The Emergency Service personnel who risk their lives to serve our community are undoubtedly heroes in many people's hearts. Tony Elliott and his crew have served tirelessly throughout the past 7 months, and in fact, many like Tony (23years) for over 2 decades. Here Tony shares his story; the man behind the hose, who says his most important goal in his supervisory role as Captain is to make sure the people on his crew who go out to perform rescues, also come home to their families at the end of the day.

"So, I was born in Coraki hospital, I’m a local boy born and bred, lived in Lismore most of my life. I have one brother, my parents are now actually in Casino. We did have a farm together for a number of years but that's further down the track.

I went to Our Lady Help of Christians in South Lismore, then went on to Trinity, where I was one of the inaugural Trinity kids in 1985, when it first became Trinity.

I left in year 10. Went out into the big wide world and joined the Royal Australian Air Force as an apprentice.

You know, when I grew up, I wanted to be a copper, my whole life, I just wanted to get out of school, didn't want to be there. Then I found out, you had to go to year 12 to become one, and I didn't want to do that. Somewhere along the line, a friend told me that you could do it, if you got an apprenticeship.

Image supplied: 1989 RAAF Apprenticeship training

You could leave in year 10 get an apprenticeship and then go into the police force later on.

So, I applied for a couple and Qantas was one of them. The Air Force was the other, and the Air Force come through. So I did that.

I actually remained there for 12 years.

I started in Wagga Wagga where I spent two years, then eight years in Newcastle. Six of those I was in a hornet F18 flying squadron, I actually got a backseat ride in an F18. Not too many people can say they've done that. That was just awesome. Best hour of your life ever. Oh, yeah. Better than any roller coaster ride you've ever been in before.

I was there for eight years. My last posting was on the bombing range of Evans head.

So I was coming home again, and then they were going to post me to Melbourne to there and I just decided it was enough, it's time to get out and I was coming home. I had met my current wife and in the process of that and just went nah, I just don't want to do the nomad thing anymore.

Image supplied: 1990 Tony as RAAF apprentice helping out at Sergeants mess dinner

They're away all the time and periods of time they're over the years that I was in the Air Force, I was away for six to nine months.

During my time in the Air Force, however, I travelled all around Australia. Both flying and driving trucks, buses, cars, uni mogs, and four-wheel drives, all around Australia and pretty much halfway around the world. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, those sort of places on exercises as well.

Overseas we were posted for exercises, either two weeks, four weeks, or three month periods. There was never a permanent thing overseas. But it was more the camaraderie that you got with your mates because you were there together.

You really got to know people, you really got to understand how other people lived as well, especially in the third world countries. They were a big eye-opener as a young fella. Up until 16, I'd never been out of Australia. I'd never even been on an airplane till the day I joined the Air Force and flew from Brisbane to Wagga, in the back of a Hercules, it was like wow, this is different!"

As a young fella, you just lived your life. And at times, yeah, it was on the edge. You push the boundaries everyone does at some stage. But the difference there, when you're pushing boundaries in that situation, you've got mates there that are like your brothers, that will also pull you up. Or you pull them up, you know, when you're starting to be stupid, they're there to rein you in.

How did Mum and Dad feel about me joining? Oh, though, they were perfectly fine with it.

My mum's favourite comment was when I left Australia Day 1989 and I came home at Easter (we weren't allowed out for 12 weeks, we were locked up basically for 12 weeks, learning the defence ways), I still remember her with a tear in her eyes saying 'my boy left home a boy and came home a man'.

So you know you just had to grow up because you didn't have your mum's purse strings to pull on. You were on your own. But you had your mates you had your corporals your sergeants, you know your people that were 'the course mums'.

We had a little follow called Corporal John Wardley. LJ is a tiny little fella. But Jesus, when he spoke, you listened. And he was of course mom, and he told us I'm your mom, your dad, your brother and I'm also your gatekeeper. And he was and he was a fair man. He was a hard man. But he shaped us into what we became".

"You had that discipline and respect instilled into you anyway back in our day, it was there to start with. But these guys actually shaped you more because without the discipline and respect what you were doing, at times, you could get killed.

"They told us 'Yeah, you're a 16-year-old, being told that at any given moment, you could be in a war zone. And if you don't play by the rules, you could end up dead. Yeah, we lost a few people off our course because of it. They just weren't mature enough to deal with that sort of thing. But hey, it's not for everybody, either".

Image supplied: Early on in Tony's career with NSW Fire Brigade

There were less people with less issues with authority back then, you had respect and respect for the elders, you had respect for people of authority. You know, you have respect for a uniform. You know, you put that uniform on and you wore it with pride. And to this day, I'm still the same. You have a uniform, you wear it, and you're not just representing yourself. You're representing your family, you're representing that uniform. And everybody else who wears it! It doesn't matter whether you're a service, whether the defence by the fires, emergency services, whatever it is, you're there for that reason.

I have one brother, who's 12 months older than me, who is also local. He's always worked here. Unfortunately for him, he worked for Norco for 30-odd years, and he's currently just lost that job. I spoke with him a few weeks ago, and he's got another job and he's also in the coaching scene with a soccer academy and I'm pretty sure he's still chasing that around as well. So Mum, and Dad are both retired and they've retired over in Casino.

So when I got out of the Defence Force, we ended up coming home. My wife and I moved (she wasn't my wife then) but we lived with them for a little while, and we bought a house and we ended up buying a 300-acre farm at the other side of Casino together. And we ran that for nearly 15 years. We had Brangus Beef Cattle.

We were breeding stock bulls and cows and just commercial stuff as well. And we did that for 15 years. But as always, mum and dad wanted to retire and we decided to move on.

We bought a house out of Caniaba. We live out there on acreage, three acres. It's good to get back just out of town with the kids. The young fella can ride a motorbike around and my daughter learned to drive in the back paddock.

Christopher and Megan are both into gymnastics. My daughter retired at level 7 a couple of years ago (they go up to a level 10) and actually she was coaching with me, I'm an advanced women's artistic coach and intermediate men's as well. So I was doing that for the last six or seven years with the kids.

Image supplied: Proud Dad and Defence Veteran on Anzac day

It was one way of keeping busy while the kids were there.

Again, it's the discipline side of things when you see your kids in uniform not doing the right thing, you think 'how do I help?' You know, that was just the defence in me.

You're wearing a uniform put a bit of discipline on you know, you are representing your club, your family? Next thing I'm doing advanced courses!

In the process of that, I had 27 daughters at one stage, which at times is like trying to wrangle cats, but was good fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it, I do miss it.

Post-flood hopefully there will be something come back. It's just a matter of where. My daughter's now coaching in Alstonville Awesome. So she's started out there a couple of our girls went out there to get through some country championships. Megan and myself went out there with them and the lady out there offered her a job so which is good, I'm really proud of that.

Gymnastics is one of those sports that is very ageist early on, it's particularly hard for female gymnasts, many of whom give up between 14 to 16 because of the challenges on the body as they develop, but that's changing in the sport, which is a good thing. There's a lot more older females coming back when I say older I'm talking 18 to 25's that still have the ability but they stopped growing, so it's better for their body so to speak. They're in a better timeframe.

Chris is currently a level seven and after the flood, we ended up having to travel to Brisbane three times a week. Because we were in the middle of state trials and state championships in Sydney.

The first Sunday, the Sunday night of the flood, we come home from Sydney, where he had done really well at a trial. We miss trial 2 because of the flood. One of the gyms in Brisbane rang us up and said bring him up here. "You can train up here for however long you need to" they told us. They really looked after us, he got through state and he actually came away from it with a gold medal.

The level seven vault champion for New South Wales, twice now, it's incredible because he also competed with Armadale gymnastics in the team's event only a few weeks ago. And they came away with another gold medal involved. So he's twice state champion in level seven men's and he's aspiring for eight to 10 years for the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics. Commonwealth Games 2030 in Canada and 2032 in Brisbane

Image supplied: Tony with the Level 7 Vault State Champion, his son Christopher Elliott

So, we're travelling to the Gold Coast now instead, three times a week, we do a bit of sharing with that one with another family from Casino who their son is a level six and he used to train with us as well in Lismore, so we take it in turns going backwards and forwards to the Gold Coast.

I've had my own business as a home maintenance, lawn mowing, handyman business as well. So that keeps me fairly busy. I started that a couple of years ago, before that I worked at the hospital as a 'wardy' for a while, about 5 or 6 years at Lismore Base. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I just seem to have this thing where I like helping people, I suppose. I had a lot of fun.

If you can make people laugh when they come out and they're in pain, and they're at their worst. It's something that I've done for a long time, see people at their worst. It's something that, as a captain, if I do interviews or we get new people that I just want to tell them, what we do is we see people at their worst on their worst possible day. Whether it's an accident or fire or you know, they've fallen down in the street, they don't have a good day when we turn up. So, during that transition onto wards was quite easy for me. There really isn't much that I haven't seen.

I suppose it's one of the things it was instilled in me from joining the Defence Force where you follow the rules you follow the basics and you know, use common sense. Treat people with dignity, treat others how you want to be treated. It's the way it needs to be.

People ask me, how do you do what you do?

I just do. It's just something that you either can or you can't deal with it. And it's not meant for everyone.

Before you start, how do you know if you are cut out for this kind of role? You don't? You don't know and it's one of those things that you either will or you won't do. Or you'll learn how to deal with it. There's always structures in place to support people to do this, it's the same with anybody new. Very rarely do you get somebody that's got any experience in this job.

The Lismore App reported earlier this week that the Lismore Brigade is recruiting for retained firefighters, which you can read more about here: Retained firefighters needed in our local stations