Helping hands in orange: Geraldton SES volunteers recognised during National Volunteer Week

Laura Green and Joey Mihaly are prime examples of the unifying force of volunteering, with a shared passion for service to the community bridging the generation gap.

It is National Volunteer Week (May 19-25), a chance to shine a spotlight on those who dedicate their skills and time to helping others.

The Geraldton/Greenough State Emergency Service unit proudly celebrates its team of around 60 volunteers. Among them are SES logistics officers 20-year-old Ms Green and semi-retiree Mr Mihaly.

Ms Green’s emergency service journey began at the age of 13, when she joined the local fire brigade cadets. When she turned 16 she heard the SES were looking for younger volunteers and didn’t hesitate to step up.

“From there, I’ve just done everything that’s really been offered. There are good opportunities for everyone, every skill set,” she said.

Mr Mihaly’s path to the SES began after he caught a news segment about the organisation that showed volunteers in 4WDs tackling rough terrain. Immediately he knew he’d like to be a part of it, and in 2020, he signed up.

“I remember years and years ago I was watching TV. There was a news report about SES doing something and this LandCruiser came on, just bouncing around through the dirt and scrub and I thought ‘that’d be so cool to be able to do that’,” he said.

“And it just stuck in the back of my brain for a long, long time.”

Just recently Mr Mihaly was deployed to South East Queensland after tropical cyclone Alfred wreaked havoc on the coast.

“Most of the jobs were chainsaw jobs, because it’s just trees down all over the place, and we really didn’t do anything else but chainsaw work,” he said.

“I remember being at a house, removing trees from the backyard and the next door neighbour was watching us like a hawk, screaming that we were ruining the bird’s habitat.

“She was our next job, and by the end, she saw we were just trying to help her and then she realised, ‘oh, you guys aren’t killing everything in sight — you’re not just chopping down trees for the hell of it’. We won her over. She actually gave one of our team members a hug.”

Ms Green recounted one of her first, and to this day, most impactful deployments to the Carnarvon-Gascoyne Junction fires.

“I was fresh, as you could imagine, and I got the opportunity to go up there for a five-day deployment to do water bomber refilling and all the IT stuff out the back of where they’re doing the incident base,” she said.

“And that opened my eyes a lot to SES and all the other agencies along with it.“

Both volunteers said the best part of SES was learning hands-on experiences while making a real-world difference to people in crisis.

“We mostly get called out to smaller jobs like holes in roofs after big storms, flooding, transporting firies from place to place and even broken down cars,” Mr Mihaly said.

“But once a job is done you really do feel this massive sense of accomplishment, and as corny as it sounds, I really do love just helping people.”

Ms Green added: “When I’m in a good position, not everyone else is, and I have the capability to help people.”

“That’s how I enjoy it. And you see so many different things, different people, different ways of life, while you’re doing it.

“It’s quite impactful, you see people in very vulnerable moments in their life, often pretty much the lowest they’ve been for some of them, but they’ll turn around to people like us, and they’ll be like, ‘thank you for what you’ve done, you’ve done a little bit, but it’s more than enough’.”

The SES pair encourage anyone who may be thinking of joining the SES to look into it “more closely”.

“Anyone can join. Any height, any gender, any disability we’ve got. We always make accommodations. There’s always a place for people here,” Ms Green said.

To celebrate volunteers like Ms Green and Mr Mihaly, WOW Day, or Wear Orange Wednesday, is on May 21.