BRAD Buckingham was born in Melbourne and moved to Beechworth in September 2022, having retired earlier that year.

What did you do workwise?

I spent my working life in various training roles, with most of that time training financial planners and their support staff with the CBA and then the MLC group.

What brought you to your role/career?

My dad was a teacher and so I got the gene that likes to see ‘the slow nod of understanding’. I have always enjoyed taking people from not knowing to knowing, especially when it affects their livelihood.

What did you love about your work?

Meeting people I trained early in their career catching up with me years later and telling me about something that I taught them that has stuck with them down the years.

What do you do in the community?

I joined the Beechworth Fire Brigade a couple of weeks after arriving in Beechworth. If I don’t help put the fires out, who will? I got my general fire fighter ticket in February this year and have been attending as many call outs and training courses as I can. An immediate benefit in joining the brigade was that it got me embedded in the community quickly.

After a 25 year break, I am cricket umpiring again, now with the Wangaratta & District Cricket Association.

I’m also a driving mentor with the shire’s L2P program. It provides a car and licensed driver to young folk who, for whatever reason, have no car to practice in, and/or no one who can sit with them to help get their minimum 120 hours up.

My interest in amateur theatre continues. I assisted with Beechworth Theatre Company’s production of ‘Cosi’ this year and will be directing a play next year for the Wangaratta Players.

Is there an important community issue that you think needs addressing?

It’s a coin toss between two well-known issues. One is how best to juggle attracting people to visit our town, but with limited public money to establish and/or maintain those various attractions. The other is the problems businesses are facing attracting staff. The cost and availability of local housing makes it hard for people to commit to a job here if they can’t find a place to live.

What do you see as one of the most important current world issues?

Our climate is changing and it’s making weather more extreme. That’s more floods and flood damage and more intense and longer fire seasons.

If the person you would most like to meet came to Indigo Shire (past or present), or was already here, who would that be, what would you show them, and why?

Scottish actor, retired comedian, artist, writer, musician, and television presenter Billy Connolly. He is a very funny and gentle man. I would show him our older buildings that I really like, with their sepia colour schemes, and the fact that two minutes’ drive out of town you have the gorge views, the road to Stanley through those gloriously tall trees or the broad view south from the Wangaratta Road. I might also take him on a tour of the fire station. Who doesn’t love a big red truck?

What book are you reading?

‘The Laws of Cricket’. Yes, I actually do know the LBW law.