Gary Patzwald
Position: Darling Downs Representative and Senior Vice President
Address: 282 Connolly Road, Geham Qld 4352
Email: darling.downs@rfbaq.org
Phone: 07 4696 6158
Mobile: 0418 700 276
Born in Toowoomba and lived on the family farm all my life, I went to my first major fire in the mid 60’s on the next-door neighbour’s farm. As a member of the Cabarlah Rural Fire Brigade, I have held several senior positions, Treasurer 4 years, Chairman 8 years, 1st Officer 6 years. Also the RFBAQ Toowoomba Support Representative for Michael (Mike) Garrahy for 4 years and RFBAQ Toowoomba Representative for the last 5 years since Mike passed away.
I am a self-employed earthmoving contractor and farmer for about 30 years and now work for Toowoomba Regional Council as a multiskilled plant operator for 7 years.
I have assisted many brigades and firefighters to obtain grants from the RFBAQ in the past 2 years, the latest being the Primary Producer Brigade $1,000 grants, which all that applied in our area received them.
The biggest challenge I had so far was to assist a brigade to deal with a death on the fire ground and arrange funding for his funeral.
I plan to do a tour of most of the brigades in my area, which got a lot bigger after Geoff Wrigley left and his area was amalgamated with mine, to offer my assistance to any brigade that give me an invite to visit their area I have attended many brigade meetings and functions whilst as a representative for this area.
As well as organised many chainsaw courses where RFB members received their intermediate tree felling ticket free of charge. It gives me great pleasure to meet and assist people and brigades in need. I am only an email or a phone call away and after 50 years fighting fires, I have a lot of contacts and experience to be able to help brigades with.