By Mikayla van Loon
Firefighters and brigades from all over the country came together over the weekend to raise money for mental health and suicide prevention in the 28 floor Melbourne Firefighter Stair Climb.
Taking on the challenge were members from Montrose, Mooroolbark, Chirnside Park, Wonga Park, Lilydale and Mount Evelyn who raised a combined total $15,339.
Donning 25kg of turnout gear, Montrose CFA brigade member James Gluskie said even though he’d done it before, the climb of Crown Metropol was still as challenging as ever.
“The first 15 flights are very much just on the main tank, and then as you get higher up, you either start dying or get the zone and keep pushing, or a happy combination of the two,” he said.
Describing the feeling of wearing the CFA response gear while climbing stairs, James said to imagine “climbing stairs in the desert wrapped in a doona.”
“We’re used to wearing the gear but we’re not used to climbing up 400 odd stairs in all the equipment,” he said.
“So imagine wearing a doona and then putting on a scuba set and climbing stairs. It’s very, very stuffy and the air is rather dry sometimes.”
While a physical challenge and a test of endurance, the stair climb also tests mental capacity to keep pushing on when times get tough, making it for James seven and a half minutes of focus and mental strength.
James said for the people who had done the climb before “we knocked our times out of the park, which is amazing” and for those who hadn’t, it was just a good experience, something everyone was proud of at the end.
“We all had the general consensus of, ‘we don’t care what our times are, let’s make it to the top’.
“Because after two years of Covid and all the mental health that has come from it, we just wanted to make it to the top for ourselves and getting up to the top was an amazing feeling.
“We made it, we’ve done this, it raised so much, half a million dollars for this charity. So it was amazing to get up there and get to the view, get the gear off, get some water and sit down and have that sense of achievement.”
Montrose Fire Brigade collectively raised $5510 mostly through individual fundraising efforts, with the help of some sales of batteries.
“Montrose has quite a focus on mental health as a brigade. So it was really good to be able to raise this money for mental health and for these foundations and give back outside the brigade to mental health,” James said.
Mooroolbark raised $3,241, Chirnside Park $2,475, Wonga Park $2,800, while Lilydale brigade member Callum Jones raised $813 and Kyle Willsher raised $225, as well as Mount Evelyn’s Rick Ventrella raising $275.
The funds raised will be donated to Lifeline, Fortem and the 000Foundation.
