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The earliest use of ladders for firefighting appears to have been for the accessing and removing of thatched roofs of buildings, with suggestions the practice dates back to the Roman Empire. As buildings grew taller, their use for saving life became apparent, and following the invention of fire hoses the opportunities for gaining access to upper stories for firefighting also increased. The early pumping engines were too small to carry ladders on board, so they were carried by

Last year for Ask a Museum Day 2022 we introduced you to the Heritage Team which at the time had some fresh additions to the team, Ben as the new curator (that’s me) and Ella as the Assistant Curator. A year has passed, and we still get questions each and everyday from people asking us about what it is we exactly get up to in our jobs, so we wanted to take the opportunity this year now that we have been in our roles for a little while to answer some of those questions! Interv

On Sunday 10th September 2023 the Museum hosted our annual History Week Keynote Presentation with this years theme being "Voices From the Past". With this topic we chose to highlight the history of women in the fire brigade in NSW. Our CEO Belinda McMartin gave our keynote address with our special guest speaker being Dr. Kristine Klugman OAM. To watch our Keynote Presentation in full visit www.museumoffire.net/history-week-2023 Women have always had a role to play in the fir

We are excited to bring you one of our most recent exhibits New and Noteworthy . To showcase the vast collection we have at the Museum of Fire, this exhibit gives us a chance to showcase new donations or noteworthy objects in our collection. The objects chosen for its first display span over 100 years, from a T. J. Bown & Co coupling from 1889, to the fifth Chief Officer Thomas Nance’s uniform (c. 1929-1934), and a Fire and Rescue NSW drone from 2015-2020. T. J. Bown & Co Cou

The following has been extracted from a Fire News Article written by the Museum of Fire from May 2013 in relation to the at the time new CO2 Tender entering the Fire and Rescue Fleet back in 2013. CO2 Tenders Past With the imminent arrival of a new CO2 Tender, we thought it timely to revisit the history of an appliance type believed to be unique to FRNSW over a period of almost 80 years. Back in the mid-1930s, the Sydney County Council (electricity distributor for much of Syd

The Museum of Fire is proud to have been shortlisted in the 2023 National Heritage Awards in the category of Conservation – Interiors and Objects for the restoration of the 1959 Commer Fire Engine. The project saw an original 1959 Commer C5FT fire engine restored by our hard-working team of volunteers to a state of completeness unseen since 1983. The Commer C5FT is one of four in existence in NSW and is the only known one to have been restored to this degree. The Commer has

Up until the 1920s the use of breathing apparatus was limited by the distance dictated by the length of tubing attached to a bellows smoke helmet and the time limit imposed by the self-contained Vajen Baden smoke helmet as such the New South Wales Fire Brigades (NSWFB; now Fire and Rescue NSW , FRNSW) began to look for a type of breathing apparatus that would allow firefighters to move around freely and spend longer periods of time in smoke filled, toxic or oxygen deficient a

In the Museum’s collection is a wonderful historic fire engine, the 1923 Merryweather Turntable Ladders, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year. In honour of such it has been commemorated as the Museum of Fire’s vehicle of the year for 2023. Whilst a somewhat allusive fire engine in the historical record, the Merryweather has certainly got some stories to tell over its 100-year tenure. Early History of Merryweather and the Petrol Fire Engine Revolution The turntable la

Commer first began in south London around 1904 as Commercial Cars Ltd, manufacturing a variety of vehicles with a forward control aiming to implement better petrol-electric transmissions that relieved drivers of needing to master the art of the “crash gear box’. Commer would participate in the fire engine industry as early as 1910, teaming up with Henry Simonis and Co of Watford. Simonis was an established fire engineering company and provided the firefighting equipment and b

At the start of 2022 our team at the Museum of Fire selected “Floods” as the theme of that year’s art competition. In the previous two years the competition had paid tribute to the terrible bushfires of 2019-2020 and more recently the resilience the community showed during the COVID-19 pandemic. These topics all reflect how difficult the last three years have been and while the artworks created by the children could have reflected a very pessimistic or gloomy view of the worl