Community & Business
20 June, 2023
Dedication pays off for Ashley
YUNGABURRA local Ashley Cupitt has spent nearly all his adult life protecting his community from the dangers of bushfires, attending accidents and providing support for his fellow officers and his decades of selfless service have been recognised with an illustrious medal.
YUNGABURRA local Ashley Cupitt has spent nearly all his adult life protecting his community from the dangers of bushfires, attending accidents and providing support for his fellow officers and his decades of selfless service have been recognised with an illustrious medal.
It was this dedication to his community and his fellow officers that earned Ashley the prestigious Australian Fire Service Medal as part of the King’s Birthday Honours recently.
Ashley had previous experience in fighting blazes long before joining with the Queensland Fire Services in 1976 as he worked at the Yungaburra sawmill during his earlier years.
The workers would often trade their tools for hoses as they stood side by side with local firefighters and battled blazes the sawmill would incidentally cause.
“When I was 15, I was working at the Yungaburra sawmill and in them days they had three rubbish fires at the back that used to burn year-round,” Ashley said.
“In the dry season every now and then, the fire from those would spread into the surrounding grass and burn back to Tinaburra and round to the Yungaburra Sewerage Plant – one year it burnt that much it jumped the creek and went back to the Barron River.
“Us mill workers would drop our tools and go help the firies fight the fires, we would do that quite often, one year they asked me if I would join up.”
So began Ashley’s near half century long career in the fire service which would eventually see him rise to chief, later renamed to captain, of the Yungaburra Fire Station.
Ashley also took on a role as a peer support officer and coordinates the entire region, providing comfort and assistance to firefighters who may be in distress after attending a road accident or other traumatic incident.
It was this devotion to his community and fellow officers that led Ashely to be nominated for and receive the Australian Fire Service Medal, which he saw as a great honour.
The Australian Fire Service Medal is not in recognition of long service but rather distinguished service and seeks to recognise a firefighter’s devotion to the service, not how long they served.
“This medal is for distinguished service, going above and beyond the normal job role,” Ashley said.
“Like the peer support I do, and I was also an auxiliary training officer for a lot of years.
“I’ve also done a lot of things over the years that was not expected of me.”
As Yungaburra is one of the smaller stations on the Tablelands, Ashley and his crew often get called to back up other crews in the area to assist with bigger incidents.
One of the most recent fires were the 2019-20 bushfires which tore through Mareeba and destroyed multiple properties.
Ashley said the role of a firefighter has changed over the years and grown from just bush and structure fires to road accidents which is now the biggest part of the job.
“We do road accidents, grass fires and we also assist the ambulance a lot now,” he said.
“We help them lift casualties out of houses, CPR, first aid and stuff like that when needed.”
Ashley will have to retire from the service when he turns 65 towards the end of the year but he has already been approached but multiple rural fire brigades and the SES to join up
