Riverina Rewind: Coolamon's world-class collection of firefighting memorabilia

When you’re a kid, there are few things more exciting than a fire engine roaring past, sirens blaring and lights flashing, with a team of valiant firefighters onboard rushing to the rescue.

It’s a passion that never left retired firefighter Chris Berry and a visit to his extraordinary museum in Coolamon is guaranteed to rekindle your sense of adventure and appreciation for those who have served.

Stepping through the doors of the old Coolamon Fire Station is like walking into an Aladdin’s cave of firefighting memorabilia.

Like all collections, it began with a single item that Chris picked up while working as a cabinetmaker in the Riverina.

“I was putting a kitchen in at West Wyalong and there was a brass helmet sitting on top of the cupboards,” Chris recalled.

“I told the lady that I’d always wanted one of them, and she said, ‘Take it, I hate it’ – so I bought it off her and it all went downhill from there!”

Fortunately, Chris’s wife is a keen contributor to his collection and they have spent four decades acquiring and restoring thousands of artifacts.

The Coolaman Fire Museum boasts three exhibition rooms filled with all manner of accoutrements, from helmets, belts and uniforms to buckets, hoses and axes.

There are fully restored, hand-drawn fire carts, an official NSW Fire Brigade bicycle and antique breathing apparatus, including the leather bellows once used to keep the air flowing.

“I just love all the history and I’ve got things here from the day the NSW Fire Brigade started, right up to today’s uniform,” said Chris, indicating a line of mannequins, one of which is wearing his own woollen uniform from when he joined in 1979.

“Up to 1910 it wasn’t called NSW Fire Brigade, it was called The Metropolitan Fire Brigade,” he explained.

“This brass helmet’s got 1909 scratched in the back with the fellow’s name and the front panel is loose, so you can see they’ve changed the plate over to NSW.”

Many of the pieces date back even further to the early 1800s, including leather hoses and buckets and a collection of private insurance plaques.

“Up to 1884 in NSW, the fire brigades were owned by insurance companies, so if you didn’t have one of those plaques on your house, they’d just let it burn down,” he said.

“A fellow named Andrew Torning started the first volunteer fire brigade [in 1857], and his great-great-granddaughter lives here in Coolamon.”

The Coolamon Fire Museum officially opened in 2015 and also serves as the Visitor Information Centre.

Chris funds the operation through donations and some support from the council but said he almost had to close the doors this year when things got tight.

“Just a few weeks ago I had a stack of bills and no money, so I said to the wife, ‘That’s it, we’ll have to close it down,'” he recalled.

“But then my sister’s granddaughter, whom I’ve never met, started the GoFundMe page and we’ve made just enough money to keep going.”

So for now, the doors stay open and Chris will go on taking visitors through his sprawling collection, keeping the history alive.

“When I joined the fire brigade, everything was brass and we had to polish it,” he said, looking around at the burnished collection.

“We now have a muster in Coolamon every year on the October long weekend, so I guess I’ve got to start polishing it all again before we get there.”

The museum and Visitor Information Centre’s opening hours are 10 am to 4 pm seven days per week and you can support the museum through the GoFundMe page.