'Five years is long enough': Austinmer RFS volunteers sick of waiting for a new station

Brigade captain Gareth Fleming said the current station was 50 years old, had inadequate changing facilities for the 60 volunteers, no indoor meeting room - and the new fire truck didn't even fit in the garage.

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"It worked back in the day when you had 10 or 15 volunteers who did a few bushfires every now and again," Mr Fleming said of the station.

"But Austinmer doesn't just do bushfires any more. We did a body recovery a couple of months ago. We do car accidents, house fires, truck fires. Brigades have changed a lot in what we respond to - basically everything Fire and Rescue NSW responds to."

Five years ago a parcel of land at the end of Seafoam Avenue, along the rail line at Thirroul, was identified as a location for a new station.

The land is owned by Transport for NSW, and Mr Fleming said the last five years had seen a lot of back-and-forth between that state government body and Wollongong City Council to acquire it.

He said the process for a new station was that a council owns the land, the RFS pays for the station construction, then council maintains it.

But that process cannot begin until council acquires this parcel of land.

"The last five years has been toing and froing, trying to get a price," Mr Fleming said.

"[Transport for NSW] wants up $2 million and I think council is at $200,000, so they're nowhere near each other."

Mr Fleming said moving the brigade out of Austinmer and into Thirroul would improve response times.

With many volunteers living out of the suburb, coupled with the small, winding streets around the fire station, it can take as long as 15 minutes from the time people leave their homes to when the truck is on the road.

"Our response time would be up to eight to 10 minutes quicker being in [Thirroul] than being in Austinmer," he said.

Mr Fleming said volunteers were concerned about their ability to respond to an emergency if they had to keep using the old station.

"Five years is long enough, especially with the last fire season we had," he said.

"The Illawarra, to be honest, was very very lucky it didn't have a fire in that campaign. In the northern suburbs that would have been disastrous if we had a fire there."

A Transport for NSW spokesman said it had not received any correspondence from council on the issue since January this year, when a below market value offer was made.

"Sydney Trains supports Wollongong Council's acquisition of this land for the creation of a new station at Austinmer and looks forward to hearing back from council after contacting it several months ago," the spokesman said.

"As council is aware, this land is required to be acquired at 'market value' as per NSW Treasury's guidelines for any land sale between government agencies and local government."

A Wollongong City Council spokeswoman said they were looking at a number of options to help the Austinmer RFS find new facilities.

"The RFS flagged with council in 2016 a potential site owned by Sydney Trains," the spokeswoman said.

"While initial conversations with Sydney Trains indicated the site was not available, we have resumed negotiations with Sydney Trains in 2019 - with the support of a local MP - about the site.

"The feedback council has received to date is that we would need to compulsorily acquire the land at commercial market value."

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