Firemen for a Morning

Now that our Saturdays are no longer spent house-hunting, we've had a little more time to spend doing fun things for the whole family. (By that I mean fun things for Noey of course.)

Last Saturday we went with Nat and Edgar and their Mums and Dads to the open house at Central Fire Station. I think all the Fire Stations are actually open the public on Saturday morning from 9am - 11am, but according to my colleague, the Central Fire Station is the most popular and used to visitors, and as a result, puts up the best show.

We were a little late that morning and there was already a good crowd following the tour. Not surprisingly, the little boys in the group far outnumbered the little girls! My vehicle-loving son was, of course, suitably impressed by everything!

"Ooo, water... Must touch..."

Wheeling out the big machines. Noey stopped and stared. And stared for a long time.

And when they started raising the ladder, Noey couldn't help himself. "Wow!", he said, spontaneously and repeatedly. They proceeded to lower the platform to the ground and brought folks on it, 4 at a time, on a joyride several stories up.

"Mama carry me!" Noey needs a closer look.

The firemen also obligingly gave a demonstration of how they would slide down the pole from the top of the building to the ground.

After they were done, Noey was so impressed he made a break from where he was standing towards the pole some 20m away! (True story.) "Staircase!" he kept saying, engagingly. Of course Mama was having none of it.

"Not even when I smile like this?"

Noey resigned instead to having to take the obligatory photo with the fire engine for Papa.

Unfortunately we never got to go on the ride on the platform because the station recevied a real fire call and all the fire engines got deployed, leaving us with nothing to see! Then again, it was kind of cool watching the firemen all snap into work mode. They quickly bundled everyone out of the vehicles (which we were exploring) and grabbed all their gear and were out in a really quick time. I think we were all suitably impressed!

Left with nothing else to do, we did a short walk-through of the on-site museum and then headed over to Macs at Funnan to round off a lovely morning.

Noey completely wiped out on the way home. He only woke up for a really late lunch around 3pm!

More photos here.

Guess we'll have to go back another morning to claim that ride on the platform. I was looking forward to that!