McCourt Street Fire Station by Noel Stephens February 1998

The land on the corner of McCourt Street and Railway Parade Leederville was bought for a fire station site in 1917. The station was built in 1927. The station itself faced into McCourt Street while the separate house for the resident officer in charge was on the corner and faced into Railway Parade. There was a large house on the site when it was bought in 1917 but it is not clear whether this house became the officer’s quarters or was demolished to make way for the new station.

The new station was to replace two other existing stations:one in Kimberley Street, Leederville and one in Rokeby Road, Subiaco. The one in Kimberley Street was converted to a private residence and was still standing at the time of writing in 1998. The one on Council property in Rokeby Road between Bagot Road and Hamersley Road was demolished to make way for expansion of Council buildings.

The station became operational at 1800 hours on the fifteenth of November 1927, with the crew and Dennis Hose Tender -- Motor Number 13 -- transferred from the Subiaco station which was closed at the same time. The crew were Senior Fireman Jorgenson and Firemen Croft, McMillan and Hardy.

The Kimberley Street station was manned by one man to monitor the alarm board until the twenty second of November 1927 when the transfer of the alarm system was finished and the station closed. It may have been that McCourt Street was the only fire station in Perth to become generally known by the name of its street because of the need to distinguish it from the Kimberley Street station since both were in Leederville.

In days gone by, when Perth was less developed, the fire stations may have been the only places with a light on in the darkness late at night. This seemed to attract some of the lonely people who roamed the streets at night who would wander into the stations for a brief human contact.

A man came into McCourt Street one night and announced that he had just taken Paris green -- a poison once commonly used by gardeners. Fireman Paddy Doyle called up the stairs to "Curly" Bethune. "Hey! Curly! What do you do for a man who has just taken plaster of Paris?"

"Give him a boogee with the stirrup pump before it sets" says Curly.

In those days there was always a tank of bi-carbonate of soda solution ready for re-filling fire extinguishers. Paddy fetched some of this in a bucket and forced it down the man’s throat saying "Drink this or I’ll murder you" whereupon the man threw up and collapsed on the floor.

Meanwhile some-one had called for an ambulance which arrived shortly. After they had placed the patient in the ambulance and were about to close the door on him, he beckoned feebly to Paddy and tried to speak. Thinking the man was trying to convey his dying wishes, Paddy bent low to catch his fading words and realised that he was asking for his teeth, which he had thrown up on the floor in the station. With that Paddy straightened up and said "Where you’re going, you won’t be needing them".

The man died the same night.

* Felix Holywell says this account bears little resemblance to what really happened.

This photograph was provided by Colin Cook, a grandson of James Alexander Cook who is seated next to the driver. It depicts the crew of a Napier-Holman fire appliance who are believed to have been stationed at "Leederville Fire Station" early in the 20th century. It is not known whether the "Leederville Fire Station" referred to means the one in Kimberley Street or the one in McCourt Street.[see paragraph 2 of the above article.]

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