TURF WARS - Hood Style

For those of you who viewed yesterday's local bush fire and secretly suspected turf wars between rival precincts the Hills and the Hood, then you would of been right. Not really. A rogue gang from Forri started the multiple blazes, that accompanied with suspect tactics by the local Brigade, made for an impressive summer bushie.

I was totally oblivious to the trouble brewing deep within Hood territory on that fateful afternoon of Wednesday the 31st of December (New Years Eve), it wasn't until one of the top Hills officials warned me of the approaching danger and also a carefully planned out course of action which proved to be near fateful.

It all started around 1630 DST, I was preparing myself for a big night of festivities to welcome in the new year. T-Rav called me and informed me of the situation. We headed out and strategically parked at the lookout (Honey Rd). We ventured deep within the Sacred Forest only metres from Hidden Creek. We followed the tracks down the hill to a point overlooking the Seedy Park and the Lesmurdie Falls. At this point we had a clear panoramic view of the magnitude of this beast. There were two fires; one in Seedy Park and the other climbing the hill towards the Goat Farm.

We quickly realised the implications of this second fire and how the lush grass which Goat grazes upon could well be gone by nightfall. Sweat started to drip down my face and the adrenaline kicked in. We took a right and a left and made our way down to ground zero. The fire at Seedy Park had started to calm down thanks to the local fire brigade and the aerial contingent. As we continued down we were in clear view of the fire service and vice versa, only metres from the flames. At this point, something strange happened. T-Rav and I watched as a small burning log was still burning very precariously, untouched. The FB seemed to retreat. T-Rav and I watched as the the second fire on the hills grew with every passing second. The legendary Hercules tried several times to engulf the giant but to no avail.

Several minutes passed as our eyes were fixed to the north, but something wasn't right. The smoke in the surrounding air had increased and so had the crackling of fire. We looked back towards that log...this wasn't good! Only about 15 metres away from us where the smouldering log once was, was now a full-pledged wall of flames. We looked at each other, not knowing what to do. As I looked around to analyze the precarious situation which we were in I noticed a much bigger fire only 50 or so metres away.



We were caged in on both sides by two huge walls of fire. This time we only had two options; run or call out some water pokemon. Unfortunately for us I had already traded my level 42 Blastoise for some shitty sand pokemon. WHAT WAS I THINKING!!! We ran, back up from where we had come down earlier. As we made our way to the track intersection I noticed the fire on the left had made it's way up the hill also and was about to consume one of the tracks.



We contemplated running the other direction into Hills territory but because this was a Hood only affair we took our chances against the smoke dogg. As we legged it along the rocky outcrop we saw the local ranger absolutely gunning it away from the approaching flames. We ran and ran and were seriously close to the flames towards the end but managed to get to Trav's beast in time.

I even jumped on the pushie at 3am in the morning to do some further investigating. After stumbling home from NYE celebrations I rode my bike to check out the fire. It was pretty cool, there were embers everywhere on the hills and looked like something outta LOTR or some shit. The flames were still going down in the Hood and so were the hoses.

DIJI out