Their old “tin shed” building was constructed in 1997 as a two-bay station ideal for a small, rural fire brigade.

Volunteers did not have much room to move around and had to clean up their breath apparatus in the same sink as they washed their coffee cups.

But Wodonga West has changed since then and so has the way it needs firefighters.

Brigade captain Ross Coyle said the number of callouts increased from about 20 per year in the 1990s to 297 in the past year.

“We’ve certainly outgrown our facility, it will be a fantastic investment in our future,” he said.

“The majority of our calls these days are supporting the Wodonga brigade.”

The new station was closer to residential areas, which Mr Coyle said would help firefighters get to jobs more quickly and improve fire response times by about four minutes.

“Progress is certainly on track,” he said.

The CFA will also make use of the new facility by making it the home of the Wodonga Group Headquarters and Local Command Facility, which manages all medium-sized incidents in the Wodonga local government area.

District 24 operations officer Ashley Mills said work on the new site officially began at the end of January and if all went to plan, it should be ready to move into by August.

He said the design would provide a “comfortable and spacious” new home for firefighters, adding “they’ve been waiting for this for quite some time.”

“It will definitely take the brigade forward for the next 20 to 30 years,” Mr Mills said.

Wodonga West had 119 volunteers on the books, most who were healthy and active on the fire frontlines.

Mr Mills said it was important that the new station would allow them to be capable of fighting both structure fires in town as well as wildfires.

The brigade had not contemplated the logistics of moving to the new station, but expected to find a lot of interesting memories from the past 20 years when the time comes to pack up, Mr Mills said.