By ANDY WILSON
Tanya Lumley likes challenges.
Moving last year from Mornington Peninsula to Strathbogie to join her partner, she took it upon herself to serve her community by joining up with the local CFA brigade.
Adding to that was her then finding employment with CFA, working in volunteer sustainability.
"It allows me to help brigades grow and volunteers to succeed," Tanya said.
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All of this, however, is mere background to a third achievement Tanya recently added to her community success list.
On Saturday 6 September, she entered the 12th annual Melbourne Firefighter Stair Climb held at the Crown Metropol hotel in Melbourne.
Against a nation-wide field of firefighters from all emergency agencies, including a large contingent from South Australia, Tanya came in a commendable fifth place in the women's under 50 division, climbing the entire stairwell of the hotel in eight minutes, 22 seconds.
The stair climb sent off over 1000 competitors one minute at a time to cover 28 flights - 29 if you include the one Tanya took from Townsville from a wedding, which landed at 2am that same day.
"I completed it on three hours sleep," she said.
"And we do it 'on air' (oxygen face mask and tank) with full PPE kit, so it weighs about 25kg all up."
The real victory came with Tanya winning first prize for the amount of money raised, with a whopping $15,365 seeing her about $7K ahead of second place, and all from the modest and small brigade at Strathbogie.
"I had a couple of grand in there to start up with from the great support I had from family and friends," she said.
"But when I put the bulk of the money in on the fund raising night, one of the organisers said ‘where the heck is Strathbogie?'
"'Why would Strathbogie be putting $15K into this?'
"He then got on Google Maps and street-viewed the brigade and said 'it's a shed!'"
She said it had been quite an achievement to come first in the fundraising but gave credit to all the donors who chipped in.
The event was run by the 000 (Triple Zero) Foundation and raised over $1.125m, with a small portion going to that organisation and the bulk of it donated to Lifeline and Peter Mac.
"The beneficiaries are amazing," Tanya said.
"What they do is so crucial."
The monumental effort she put into fundraising eclipsed the need for pre-training and although she lifts weights for fitness at the Euroa Gym, she doesn't like running.
"My training could have been a bit better - I don't like cardio work."
"But, yep, I could do it again; it was really cool to be the first person to represent Strathbogie, but next year I am definitely roping in some extras.
"I was told by my brigade that they were planning more than just me next time.
"Which is great - it’s the whole point of it, isn't it?
"And if a bit of friendly competition is what gets the donations up, then bring it on.
"There's not many small communities that are going to come together like that."
Tanya said that on the day, she was attributing her effort to a 'number of people' she had in mind who have been affected by cancer.
"There were a few tears around with some - lots of happy tears and some sad tears, like the guy next to me.
"I said to him 'have you got someone on your mind?' and he's like ‘yep’.
She gave him a hug.
"Then let's go hard," she said.
