Then, two days into his well-deserved retirement and new life on 16 hectares in the Waitaki Valley, he received a call from Stu Rooney, the commander of the Southern fire region, who had a problem in East Otago.
The area commander Brendan Nally had taken a job as the area commander of Hutt Valley and, with a regional restructuring under way for the next few months, Mr Rooney was short of a boss until it was done.
Mr Davey stepped up and now Mrs Davey is short of a "retired" husband five days a week.
It is not the exact retirement he had in mind, but Mr Davey says it is good to be involved in the operation side of things again.
"I will be nice to step out of the service from an operational role, where I started all those years ago."
Mr Davey will act as the East Otago area commander until June, when the new regional staffing structure is in place, at which time the area commander job will be filled permanently.
Most recently Mr Davey was the national manager of operational standards for the national Fire Service, working in headquarters at Wellington.
He had done that for about 14 years. Before that his roles included the area commander for Nelson, Marlborough, West Coast and South Canterbury. He is on the international board of directors for the Institute of Fire Engineers.
He commutes to Dunedin, where he stays from Monday to Friday.
