{"id":32492,"date":"2013-05-07T23:49:13","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T13:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=32492"},"modified":"2020-12-18T14:58:27","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T04:58:27","slug":"barneys-seen-a-lifetime-of-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2013\/05\/07\/barneys-seen-a-lifetime-of-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Barney’s Seen A Lifetime Of Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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David “Barney” Wyatt … 30 years with the Queensland Ambulance Service<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

May 8, 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

The demolition of Kingaroy’s old ambulance station last month to make way for a new $3.6 million complex has brought back memories for one of the area’s longest-serving ambos.<\/p>\n

David “Barney” Wyatt will have served 30 years with the ambulance service in July, and plans to retire in September.<\/p>\n

Barney is based at Proston these days, but served many of his years at the Kingaroy station in Kent Street.<\/p>\n

He began work as an honorary ambulance officer based in Goomeri in 1983. \u00a0Two years later, he accepted a permanent position as an “ambulance officer mechanic” with the then-QATB in Kingaroy.<\/p>\n

There were just nine staff in the building at the time, assisted by 10 honorary officers and seven members of the Ambulance Auxiliary.<\/p>\n

A few years after Barney shifted to Kingaroy, the station underwent a major refurbishment.<\/p>\n

The station building, which dated to the 1950s, received a new facade and was transformed into an administration centre. The old Superintendent’s house, which was next door, was shifted to make way for a new plant room.<\/p>\n

The Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) was formed a few years later, on July 1, 1991, when 96 individual Queensland Ambulance Transport Brigades (QATB) were amalgamated into one organisation.<\/p>\n

In 1993, the structure of the service changed again and Barney was asked to choose whether he wished to stay a mechanic or become a paramedic.<\/p>\n

“I had been doing paramedical training right from when I started so it wasn’t anything really different,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I had been spending two days a week in the workshop and the rest on the road. Now I’m on the road all the time.”<\/p>\n

Barney is South Burnett born and bred and volunteered in three different emergency services before becoming a full-time ambo.<\/p>\n

Not only was he an honorary ambulance officer at Goomeri, he also served in the SES and as an auxiliary fireman.<\/p>\n

He also found the time to complete an apprenticeship as a motor mechanic.<\/p>\n

Barney had worked with his brother Arthur, who owned a garage, since he was a teenager. It was during this time that he was first exposed to “emergency services” as he regularly drove the station’s tow truck when it was called out to traffic accidents.<\/p>\n

When he and his wife Margaret, a school-teacher, shifted to Kingaroy, Barney also became involved with the Emergency Services Cadets, with whom he spent 14 years as an adult leader before the unit was dissolved and re-formed as a unit of \u00a0the St John Ambulance earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Barney – who has been volunteering his services in one way or another since 1975 –\u00a0is now looking forward to some “my time” after he retires.<\/p>\n

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