THIRTY years ago, Queensland's ambulances had no paramedics, were only recently installed with defibrillators and came under the authority of more than 90 separate committees statewide.
It's a far cry from the situation in 2015, but Advanced Care Paramedic Jeff Bickford remembers the ambulance brigades of 1985 well: that was the year he entered the profession.
The Queensland Ambulance Service paramedic, based at the organisation's Redland Bay station, celebrated three decades' helping patients earlier this month.
When he switched careers to the then Queensland Ambulance Transport Brigade after serving as an auxiliary firefighter in Cleveland, he found an organisation already in the process of major change.
"When I started in the job we were talking about ambulance officers progressing to become full blown paramedics," he said.
"It's something we dreamt about when I started the job back in '85, and now here we are doing it all. Every ambulance that responds out there has advanced care paramedics onboard."
Jeff rode the wave of reform and was among the first cohorts of trained paramedics in the late 1990s, as well as enrolling in the first university-level paramedic course in 2000, graduating with a Bachelor of Health Science.
He spent 13 years as a frontline Intensive Care Paramedic, before moving into the area he most loves most working in acute care in ambulances as an Advanced Care Paramedic.
In between regular urban stints, Jeff has found success twice with colleague Garry Clark at the Insititute of Ambulance Officers Australia's national competition, taught survival at sea courses at Sea World, helped as a paramedic in a car rally, helped with helicopter airlifts and worked at single-officer stations in outback Queensland communities.
Now he works from the Redland Bay Ambulance Station, where he was a founding paramedic at its opening in 1999.
"It's a great station, it's a nice location, it's a nice place to work in and there's a really good team; my colleagues are a great bunch of people to work with," he said.
"I plan to [be a paramedic] as long as I possibly can; I love it."
"In the last few years, I've come to the realisation that what I really enjoy is the patient care side," he said.
"I really enjoy being in an ambulance, working with a colleague who you can bounce ideas off and then being able to do the actual frontline patient care."