From the back seat to the frontline

However, she quickly found herself drawn into operations and after completing her initial training, she began attending call-outs and discovered a passion for emergency service work.

“I enjoyed the challenge. I enjoyed learning new things. I enjoyed working with the crew,” she said.

“It’s fun working with a team that are all committed to caring for other people.”

Just two years after joining, Ms Gledhill became Rochester SES unit controller, a position she never sought but one that eventually placed her at the centre of some of Rochester’s most significant flood preparedness projects.

A turning point came following the 2011 floods and Rochester’s subsequent flood study in 2013.

While emergency services were learning from the event, Ms Gledhill became focused on helping residents understand what to do before floodwaters arrived.

She believed the existing messaging was too focused on what people shouldn’t do.

“All they had was ‘don’t drive through floodwater’,” she said.

“Telling people who are stressed and know there’s something large coming at them, telling them a negative is not good for their mental health.”

She wanted to give communities practical actions they could take, which eventually led to the creation of the now widely recognised flood preparedness message: Bag it, Block it, Lift it and Leave it.

The slogan began as a simple idea she hoped to use as a way to help educate the community, especially kids in schools.

However, the concept evolved into a statewide campaign complete with educational resources and a memorable jingle now used throughout Victoria for flood education.

Despite its success, Ms Gledhill admitted she was initially reluctant to be associated with the slogan.

“When it was going to be developed, I said nobody should know that I’d come up with this because I was very nervous,” she said.

“What if my peers thought that it was stupid, and it didn’t work?”

Instead, the campaign has become one of the most recognisable flood preparedness messages in Victoria.

Her commitment to helping the community stay prepared continued and, in 2018, she helped drive the Resilient Rochester Project with the support of Campaspe Shire Council.

Using SES operational data and flood modelling, the SES provided residents with personalised fridge magnets containing property-specific information about potential flood impacts and preparedness actions.

At the time, a major flood hadn’t swept through Rochester for nine years, and so the value of the magnets weren’t recognised until the major flood in 2022.

The magnets were again reissued in 2024 to a large number of residents and, today, Rochester remains the only town with the resource.

Ms Gledhill said helping the community prepare for future flood events was vital.

“Communication is one of our biggest barriers,” Ms Gledhill said.

“If a percentage of the community take that information and use it and be proactive, then hopefully it will help the preparedness of the town.”

While her work has now been recognised through the Emergency Service Medal, Ms Gledhill remains modest about the honour.

Reflecting on the recognition, she said the experience was both overwhelming and embarrassing.

“I worked on all of this other stuff with various committees, so I feel like I’ve been recognised for their efforts,” she said.

“I don’t feel as if I’ve done anything more than what everybody else has put in.

“I just hope I’m worthy.”

Ms Gledhill is now the second person to have been awarded the Emergency Service Medal in the history of the Rochester SES.