Unit History

The Willoughby unit was formed in 1977, the first controller was Fred Oughton. When the unit first formed it was without any vehicles and private vehicles where used to respond to jobs, it took 6 months before a vehicle was sourced. A nearby Car dealer was kind enough to donate a Toyota Twin Cab Dyna with a custom fitted body. Compared to today's standards it was rather crude, but at the time it did the job. The Vehicle was fitted with equipment to deal with Storm and Tempest damage.

15 years ago the unit went though a large change, the near by Lane Cove unit was struggling to operate for a number of reasons and it was decided that they would merge with the Willoughby unit.

This posed several unique problems, with two management teams having to merge. Ian Partridge the Deputy Controller (Lane Cove) volunteered to take charge of the operations team and Cory Meijer Deputy Controller (Willoughby) took charge of the Rescue section, amazingly 15 years on both Ian and Cory are still with the unit. The merging also meant one of the HQ's would have to close, since the Willoughby LHQ (Naremburn) was the most suitable it was the new joint LHQ and the Lane Cove LHQ was closed down.

The Willoughby unit was in fact one of the first (if not the first) units to wear orange. This was a change from the white overalls that the Civil Defence teams used to wear, once the change to orange was announced our unit dyed its white overalls to orange.