Local Heroes

The Heir and I have just returned from fighting a fire and saving the neighbourhood from going up in flames, or a small patch of bush near the drain at least. Mrs HP went to pick up Fashion Boy from a party (One of those wild moustached drawing parties!) when she rang to say there was a fire burning down the street and that we should go and put it out. The "little" fire she reported was well alight by the time we got there so I called 000 to report it then with the help of another bloke who'd stopped the three of us managed to beat it out with tree branches. It wasn't near any houses but it would have burnt a significant area if we hadn't extinguished it. The fire brigade arrived a few minutes later, took a look, then put their lights and siren on in a peculiar piece of timing.
They proceeded to give it a good soaking to deal with the remaining coals and embers.
Our good deed done for the day we headed for home.

We had been out at a quiz night at the hockey club and came from 5th with one round to go to storm into 3rd place. That scored us an assortment of prizes which we had to divvy up. We got a digital camera that will make a good present for one of the kids.

The big news of the day is that we have a new government in Australia with the Labor Party winning and Kevin Rudd becoming the new Prime Minister. The most amusing part of the whole deal was that the sitting PM lost his own seat, only the second time it's happened since federation!

I spent the afternoon dismantling the shed in Quindalup. Stu aka The Gardener and The Heir helped. Stu was the brains of the organisation, with me happy to follow his lead. The Heir provided material assistance, going to buy me a new key chuck when mine broke, and then when that one broke! going to get a stronger one from Bunnings back in Busselton.
While he was away I managed to fall off the wheelie bin I was standing on drilling out pop rivets and cut and scraped myself in a few places. The bleeding has stopped but my leg and arm are aching.
We managed to get the whole thing apart. The next stage is transporting it back to our place. We'll need a large trailer to do that.

Unfortunately there's been no progress on getting Sport Boy's bike back. Mrs HP did get busted inspecting a couple of bikes laying on the front lawn of a house around the corner though! The lady in the house was very nice once she explained what she was doing!