“The enormity of damage, despair and tragedy – you feel that personally, but somehow you have got to compartmentalise that because you have got a dynamic and unfolding situation that's not going to go away.”
One wonders what his teacher would make of her wayward pupil now, observing him night after night on the TV news, flanked by the Premier, steering the state with apparent steely calm through the most destructive bushfire season NSW has seen.
"Anything?" I suggest, nodding at my own cup of tea. "Coffee, a snack?" No, he says, patting himself on the belly. "I can live on what I’ve got." He admits to not finding much time for exercise, something "my physique probably depicts very well". Besides, he declares, he has to leave for the airport shortly to farewell a contingent of Canadian firefighters.
Ironically, Lisa used to chide her own father about the demands of his job, which often tied him to home base so he could monitor the radio networks overseeing local bush fire brigades. She and Fitzsimmons had only just started dating when he overheard her vowing to her father: "I’m never going to be involved with anyone in this bloody organisation. All it does is dominate your life!" It's a running joke between them now.
The glue that had bound father and son during his turbulent adolescence was their membership of the Duffys Forest Rural Fire Brigade. "It was almost like a modern-day creche for teenagers," Fitzsimmons recalls. "Dad would duck up there for the weekend, and I’d go with him. In 1994, ferocious blazes along the eastern seaboard prompted the government to put the old bush fire brigade system under review. Fitzsimmons, already on the radar as a standout volunteer, was brought into the management fold in September of that year and given a job in risk planning before moving into operations.
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