Okaihau: Great halls of fire

There are signs pointing to the Northland Firehouse Museum near Okaihau but they're neither large nor overt - perhaps reflecting the personality of the man who started this priceless collection of fire memorabilia.

Yet turn off SH1 into a rural driveway and pass the resident ducks and dogs and before you is a faux fire station. Except the trucks and all the fire paraphernalia that accompany them are not primed for duty. They are old and they have been retired. What they do, though, is represent one of the most complete histories of fire fighting in New Zealand and elsewhere that you can see in one place. How did it all begin?

Ask Brian Denton - the collector of these full size fire engines, model fire engines, uniforms, helmets, badges and medals - and he'll tell you it wasn't meant to be like this at all.

"I started making fire engine models in the 1960s for my youngest son who had always wanted to be a fireman. I used to go on safari from fire station to fire station to photograph the appliances and stations and to me the fascination was in the history."

He wasn't even in the fire service - he was a manager with the Farmers Trading Company first in Auckland and eventually and finally in the mid-eighties in Kaitaia. He was, though, a volunteer fire fighter in Ahipara during that time until he bought a lifestyle block in Okaihau and moved south. That's when he started collecting what he calls 'the big stuff' starting with a 1967 Bedford which was, coincidentally, formerly from Okaihau.

"Friends started giving me helmets, jackets and paraphernalia and they were put into boxes and sent upstairs because there was nowhere to display them at that stage. I had also started writing to pen-pals around the world and we swapped patches, badges and photographs and it snowballed from there."

It did indeed. He had three cabinets full of stuff in the lounge, myriad boxes in the attic, the third bedroom was purloined as an office and that original Bedford was in the paddock. He joined a collectors' group and would hear about fire vehicles being put out to pasture or up for auction and try to get there first, helped by an Auckland friend who was the Deputy Chief Fire Officer and would give Brian a heads-up. Then he built a shed by using one of the fire engines as a platform to erect the shed scaffolding

"I was going to build a farm shed anyway and we put in a loft to become a museum. That lasted a year when we extended the bottom floor for all the models and the uniforms.

"At that stage I put in a tender to the Far North District Council to buy a fire engine for $40. I wanted the searchlight off it but I got the lot and it cost Council around $200 to freight it to me!"

Three years later he added an extension to the shed so today there's a wardrobe department with some jackets dating back to the 1800s, complete uniforms ranging from 70 years old to nearly modern day, a model studio housing countless numbers of miniature fire trucks, a full-sized fire station and a museum with fire memorabilia from around the world.

When he started collecting he discovered there were few, if any, single sources of written information so he wrote a pictorial book on the subject published by Reed. It's appropriately called Chariots For Fire. That and the website have been the catalyst for attracting international attention to the museum site.

The Northland Fire Museum has hosted visitors from around 20 different countries to date, mostly former fire-fighters themselves who will leave mementos or send things to him when they get home and the property is licensed as a park-on-property site where as many as 30 camper vans have been housed at one time.

It's the only fire museum in the country open seven days a week and arguably the only one with such a cross-section of fire equipment. It's a prime Northland tourist destination but if there is one disappointment Mr Denton has it's that no-one from Destination Northland has ever officially seen it.

"How can they promote it if they've never seen it?' he asks ruefully.

In the meantime he carries on his duties as museum curator and collector, as historian, author and as a volunteer with the Okaihau Fire Brigade and a fire education officer as if none of these things are extraordinary at all. Others both close to home and far away would thoroughly disagree.

www.firehousemuseum.co.nz

Mr Denton welcomes volunteer assistance.

Phone 09 401 9295