People with Purpose: Never too old to serve

How did you come to volunteer for St John?

I joined in April 1944.

They started a St John cadet division at Colonel Light Gardens [in Adelaide] and my older brother went along and came home with this fabulous uniform of grey pressed flannelette shirt and strides with a stripe down the side.

I thought, “Hang on, that’s for me!” So that’s how I got in.

We went out with adult members of the division and did various duties at picnics, the [Royal Adelaide] Show, the trots, Victoria Park races and Morphettville, all over.

We were apprentices, I guess. We acted as gophers for the adult members and got the hang of things and then later when we transferred up to the adult division, we went out and took cadets out with us and did the same thing.

We were going out there and fixing up people that got hurt and got a smile or a thank you and it felt good. I thought, “This is great.”

What changes have you seen over the years as a St John volunteer?

There have been some massive changes, mainly in the skills and the equipment available.

Back in those days it was basic first aid stuff and we didn’t carry much. Some bandages and iodine. We had a pair of scissors and a pair of forceps and Friar’s Balsam (used to clear airways) and other bits and pieces.

Now of course we’ve got defibrillators and asthma treatment and GTN [glyceryl trinitrate] spray for people who are suffering a heart attack and are in pain. There’s all sorts of medications and skills that have come up through the years, so things have changed quite dramatically.

How do you feel about being the longest serving St John volunteer in the world?

I never even thought about it!

It was my daughter Lorna who said, “Hang on a minute, I’m going to look into it.” So she emailed our national headquarters in Canberra, and they said, “Yes, David’s the longest serving in Australia.”

They then emailed our international headquarters in London, and they did a search and came back and said “Yes, he must be the longest serving member in the world.”

So it was Lorna who stirred all that up. I hadn’t even thought about it before then.

I thought fair enough. I’ve been around for a while but I’m still here and still going and I’m not going to retire yet.

I’m quite pleased with the fact that I’ve managed to get half a dozen cadet divisions up and running in the Murraylands area and the youngsters that got involved in St John through that.

I’m quite tickled pink at the fact that I was giving first aid classes across the countryside.

I taught one at Murray Bridge and after the course had finished, three ladies came up and said they’d like to join the division. In those days there were male and female divisions and never the twain shall meet.

I passed the buck and wrote to the commissioner and asked him what to do. He wrote back and said sign them up!

So, Murray Bridge would have been one of the first combined divisions where you had ladies and men in the one division, but of course that’s common now.

I transferred from Adelaide to Murray Bridge in 1954.

It finished up I had 19 divisions to look after and I travelled thousands of kilometres around the countryside because I used to visit at least one division a week.

If they had problems, it was my job to get into headquarters and stir them up to see if we could fix whatever was wrong.

How many lives do think you may have saved during your long career?

It’s hard to know. We’ve had a few people knocked around pretty badly, but after dropping them off at the hospital, we never find out what happened to them after that.

What advice would you give to people thinking about volunteering?

I’d tell them to give it a go.

Preferably, I’d say, join St John, but of course there’s other options such as the State Emergency Service (SES), Country Fire Service (CFS) and all those other volunteer organisations. I’d say give it a go and see how you like it.

In St John, of course, you learn quite a few top-notch lifesaving skills, particularly things like CPR, which is pretty valuable in the summer in areas where people tend to jump into a swimming pool or into the sea.

Have your family members followed in your footsteps and joined St John?

All four children of our children were in St John.

They were all cadets. All bar one of them moved up into the adult version [of the organisation] and then because of work travel, they gave it away.

In the end Lorna was the only one that stayed, and she is now the superintendent of the West Torrens division and her four daughters all joined up.

I’ve got 15 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren.

When people say are you going to retire, I say “No, I’m going to hang around and annoy everybody a bit longer!”