22/12/2025
Santa is coming on a fire truck this Christmas eve starting at 4pm
With just over 24 hours until our annual Santa run occurs, we thought we’d once again share some info on its origins.
The origins stretch way back to the 1980’s when several of our members had young kids. Santa would travel from house to house in the fire truck to get the kids excited for Christmas Day, drop off some presents (and lollies) and, more importantly, encourage them to go to bed nice and early. The run covered a few kilometres and would last around an hour.
Over time, the run expanded as the number of members with kids grew. By default we’d drive past families with kids who would come out onto the footpath to give us a wave. They became part of the run and we looked forwarding to seeing them every year too.
The route for the Santa run has remained largely unchanged since the mid 2000’s, albeit for some additions around our Station. The current run covers more than 57km around the streets of Queanbeyan and takes almost 5 hours.
Back in the day, Santa would ride on top of the truck in a purposely made chair and was often the victim to some low hanging branches. We’d purchase around 40kg of loose lollies and bag them up ourselves to give out to the kids. These days Santa needs to be secure inside the truck and we provide pre-packed lollies (close to 2000 bags). These are purchased directly by the Brigade without any external support.
Since it’s commencement there have only been a handful of people who have been Santa’s “helper”, two of which have been that helper for 20 or so years each.
To ensure the Santa run is safe for all, we ask a few things:
- Please understand the route is the route. It’s tradition. If we don’t come to you, you can come to us. Listen out for the sirens which will give you an indication when we get close to you. Check the live tracking link and look at the map we posted.
- We typically avoid going into cul-de-sac’s as we don’t want to try and turn around or back out when there are kids around.
- Please ensure kids stay on the footpath or nature strip.
- The truck carrying Santa does not stop to avoid kids running out onto the road.
- If the truck carrying Santa does not leave some lollies, the supporting vehicles will. For those of you who provide us some “refreshments”,snacks, amd chrissy presents, the supporting vehicles will collect these too (we say thank you In advance).
Below is the route. We start in Queanbeyan East, then head downtown around Queanbeyan Park, over to Crestwood, West Queanbeyan near the Racecouse, Karabar, Fairlane Estate, finishing off in the Cooma Street area.
Our members look forward to this event every year. We know many of you do too.
Merry Christmas to all.
