Taken a beating

 This is Spotty on our beautiful Bonsai Mountain, close to the top of North Face Gully. The sky is blue, the birds are singing in the trees, or gorse bushes and all is well in our world.

 All is not well however on this morning as the first warning signs block out the sun

 someone has set fire to the gorse bushes. I got there just as the brave fire fighters who were about to have a very very long day with some exciting bits.

 I took them up sheepskull lane to save them slogging their guts out on a direct approach.

 Just ahead the fire was building

 the waist high gorse bushes have a natural flammable liquid in their branches and once they get going the fire spreads quickly.

 I went up to the summit to get a view of whats occurring to find a 200 metre line of flame advancing towards yours truly's bit of the planet. This set alarm bells ringing as the bank would be a bit miffed if it burned down before I paid for it.

 Spotty kept a keen eye on the inferno

 while I went back to get the workers

 who tackled the spreading blaze with a keen optimism and leaf blowers

 but it soon got past them and

 fearing the worst I left them to it via North Face Gully with the fire advancing into the cauldron.

 Spotty took cover from all the smoke and falling ash, it was at around this point two of the fire fighters had a close call top of the gully getting marooned and having to dig a scrape in the ground and wait it out.

  I made sure all animals were accounted for and filled the buckets.

 Thankfully the skill of some 30 firefighters saved the apprentices playground. Here we are some 4 hours later on the non damaged side on a recce to see what had happened.

 This is the start point, the black trail suddenly spreading over the whole hill. The likely cause was a member of the militia trying to clear the ground but failing to alert the authorities and choosing a day when the wind speed and direction threatened those who live on the hill.

 Here is the view from the cauldron where the fire damage can be seen as far down as the second tree, 300 metres from the house, closer than 2006.

Bliss relaxing.