got to be You've
Speaker 3: got to know about chemistry, hydraulics. You know, if you're
Speaker 3: on the tenth floor and you want a certain pressure
Speaker 3: on your hose, what do you pump at? You know,
Speaker 3: what's a friction loss? You've got to no building construction,
Speaker 3: You've got to be a bit of an electrician. What's
Speaker 3: the power doing? How what have I got to look
Speaker 3: at a plumber? You know, there's all these things you
Speaker 3: have to know, and it's just got more and more
Speaker 3: complex over the years. But that's what makes it such
Speaker 3: a wonderful career. And again back to the men and
Speaker 3: women on the front line, you just you just don't
Speaker 3: find better human beings. You know, I loved working with
Speaker 3: them and still do.
Speaker 2: Black Summer twenty nineteen, going on to twenty you're established,
Speaker 2: what rank are you holding at this stage?
Speaker 3: I'd retired, So I retire in January twenty seventeen. So
Speaker 3: as I did fourteen years as Commissioner of Foreign Rescue
Speaker 3: in New South Wales, which is one of the world's
Speaker 3: largest fire services. And look, I'll be open about it.
Speaker 3: I had to get out because I had PTSD and
Speaker 3: I sort of tried to deny it to myself, but
Speaker 3: my head was not in a good space and it
Speaker 3: was just time I had to go.
Speaker 2: And so did you recognize that or did someone else
Speaker 2: recognize that I.
Speaker 3: Was in denial? I knew all the sime PTSD, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I was too busy looking after other people, but
Speaker 3: it just came to a head.
Speaker 2: And look, I remember it was at a moment that
Speaker 2: you thought something's not right.
Speaker 3: We had a former Major General from the Australian Army
Speaker 3: speaking to a mental health conference of fire services that
Speaker 3: we'd arranged and I was up the front and I'm
Speaker 3: listening to him. He's written a book, Exit Wounds, and
Speaker 3: he was talking and I was just ticking the boxes
Speaker 3: as he went, and I just remember someone said to you, okay,
Speaker 3: because my legs bouncing and I've fidgeting, fidgeting, and I
Speaker 3: had to walk out and it all sat opened the gate,
Speaker 3: and so it was and I finally did something that
Speaker 3: a lot of men don't do. I sought help. And
Speaker 3: you know, this is one of the cultural things in
Speaker 3: fire services in particular, heavily male dominated, and blacks don't
Speaker 3: tend to talk about their feelings, and it was one
Speaker 3: of the reasons I pushed hard for more for women
Speaker 3: and fine and risk in New South Wales now has
Speaker 3: the largest proportion of frontline women than any fire service
Speaker 3: in Australia and up there in the world. But it's
Speaker 3: changed the culture for the better. People talk more. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that was really confronting just to go and talk to
Speaker 3: someone and say I don't feel the best. And it
Speaker 3: very quickly sort of escalated the diagnosis and everything. And
Speaker 3: they said you're in a you're in a pretty bad way,
Speaker 3: and I said, yeah, yeah, but I'll be right. And
Speaker 3: I said, no, no, you weren't.
Speaker 2: The default answer. Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine.
Speaker 3: Yea, you know that you're not. And look, I remember
Speaker 3: the day I retired, it was just this huge weight
Speaker 3: lifted off my shoulders. I wasn't responsible anymore. And the thing,
Speaker 3: you know, you'd know in the field, you've been in triggers,
Speaker 3: and my trigger was losing someone and going to knock
Speaker 3: on the door and tell a family they'd lost someone.
Speaker 3: And I couldn't. I didn't have another one in me.
Speaker 3: And in every time a page I went off, I'd
Speaker 3: have a panic attack, going no, no, no. And the
Speaker 3: day that I stopped and I gave it back, I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: I thank god, thank god.
Speaker 2: That didn't that didn't last too long, right, Yeah, because
Speaker 2: you got called up for Yeah.
Speaker 3: Look, Dad tapped me on the shoulder and he said,
Speaker 3: you know they're short of volunteers mate locally and you're
Speaker 3: able bodied. Yeah okay, but look it had been my
Speaker 3: plan and that was your thing. People people say, what
Speaker 3: you got out of that because you went well and
Speaker 3: you went back into I said, yeah, but it's different.
Speaker 3: It's that it's that leadership stuff and being responsible, that's it.
Speaker 3: And you feel an obligation. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of money.
Speaker 2: Try calling for you again.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, Yeah, they've invested a lot of money, you know,
Speaker 3: I know, I work with a London fire brigade, with
Speaker 3: Los Angeles City Fire Fire Department, New York Fire Department,
Speaker 3: New York Take you know, been around the world, got
Speaker 3: all this knowledge. So just say, I know I'm retired,
Speaker 3: now I'm going to the beach. Well no it's not.
Speaker 3: It wasn't going to and look if there was smoke
Speaker 3: on the horizon and I couldn't do something about it,
Speaker 3: that really hurt me, you know, it was I've got
Speaker 3: to do something. So I went back to being a volunteer.
Speaker 3: So leading up to those fires, that was the original
Speaker 3: question you asked. I was a deputy captain, so I
Speaker 3: was a crew leader, you know, just in charge of
Speaker 3: a crew. But I had all the qualifications to be
Speaker 3: a group leader, in charge of a number of brigades,
Speaker 3: and to be an incident controller. And so I'd get
Speaker 3: called in to do command roles or just take a
Speaker 3: crew to a small fire and put the fire out.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the lead up into twenty nineteen twenty eighteen
Speaker 3: was almost black summer. But then it rained in New
Speaker 3: South Wales in November and it just we lost homes
Speaker 3: very early in the piece, so earlier than we'd ever
Speaker 3: really had big fires before in August should have shouldn't
Speaker 3: have been until October. Big fires in the state of Queensland,
Speaker 3: Tasmania in places that had never burned before. And so
Speaker 3: this was prior to, yeah, prior to and just saw.
Speaker 2: The warning signs were they did that ring alarm bells?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah. No. I was losing sleep. And
Speaker 3: I'd been tapped on the shoulder by the Australian Climate
Speaker 3: Council to come on board as a member as a
Speaker 3: natural disasters expert. And they were formed after the Liberal
Speaker 3: National Party government that came to power and I don't
Speaker 3: know what year immediately sacked everybody on the Climate Commission.
Speaker 3: So they got crowdfunded, the community crowdfunded them. They became
Speaker 3: the Climate Council. So I'd come on board and I
Speaker 3: was telling the Climate Council, something really, really bad is coming.
Speaker 3: This is twenty eighteen. We just dodged a bullet, but
Speaker 3: millions of hectares were burnt, dozens of homes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is out of the norm.
Speaker 3: This is Yeah. It ever doesn't rain in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it's going to look like, but
Speaker 3: it's not going to be good. So yes, that's where I.
Speaker 2: Was at so did they lessen to you?
Speaker 3: I look absolutely, and I put to the Climate Council,
Speaker 3: I said, I'd like to I think it would be
Speaker 3: really beneficial to have former fire chiefs who can speak,
Speaker 3: because when you're employed by government, you're bound by government
Speaker 3: policy and you don't come out criticizing the government, or
Speaker 3: you can, but you won't have a job for much longer.
Speaker 3: But I want to form this group of former fire
Speaker 3: chiefs and they said, yep, go for it. So cut
Speaker 3: a long story short. One week of phone calls and
Speaker 3: I had twenty three former fire chiefs from every fire
Speaker 3: service in Australia just saying, look, where as worried as
Speaker 3: you are, we've got to do something. We've got to
Speaker 3: go to the government. We've got to go to the
Speaker 3: Prime Minister because this is going to blow up at
Speaker 3: the end of this year. And that didn't turn out
Speaker 3: to be that successful because the government didn't want to
Speaker 3: listen because we said two horrible words, climate change, and
Speaker 3: ideologically that was a no no. So they just attacked
Speaker 3: us wow and said we were what the Deputy Prime
Speaker 3: Minister call us at the time, time wasters in a
Speaker 3: city Lata sipping your joking me, yeah, idiots or something
Speaker 3: that was something like that, and it was just it
Speaker 3: was actually amusing just to see how juvenile they were.
Speaker 3: But the Prime Minister would not respond to our letters
Speaker 3: and would not meet with us, and we were just
Speaker 3: saying very simple things like you need to streamline how
Speaker 3: you use the military because they'll tell you that it's
Speaker 3: the system that's thirty years old, is broken and it's
Speaker 3: very hard for them to help with assets, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And the fire chiefs at the moment have asked for
Speaker 3: just twelve million dollars because they need more firefighting aircraft
Speaker 3: that they leased from overseas and they got to get
Speaker 3: in now, and they just said no, twelve million was
Speaker 3: a rounding error in the federal budget. But they just
Speaker 3: wouldn't and because it was because we mentioned climate change and.
Speaker 2: They were soon eating their words. Right, when did it
Speaker 2: start to really get out of control? When was the
Speaker 2: next let's called it the next wave, because ultimately, guess
Speaker 2: what happened. You had you had the warning shots over
Speaker 2: over the bow and now it's like no one, no
Speaker 2: one took year to that even though you didn't have
Speaker 2: the funding. Did you start preparing for what you knew
Speaker 2: was coming.
Speaker 3: Oh, look absolutely, and the fire services were just going,
Speaker 3: you know, we don't know where it'll hit. We know
Speaker 3: it's going to be bad because it was. We're in
Speaker 3: drought and two thousand and eighteen have been really hot,
Speaker 3: and in two thousand and eighteen we looked to California.
Speaker 3: They lost twenty thousand buildings in two thousand and eighteen,
Speaker 3: including the the city of Paradise was basically destroyed and
Speaker 3: nearly one hundred people killed. And often we follow California
Speaker 3: our big fire season, so I factored that in thought, Oh,
Speaker 3: you know, so that's what happened to them. We've had
Speaker 3: this build up. If it doesn't rain, if we don't
Speaker 3: get winter rain, pardon my French, we're screwed. And we
Speaker 3: didn't get the winter rains. So just to understand the fires,
Speaker 3: the legislation in New South Wales says we get our
Speaker 3: bush fires from first to October to thirty first of
Speaker 3: March e chick because for one hundred years that was
Speaker 3: a case. So in July, months before that, we were
Speaker 3: having major fires and by August we were losing homes.
Speaker 3: And in the past, no, you don't lose homes until
Speaker 3: near Christmas, maybe November, but in September sixth I remember
Speaker 3: September sixth we had catastrophic fire weather in northern New
Speaker 3: South Wales and had never even got close before that date. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it just and I just watched this unfold in southern
Speaker 3: Queensland and wet rainforest or so called wet rainforests that
Speaker 3: had dried out was burning. That stuff that hadn't burnt
Speaker 3: for me, you know, was Gondwana rainforests from the same
Speaker 3: as it was when the dinosaurs were there, and it
Speaker 3: didn't burn. Now it was earning. Just dozens of homes lost,
Speaker 3: and so the government started to dial back there, denial
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden start eating. In September, contacted
Speaker 3: by one of the ministers saying, oh, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: we should talk to you, and we said no, we
Speaker 3: want to talk to the Prime minister. So they straightway
Speaker 3: said they refused to talk to us. No, that's not
Speaker 3: actually the case. We said, we want to talk to
Speaker 3: the Prime minister. This is bad, but it's going to
Speaker 3: get a lot worse.
Speaker 2: So we've start you know this, yeah, yeah, this is.
Speaker 3: And look we did meet with two ministers. Prime minister
Speaker 3: just would not talk to us. And they held a
Speaker 3: little press conference ten minutes after we walked out of
Speaker 3: their office, saying, oh, we met with the old fire
Speaker 3: chiefs and we patted them on the head and said,
Speaker 3: you know, don't worry, we've got this, and they need
Speaker 3: to have confidence in the current fire chiefs. So tried
Speaker 3: to make out that we were bagging the current fire chess,
Speaker 3: which was not the cuts. They were doing a brilliant job,
Speaker 3: but with one arm tied behind their back, and so
Speaker 3: it was just political and it got worse from now.
Speaker 2: I have to think that politics would be an obstacle
Speaker 2: for allowing you to save lives, to save the land,
Speaker 2: to save animals, to save wildlife, to save mother nature.
Speaker 2: You'd have any resistance from government, you'd think they'd go right,
Speaker 2: and you know what you're doing is, you know, here's
Speaker 2: one hundredercent, let's go, you know, to prevent it at
Speaker 2: all costs. But instead, it's really bizarre.
Speaker 3: And it was all down to ideology. And they had
Speaker 3: a platform for a decade saying there's really no such
Speaker 3: thing as climate change and we don't have to do anything,
Speaker 3: and we you know, anything we do makes no difference.
Speaker 3: It'll be three percent or a point three percent of
Speaker 3: the emissions. Why would we ruin our economy? This was
Speaker 3: their rhetoric, But Australia's in the front line, and what
Speaker 3: we were saying was, yeah, but why did we tell
Speaker 3: other countries they should get rid of nuclear weapons or
Speaker 3: stop apartheid or whatever. You know, we used to have
Speaker 3: moral clout because ossies do the wrong thing and they're
Speaker 3: not scared to front up to someone bigger than them
Speaker 3: and say, hey, you're doing the wrong thing and climate change,
Speaker 3: we're going to whimp it out. And you know, a
Speaker 3: cynic might say they had lots of friends in the
Speaker 3: fossil fuel industries helping to fund them, and that's what
Speaker 3: we're up against. And look, so what point.
Speaker 2: Did it get to when it was like the country's
Speaker 2: going to burn? You know this is serious because I
Speaker 2: remember it going global the news globe. I remember seeing
Speaker 2: houses going wildlife you know, koalas kang like it's almost
Speaker 2: as if Australia was on fire.
Speaker 3: We'll look, it was and every state and territory had
Speaker 3: major fires, so and that had never happened before. There
Speaker 3: used to be sequential They come from the north and
Speaker 3: we'd share firefighters across borders all of sudden, we're in
Speaker 3: the fight of our lives and couldn't help each other.
Speaker 3: The aircraft we needed. California still had fires and they
Speaker 3: wouldn't let a lot of them go because a big
Speaker 3: aircraft we don't have any in Australia, or didn't have
Speaker 3: any in Australia. Then we had to lease them, and
Speaker 3: so they were saying, no, we've got our own problems,
Speaker 3: you can wait. So the fires got bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3: The weather it was the worst weather ever recorded, so
Speaker 3: for months and months and months. There's a whole lot
Speaker 3: of things that contributed to that, in the Antarctic and
Speaker 3: the Tropics and the unusual weather patterns. But we had drought,
Speaker 3: so we had strong westerly winds coming off the desert,
Speaker 3: off the interior the out back, hitting the coast, very
Speaker 3: low humidity, very high temperatures. I was fighting fires one
Speaker 3: day twenty first of December twenty nineteen. It just about
Speaker 3: reached fifty degrees in western Sydney. I did a twenty
Speaker 3: six hour shift and ended up in bed with de hydration,
Speaker 3: pretty sick, and know we we saved dozens of homes
Speaker 3: that night, but it nearly didn't make it home. And
Speaker 3: so it was horrendous weather. And as a young firefighter,
Speaker 3: I remember thinking, oh, you know the old one hundred
Speaker 3: degrees fahrenheit, it's thirty eight degrees. That's about as hot
Speaker 3: as it would ever get. But then we were fighting
Speaker 3: fires regularly in forty five forty seven. It was just horrendous.
Speaker 3: And he took off in November again, and I was
Speaker 3: actually in California at the Kincaid Fire in Sonoma County.
Speaker 3: So I went over with the Climate Council. The ABC
Speaker 3: Australian Broadcasting Commission tagged along and I went out to
Speaker 3: this fire and they did a little special and it
Speaker 3: went to where I think it was the seventh of November. Sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm a nerder, remember dates. It's a roundabout then, and
Speaker 3: on the and me saying, well, look at this fire
Speaker 3: in California. Here's what's changing with climate change. They didn't
Speaker 3: get big fires like this in northern California this time
Speaker 3: of year, but now they do same in Australia. And
Speaker 3: this build up, this is the worst I've ever seen,
Speaker 3: and I'm really frightened about what's going to happen. So
Speaker 3: the next day after they ran it across Australia, the
Speaker 3: fires went wild and lost dozens and dozens of homes,
Speaker 3: some lives, and.
Speaker 2: You're back to back at this stage, you know, every
Speaker 2: man and his dog is out. Are you undermanned as
Speaker 2: a fire service, so all your resources stretched.
Speaker 3: It it was just relentless and relentlessly and it was
Speaker 3: just you know, you're going from August and just there
Speaker 3: was no rest months and months and people who lived
Speaker 3: in the fire areas and I was really lucky. I thought,
Speaker 3: if Sydney gets hit, you know, that's where the real
Speaker 3: property losses have traditionally happened, as on the outskirts of
Speaker 3: Sydney and the Blue Mountains near Sydney. But we're losing
Speaker 3: hundreds of homes in regional areas which had never happened
Speaker 3: before and just showed how big the fires were. But yeah,
Speaker 3: people were exhorted and you couldn't get the interstate assistance
Speaker 3: because they had their own fires. You didn't have enough aircraft,
Speaker 3: you know. I remember watching a drop on the south
Speaker 3: coast of New South Wales thinking great, and then it
Speaker 3: was two hours before the next one because it had
Speaker 3: to fly back to Sydney and relaid and come back.
Speaker 3: And it was just there was no point, you know,
Speaker 3: and it was and the small aircraft couldn't fly because
Speaker 3: wind was too strong. So we'd get days of catastrophic
Speaker 3: fire weather, which was a new rating we brought in
Speaker 3: because of climate change, because the weather was getting so bad.
Speaker 3: But most aircraft couldn't fly in those days because the
Speaker 3: wind was too gusty and strong. And there was a
Speaker 3: bad air crash at see one thirty hercules went in
Speaker 3: on one of these days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard about that, but it was just.
Speaker 3: Yeah, horrific. So look, it just got worse and worse
Speaker 3: and worse, and culminated on New Year's Eve twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: The south coast of New South Wales, which is you know,
Speaker 3: hundreds of kilometers long, beautiful beaches. Tens of thousands of
Speaker 3: people go there for their Christmas holidays. It was evacuated
Speaker 3: and there were dozens of huge fires, and I remember
Speaker 3: being down there on Newyear's Day. We left Sydney about
Speaker 3: four am. It would have been hundreds of fire trucks
Speaker 3: heading down there, and we just couldn't do a thing
Speaker 3: because we had what we called a pyro convective storm
Speaker 3: above us, and that means the fire was so hot
Speaker 3: the convection column pushed into the stratosphere and brought gale
Speaker 3: storm force winds to the surface this incredibly dry air,
Speaker 3: and huge trees next to us were just getting snapped
Speaker 3: off like toothpicks and thrown around. And I didn't think
Speaker 3: I was coming home again, I thought, but you talked
Speaker 3: about the animals, and this is I was back to
Speaker 3: my psychologist over this one because I couldn't talk about
Speaker 3: I can talk about it now without sort of tearing up,
Speaker 3: but it took a lot of work to get there.
Speaker 3: Remember being on a highway and there's factories burning and
Speaker 3: homes burning, and we didn't have any water, and the
Speaker 3: power had gone and we couldn't get any water. I
Speaker 3: saw something over on the side of the highway through
Speaker 3: the smoke. What's that? And I thought it was burnt
Speaker 3: hay bales, And then some of them started to move
Speaker 3: and I went over closer and it was a mob
Speaker 3: of kangaroos who had been caught in the forest and
Speaker 3: just caught fire and come out on the raid and
Speaker 3: just died on the raid. And I've never seen that
Speaker 3: because kangaroos know how to get away from fires. And
Speaker 3: I just, yeah, i'd cry if I talked about it
Speaker 3: for months and it just said everything to me. I
Speaker 3: just thought, my grandkids are going to grow up this.
Speaker 3: You know, millions of hectares have been sterilized for decades.
Speaker 3: Animals will come back, but nothing like when I was
Speaker 3: a kid, when my parents took me camping see kangaroos
Speaker 3: and koalas and kidnaps and goannas and well, this beautiful wildlife.
Speaker 3: It was wiped down.
Speaker 2: I had a sense of worthlessness when you just said.
Speaker 2: I was stood there. You're looking around, everything around you's
Speaker 2: on fire. You can't do your job because you've got
Speaker 2: no resources, and I can imagine me being in a
Speaker 2: war zone, you know, with no weapon. Just wow, that
Speaker 2: must be some yeah sort of headspace to be in.
Speaker 2: What was going for your head?
Speaker 3: I'm not good, certainly not good. And look the mental
Speaker 3: health issues with firefighters since then, and thinking you're going
Speaker 3: to die is you know, as you know, it's not
Speaker 3: a good thing, and you do that too many times
Speaker 3: and plays with the head of it. That's an understand
Speaker 3: but but just not being able to help was so destroying.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm a firefighter, but I can't fight your fire.
Speaker 3: And sorry, I can't help you because I'm just dodging trees,
Speaker 3: and I don't know if I'm getting out of here,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know if I'm going home from this.
Speaker 3: So and it was just it's just like having your
Speaker 3: legs cut off out from under you. You know. It
Speaker 3: was just the whole reason for being and he couldn't
Speaker 3: do it. And it brought it home to me. And
Speaker 3: I got to say, I was so pissed off with
Speaker 3: the government that day, and a couple of days later
Speaker 3: the Prime Minister had a press conference and so I'm
Speaker 3: going to fix it all. I'm going to give them
Speaker 3: a money for aircraft. I was pretty angry, and I
Speaker 3: don't I actually don't talk about that much because I
Speaker 3: think it serves no purpose. But the other thing was
Speaker 3: he went on a holiday and didn't tell anyone. You know,
Speaker 3: if he told people, fine, but he kept it secret
Speaker 3: because he knew he should have been there providing leadership
Speaker 3: during a disaster, but he took off. And so all that.
Speaker 2: Also emotion as anger, resentment, Yeah, you know, worth you
Speaker 2: don't feel like you can do your job, Well, you
Speaker 2: can't do your job negative emotions, yeah you can't. But
Speaker 2: how did you deal with that? Well, you go home
Speaker 2: and cry. How did you deal with that? Was was
Speaker 2: there at the moments that you sort of just broke
Speaker 2: down and was just.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, well yes, but look in my book, I
Speaker 3: talk about it. A day I was going out on
Speaker 3: the fire line again. It was that forty nine degree day,
Speaker 3: and but two days before I'd been fighting fires down
Speaker 3: to the south of Sydney and two young dads were
Speaker 3: killed when a tree fell on their truck. And that's
Speaker 3: my trigger, you know, the big one. And I went
Speaker 3: to a cafe before I was going on shift. I
Speaker 3: thought I'll have breakfast, and I walked in. I had
Speaker 3: the newspaper and I opened it up and there they
Speaker 3: are on the front cover, and I've the tears started.
Speaker 3: I've I've had to pull myself together. People sort of
Speaker 3: looking at me because I'm in uniform. And I've got
Speaker 3: back in the car and I thought, okay, deep breaths,
Speaker 3: deep breaths, right, all the all the techniques to right.
Speaker 3: So I go to the counter and autumn breakfast, and
Speaker 3: then I just remember the barrista came over to the
Speaker 3: girl and the on the cash register, and then the
Speaker 3: girl said, it's fine, It's taken care of and I
Speaker 3: said what and she said on a flow, he has
Speaker 3: paid for your breakfast, and she said, thank you so
Speaker 3: much for what you do. And I just and that.
Speaker 3: I just thought of those two young dads and I
Speaker 3: just and I lost it and it was so embarrassing,
Speaker 3: but I just sat tears, isn't it. Yeah, so brought
Speaker 3: it back. But how nice people are and how good
Speaker 3: But these two young blakes, their families would never see
Speaker 3: them again.
Speaker 2: And also the appreciation that, yeah, moment of kindness amongst
Speaker 2: the chaos.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you have to let it out. And I
Speaker 3: learned that, and I, you know, I reflected on that,
Speaker 3: but look, it reinforced with me. We had a government
Speaker 3: that needed to go because they'd lost their moral radar
Speaker 3: and they weren't listening to the science. They were just
Speaker 3: listening to mates who didn't have much between there is
Speaker 3: and wanted to make profits. And you know, I was
Speaker 3: dealing with misinformation a certain part of the media, personal
Speaker 3: attacks and because anyone who doesn't listen to what they
Speaker 3: want to say, and I just thought, this is sick,
Speaker 3: you know, And I hope and I always thought of
Speaker 3: the UK. Margaret Thatcher was the first prime minister who
Speaker 3: understood climate change. Because she was a scientist. She was
Speaker 3: the one who said we've got to take action on
Speaker 3: climate way back then. And so it's been a both
Speaker 3: sides of politics. So yeah, it's a given it's changing
Speaker 3: a bit now. But why can't Australia be like that?
Speaker 3: We burn, we flood? You know, I can't you see this?
Speaker 2: Was there ever a light at the end of the
Speaker 2: tunnel where you thought were you know, it's starting to
Speaker 2: die down, it's starting to get control here, We're starting
Speaker 2: to take charge of these fires. Shall I say? No?
Speaker 3: It was sudden because it was just getting worse and worse.
Speaker 3: And what would happen. We'd get a couple of days
Speaker 3: low in the weather, maybe three days, and then we'd
Speaker 3: look at the forecasts, so it's going to be forty
Speaker 3: five degrees again and look at the gale force winds
Speaker 3: and we got hundreds of kilometers of fire front. They're
Speaker 3: all going to you know, bad, just keep going. It
Speaker 3: suddenly rained, but it didn't just rain, it poured and
Speaker 3: people were flooded. So we went from I went from
Speaker 3: hosing fires to hosing mud out of people's hands. And
Speaker 3: this is the trend. And you know, the basic the
Speaker 3: basic science behind it is for every one degree rise
Speaker 3: in temperature, the atmosphere holds seven percent more water. So,
Speaker 3: as the insurance industry will tell you, in Australia, most
Speaker 3: of the rain now comes in violent downpaws and causes
Speaker 3: flash flooding and then river and flooding flood. So we
Speaker 3: had record floods, floods like we've never had before.
Speaker 2: One minute, Like you said, you know, you're dealing with
Speaker 2: the fires of relief because you've got the rain, but
Speaker 2: too much of it. You're facing a whole different catastrophic
Speaker 2: event there, aren't you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it was it was more predictable. The floods
Speaker 3: were more predictable, particularly when the rivers were flooding and
Speaker 3: going downstream, but the downpaws weren't. The flash floods and
Speaker 3: people lost their lives. So, and this is what we've
Speaker 3: seen worldwide. We call it climate whiplash. You go from
Speaker 3: one extreme to the other and it's becoming more plash.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it was such a relief that the fires were out,
Speaker 3: but then we had thousands of homeless because of these floods.
Speaker 3: And we had three years in twenty twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: particularly twenty twenty two, and it was we had a
Speaker 3: triple La Nina event three years in a row and
Speaker 3: it's only happened a couple of times before. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so we're getting strange weather and strange climatic patterns. But
Speaker 3: there it's all in the extreme end. You know, nothing's
Speaker 3: nothing's down the bottom. It's all banged, big punches and
Speaker 3: communities getting hit over and over, so they get burnt
Speaker 3: out and they get flooded, then they get flooded again.
Speaker 2: So there was never a finish line. Then there was
Speaker 2: never this is the end of it. It was just
Speaker 2: one thing rolling into another, that whiplash going back and forth,
Speaker 2: you know, in my head as there was this big
Speaker 2: event and it doesn't I suppose it never ends for
Speaker 2: you guys, does it?
Speaker 3: No, it doesn't. And there's day to day stuff. But look,
Speaker 3: the big strategic thing is to get the political class
Speaker 3: to say, you know what, we're going to actually get
Speaker 3: a bit of courage on board and do what needs
Speaker 3: to be done. And it was so gratifying, I have
Speaker 3: to say it to see that government that had been
Speaker 3: in for a decade, a decade of climate and action
Speaker 3: swept out, swept out and a lot of independence coming in.
Speaker 3: Who people didn't trust the two big parties anymore because
Speaker 3: I was so much alike. And so we had half
Speaker 3: a dozen I think seven Independence Community Independence. And one
Speaker 3: of them was a journalist who was with me in
Speaker 3: California and when she did her speech to Parliament, she said,
Speaker 3: I was in California at this major fire with a
Speaker 3: former fire chief, Greg Mullins, and I just realized I've
Speaker 3: got to do something about climate and I thought, how
Speaker 3: nice is that? And things have changed, there's action taking place,
Speaker 3: and you know, there's some worldwide events in the US,
Speaker 3: for example, a little put it back a little bit,
Speaker 3: but there's hope. Now there's a lot of China's doing
Speaker 3: a heap in the renewables space. But you know there's
Speaker 3: other things going on there, of course, but there's cause
Speaker 3: for hope. And you can't give in to doom.
Speaker 2: It can't be ignored, especially when someone like that happens.
Speaker 3: But look, we're on a trajectory. I think the private
Speaker 3: sector is investing a lot of money into renewaballs. We're
Speaker 3: not reducing emissions yet, but we're getting close to being
Speaker 3: peak of missions and then it'll drop. And I'm not
Speaker 3: giving up. You know, I've got grand kids.
Speaker 2: But I suppose you can't give up, mate. It's not
Speaker 2: that you know, you've got that state of mind that
Speaker 2: you know, it seems like that you'll be doing this, mate,
Speaker 2: until until you take your last breath. Mate, by the
Speaker 2: sounds of it. And I always say to people as
Speaker 2: well with you know when I say, oh, I can't
Speaker 2: wait to retire, and my wife's like, and you're never
Speaker 2: going to have a tire, you know. And I could
Speaker 2: sort of see myself in usug where you know, you're
Speaker 2: just going to keep going and keep going and keep
Speaker 2: going and keep going. And what does the future hold
Speaker 2: for Greg Mullins? Where are you at right now? Can
Speaker 2: you step away or would you want to step away? No?
Speaker 3: And look, people talk about retirement and the old the
Speaker 3: old view of retirement was you get a rocking chair
Speaker 3: and sit in the corner and read a book or something.
Speaker 3: In that way, there's life to be lived out, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love life, and I love my family and my friends,
Speaker 3: and I live in a magnificent part of the world
Speaker 3: of rebuilt mum and Dad's home that they built in
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties. And I'm back. I look at the
Speaker 3: big tree out the front that I used to climb
Speaker 3: sixty years ago when I was a kid. And just think,
Speaker 3: how lucky am I. I'm doing stuff that I love
Speaker 3: and I'm seeing a difference, and not saying I made
Speaker 3: the difference, But there's people have waken up and look out.
Speaker 3: Of every bad thing, some good comes. And those terrible fires,
Speaker 3: worse fires in Australia history, the biggest, the most hamous,
Speaker 3: lost all the rest. People wake up and went, oh
Speaker 3: my god, and they went and this government lied to
Speaker 3: us and they swept them out of power. And I thought, ah,
Speaker 3: there's hope, you know there. And there's as I said,
Speaker 3: this climate action happening and way above my pay grade,
Speaker 3: and some very smart people doing incredible things, and really
Speaker 3: good moral politicians leading the way. And I feel good
Speaker 3: about that. And so I'll just keep doing my little bit,
Speaker 3: whether it's locally going to a house fire or whatever,
Speaker 3: or taking charge of a bush fire, or writing a
Speaker 3: submission to a Senate inquiry or whatever. But I'll just
Speaker 3: keep doing what I'm doing, and I hope it makes
Speaker 3: a bit of a difference.
Speaker 2: And well, listen, I rarely use this word, and I
Speaker 2: don't think I don't like to use them. I think
Speaker 2: they're overused, but make you're a hero. Honestly, you are
Speaker 2: legend and a hero. And I say that not lightly
Speaker 2: because I've seen a few heroes and a few legends,
Speaker 2: but mate, you're certainly one of them. And thank you
Speaker 2: ever so much for coming on my podcast, head Game.
Speaker 2: It's been a fascinating chat.
Speaker 3: Thank you for that coming from someone like you, I'm
Speaker 3: very humbled, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, and I'm humbled to be self pleader you mate.
Speaker 3: Thanks again, Greg, Thanks Ann.
Speaker 2: Greg Mullins is the author of Firestorm. If you'd like
Speaker 2: to check it out, I'll link the details in the
Speaker 2: show notes. Thanks for listening to this episode of head Game.
Speaker 2: If you enjoyed it, please leave me a review. I'm
Speaker 2: at Middleton. Catch you in the next episode.