A yoga instructor, a supermarket worker and a sales consultant walk into a fire station.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The women are the first female firefighter recruits at the state-of-the-art station at South Tamworth in NSW.
Retained firefighter Celine Simon came to Australia from France on a holiday seven years ago and fell in love with the country.
"I haven't been disappointed since I joined," she said.
"I teach yoga which is a completely different world, but it's a really good balance.
"I get to assist and help people in the community in difficult emergencies and at the same time I can have an impact on well-being with yoga which is a passion of mine.
"I already teach some of the permanent firefighters once every two weeks."
The new recruits have joined as Fire and Rescue NSW shines a spotlight on its ratios of men to women in the workplace.
Stay-at-home mums are even being targeted for service given shortages usually occur during business hours.
At the end of the day, they're just part of the crew, Tamworth Fire and Rescue NSW duty commander Peter Nugent said.
"It's probably the same thing police went through 20-odd years ago when they started to recruit a lot more females into front-line positions."
Amy Van Der Graaf is a sales consultant for a local home-building company when she's not at the station.
Now a retained firefighter, she had first applied for the Royal Australian Airforce but didn't have the opportunity to go away for training.
"I have really great employers and I'm pretty flexible with my time," Ms Van Der Graaf said.
"It is traditionally a male-dominated environment but the guys here have been awesome and I couldn't ask for a better team of people to be working with.
"I think it's been proven to be wrong, I think girls have a lot to offer - I'm encouraging my younger daughter, my 18-year-old daughter to join as well."
New recruit Jasmine Swift has spent a lot of time volunteering for the State Emergency Services, so she had an idea of what to expect as a firefighter.
"So when the opportunity came up I had no hesitation," she said.
"I'm used to using chainsaws, getting up on roofs.
"My first job call was actually to rescue a cat."
The three firefighters will start their careers in South Tamworth's new $5 million fire station, that opened in August last year after firefighters called for 24-hour staffing.