The AFSM is awarded by the Governor General for members of paid and volunteer fire services for distinguished service.

"Mr David O'Donnell joined Fire and Rescue New South Wales (FRNSW) in 1988 as a firefighter and has dedicated more than 34 years serving the community of Wingham," David's award citation reads.

"As the Station Commander of 502 Station Wingham, he adeptly leads a team of 16 dedicated firefighters, who provide fire and emergency management services across the breadth of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery activities.

"Mr O'Donnell has displayed outstanding leadership through the preparation for, prevention of, response to and recovery from emergencies.

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"His dedication to the community is evident by his leading efforts in forming a partnership with NSW Ambulance (ASNSW) under the Community First Responder (CFR) program, which sees Wingham Fire and Rescue assist the ambulance by responding to medical emergencies in remote and isolated communities. The CFR program has been operating out of Wingham Station since November 2019.

"Mr O'Donnell provided dedicated and committed service to the Wingham community during the 2019 bushfires and the 2021 floods.

"He displays the highest level of commitment to the core values of the organisation, none more so than as a Peer Support Officer, volunteering his own time in addition to his service, to care for his fellow firefighters as they face the stressors and impacts of emergency service response.

"Mr O'Donnell has made an immense contribution to the safety of the Wingham community and has given outstanding service to Fire and Rescue NSW."

This is not the first honour given to David on Australia Day. In 2020 David was presented with Pride of Workmanship Award in the Wingham Rotary Club Australia Day Awards.

Like many little boys, as a child David always wanted to be a firefighter.

At 17, the Wingham brigade captain and "a couple of firies" asked him to join the brigade, but at the time he was too young.

"They just mentioned it and I jumped at it when I had the opportunity," David says.

He spent three years in Sydney completing an upholstery apprenticeship, but when he returned home he joined Wingham Fire and Rescue. Sixteen years later he became captain of the brigade.

"It's the best job in the world for me, assisting the community and getting so much reward for doing that. Just really helping the community. Supporting them is probably the best thing I really get out of it personally."

As well as the satisfaction David gets from helping the community and saving their houses, the other "best part" of his job is the relationships formed with his crew mates.

"From the older members to the new recruits and the new generations coming through now; we've got a lot of good firies coming through now, male and female," he says.

Over 34 years David has seen a lot of changes in the job, from being solely a firefighter, to doing rescue, hazmat and now the station is also a CFR station.

"t's a really big impost - it's a bigger impost on the firies and the families involved. Virtually everyone joining now understands it's part of the role now, and they actually join because of that, too, to help the community with the medical side as well."

The CFR program took two years to implement, including training of the crew, and went online just a month prior to the 2019 bushfires hitting the Manning.

"It was hard changing from just a firefighting station to a CFR station. The changeover wasn't easy.

"Although going online CFR was difficult during the fires, the hardest was the actual fires and not being able to save houses, knowing they were unable to be saved. But also the greatest feeling was saving someone's house.

"What was devastating was saving one house two times only to find out weeks later that it had burnt down."

While David says the 2019/2020 bushfires were "very hectic" (they also had to send crews south after dealing with the bushfires locally), the job that most sticks in his mind is the destruction of the Bottom Pub (Wingham Hotel) in Wingham by fire in July, 2010.

"That was probably one of the biggest fires I've been too locally and I've been to a fair few big ones," David says.

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