Chris Schade was born in Hay in 1946. He had one sibling, a sister.

“People would ask me why my sister was 10 years older than me, it was a large age gap,” Chris chuckled.

“I said there was a war in the middle of our births.” Chris’ father departed for World War Two after his sister was born, served and came home, long before Chris was born.

The siblings were very close to exactly 10 years apart.

Chris’ great grandfather was Danish, and re tired to Waverly, Sydney.

He and his two brothers originally ventured to the Bendigo area for the gold rush.

After a time, Chris’ grandfather and one of his brothers moved to Hay in 1884.

“When he came here, he ended up as a flat hat, a pan collector,” Chris said.

When writing this story, I googled what a flat hat was and who wears it.

It refers to people who removed pans from toilets and carried them on their heads with possibly a hat or towel to cushion the weight of the pan and hence flattening it.

Chris’ grandfather worked with a man named Mr Chits, and they operated on a contract to council.

“There isn’t a lot I know about that time, as when the Waradgery Shire became the Hay Shire, a lot of records were lost.”

Chris’ grandmother left her husband and arrived in Melbourne from England, with two children, a boy and girl in tow.

She was meant to be met at the dock by the Salvation Army, who were going to provide assistance.

Sadly, nobody showed up, leaving the mother wondering where to go from here.

Instead of despairing, she got to figuring out how to solve the problem.

Quickly finding work as a household assistant for some fairly big land holders, she then moved to Hay after a time.

She found work at the Riverina Women’s Club, the female equivalent of the Waradgery Club.

When members coming into town from their properties needed somewhere to stay and be looked after, they went to the Riverina Women’s Club.

Chris naturally went to primary and high school in Hay.

Upon finishing his education, he attained an apprenticeship at Don Harrison’s, as a boilermaker.

“I was his first apprentice, and the workshop was located in Queen Street, behind where IGA is now, in the bottom left-hand corner of the car park.

It was stinking hot in summer and cold in the winter. It had a dirt floor.”

Chris completed his technical education via correspondence, to Brisbane Technical College, receiving papers in the mail to complete learning, sending them back, and waiting for the next delivery.

When Chris was 21, Hay was steering into the start of a drought, and work was becoming scarce.

Chris figured he should find other work, and was wondering what to do.

When talking to his employer, Don suggested Chris should go and work for the Navy in Sydney, in fabrication and welding.

Chris figured it was something different, so Don called to organise it, and then told Chris he should front up and they would give him a job.

“I didn’t last in Sydney more than three months,” Chris said.

“Things there at the Navy were too unionised, and this got in the way of actual work.

One day I was walking up the gangplank, with someone with me carrying my tools, and half a dozen blokes came up to me.

“They asked if I was a boilermaker or a chippie, and I told them I was a boilermaker.

“They then asked why I had a wooden ruler, and I replied it was for rough measurements.

"You couldn’t do a job another man did.

“Another time, we were asked to help with a job, installing a power point. It took seven people to do the job.

“Myself and offsider to drill the metal hole, a carpenter and his offsider to drill the wooden hole, an electrician and his offsider to put the power point in, and the lead hand.”

Chris found the actual workplace wonderful, even if working conditions more often than not defied logic.

“It was a beautiful place, with so many machines,” he said.

“But, if a mistake was made on a job, it was thrown into the harbour, and then another three weeks was spent on doing a job which was required six weeks ago.”

When Chris returned to Hay, he worked at South Hay Pub for a time, before gaining a role at the tyre service, which was located where Heerey’s Flower Shop would later be located, and where IGA is located now.

Chris and Jo met when they were both 24.

Helen was the name of the nurse Jo had come to Hay with.

Helen and her partner knew Chris, and they all ended up at the Services Club, playing lawn bowls together.

Shortly after that, they all took a trip, as friends, to Broken Hill to see other friends.

“It wasn’t a love at first sight thing, but gradual, and beginning as friends,” Chris said.

“After a while, I asked her to go to a ball. There were lots of balls in Hay in those days.”

“We got dressed up and went dancing. I thought this is nice, he loves to dance, so do I.

"Little did I know that we would dance together that time, and a waltz at our wedding and that was it,” Jo said with a smile.

After a time, both Chris and Jo were having a hard time at their jobs, and decided to go for a drive.

“We came back three months later,” he laughed.

During their long drive, they went to Darwin, after initially deciding to travel to Brisbane.

“We had all these strip maps from the NRMA, and we were headed to Brisbane, but made a snap decision we would head to Darwin instead,” Jo laughed.

“So, the strip maps went in the bin pretty quick.”

The pair bought a home before they were married, in preparation for married life.

Until then, Jo remained living in the nurses’ quarters at Hay Hospital and Chris lived at home with his parents.

Leading up to their wedding, Jo’s parents came down to help out with the house.

Her father painted the interior, and her mother made her wedding dress on a sewing machine Jo still owns.

Just before they were married, the house caught on fire.

“It had started from the back, and the tubed bread rolls from the kitchen had popped out, and were fully cooked,” the couple laughed.

Chris and Jo honeymooned on the South Coast, and it was wet and cold the entirety of their stay.

“One day started out decently, so we went out fishing in a boat.

"Once we were out on the water, it got cold quickly.

"We both had towels wrapped around us, and it became cold and wet quickly,” Chris said.

The couple lived in their backyard in a caravan a friend lent them for a time, until it was deemed the bedroom in the home was suitable once more.

“One morning we woke to discover the roof was coming off, they had started work replacing the roof,” Jo said.

“What a thing to wake up to.”

Chris joined the Fire and Rescue NSW Service in 1983.

Appointed engine keeper in 1993, he was in the brigade for 28 years.

He went back to work at DG Harrisons, after his time at the tyre service.

He spent the next 25 years of his working career there, and really enjoyed his role.

Chris got itchy feet, so decided to open his own welding and construction mobile service.

“Machines were getting bigger and bigger, and I figured I would go out to them, as it is a hard exercise for them to come to us,” he said.

One of the biggest jobs Chris worked on was the Hay weir gates.

“They came in six pieces; one went through the top of the other half when they were put together. They were about 47 foot long.

"The first one was the worst. It was stinking hot when I put the gates in, and the engineer sat in the air-con."

Chris spent a fair bit of time in the volunteer ambulance service in Hay.

“It was a good bunch, the members of the ambulance service.

"It was hard work, and it would play on your mind at times.” would haunt them, members of the ambulance service would privately make jokes amongst themselves.

Fortunately, Chris didn’t have to come across any accidents that involved people he knew, but suicides were hard.

“One time the police officer called, and told me that we were needed, but not to hurry or panic,” Chris recalled.

After the mobile service, he owned and operated the mini concreting mix business for a while, but it was a lot of hard work.

During Chris’ time at the Fire Service, the Captain showed him a letter, figuring Chris might be interested.

It was an expression of interest for becoming a commercial trainer, within the fire service.

Chris was indeed interested, and went on to attain Certificate 4 in Workplace Training and a national assessor’s course.

“It was the best job I ever had,” he said.

“The role came at just the right time, all the children had already left, so I was able to travel more without it impacting family life.

“I had a large region that I worked and trained in. I worked as a fee for service trainer.

“I trained in extinguisher use, and evacuation training.

“I trained groups in all sorts of things, including working at height, advanced first aid, oxygen and resuscitation, and trained at many work places, childcares, health care, councils and various institutions.

“There were 26 different courses in total, that I delivered.

“Because my job made money, I was given a Brigade vehicle, and that was changed every 40,000 kilometres.”

Chris would leave after lunch one day, and be gone all week.

Then there was often training at various stations on the weekend.

So, Chris went from retained firefighter to paid employee of the NSW Fire and Rescue.

He was also a bearer in the volunteer ambu lance service that was in operation in Hay, before Ambulance Officer Robert Marmont arrived in town, and for a while after.

“The phone exchange would call whoever was on duty, and tell them what happened, and that they needed three more bearers,” Chris said.

“It was horrible at times, with many gruesome accidents.

“There were no seatbelts back then, no breathalysers, speed limits were not enforced.

"The roads were not as good as they are now, and had a lack of visibility and a lot of tight curves.” In order to deal with scenes and sights which “Lou Gurney came too.

"Doctor Bonwick would come in those cases, perform the obligatory death confirmation, and then it was all left to us, though we weren’t supposed to transport the deceased.

“When we were transporting a patient to Wagga or Melbourne, we would have to make sure we had enough money on us to fill up the ambulance, and money to feed ourselves, and then we would hand those in and wait to be reimbursed.

“One petrol station on the outskirts of Melbourne was good, we could fill up and leave, and they knew we would come and fix them up on the way back.

“It was a good bunch, the members of the ambulance service. It was hard work, and it would play on your mind at times.” Chris reads books, and particularly enjoys Chris Hammer’s works and picturing places and people in the book. Isaac Asimov is one of his favourite science fiction writers.

He largely enjoys being out in the back shed working on the lathe, machinery, and completing projects.

Chris and Jo also have a hut out at Cobar, where they undertake reunions every second year.

When they get itchy feet, they travel up there to make repairs and improvements.

Chris was involved in shooting, and was a member of the Sporting Shooter’s Association of Australia (SSAA).

He still does, but not as much now. Enjoying close family ties, Jo and Chris avidly love watching what their children get up to, with all of them enjoying respectable achievements and happy lives.

The couple are simply amazing; a product of respective good families and childhoods, the formation of their own wonderful family, and maintaining their tight family unit, while both having their own fulfilling careers and separate interests.