By Parker McKenzie
Outside Ferntree Gully CFA on The Avenue, a piece of history hangs between a wooden frame within the garden facing the street.
The fire bell was originally used to alert the local community of bushfires and as a gathering call for local volunteers who would race out to the scene of a fire.
“Someone would see a column of smoke or they’d be manually alerted and they’d run down there and pull on the bell,” Ferntree Gully CFA Captain Seamus Smith said.
“The original bell was much smaller and was changed for a larger one which would ring out for 1.6km from the station for people to hear the tolling and respond to an emergency.”
The smaller version was first purchased and installed in 1926 by the Fern Tree Gully Bush Fire Brigade for six pounds after devastating bushfires in Victoria.
When the original three-sided fire tower it was mounted in was replaced in 1975, it was replaced with the larger bell by the CFA.
Captain Smith said the bell is no longer required because it has been replaced by more modern technology.
“We’ve got the paging system and we’ve got other electronic applications that we get notified by,” he said.
“We’ve got the siren as a fallback system during the fire danger period.”
While the larger bell is mounted outside the station, the smaller one— taken from a paddle steamboat — is on display within as a reminder of the history of firefighting in Ferntree Gully.
Captain Smith said the larger bell is still used occasionally, on different and often sombre occasions.
“It’s primarily used commemoratively or to add respect if we’ve had a funeral,” he said.
“It’s a feature of the garden now alongside the FireStar Rose that came out of the back of Black Saturday and the fire-resistant, drought-tolerant garden.”
A small plaque explains the history of both the alarm bell and the Bushfire Aware Garden outside the Ferntree Gully CFA building at 5 The Avenue, Ferntree Gully.
