More than six years and $14 million of works are complete at the Queensland Fire and Emergency Headquarters in the heritage city of Maryborough, but this is a building like no other.

The station is the first in Australia to be made of mass-engineered timber, and the irony is not lost on QFES Deputy Commissioner Mike Wassing.

“Normally, we’re fighting fires associated with timber,” he said.

“The fact that now our fire station is actually made of timber — there’s a lot of detail and research that has gone into that.”

The new design restored the 1951 heritage-valued brick bones of the original station, with the remainder of the building constructed from locally sourced wood.

Mass-engineered timber uses state-of-the-art technology to glue, nail or dowel wood products together in layers to make structural panels, posts and beams.

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