Fire Kings!

Fire-kings - 2008 to 2012

We used to watch a lot of Ice Age and the term "fire-king" crept into our vocabulary when Vaughan was quite young. 

In the early days during our day visits to the forest Vaughan's favourite activity was playing "fire-king" with a long stick - and under very close supervision.   He enjoys the activity just as much now and included a new variant (pic at bottom left) when he convinced Nick to play too on a recent weekend camping trip to the Watagans.

Fire-king is also used as a generic term to describe our various fire sculptures.  Our first attempt, back in 2008, followed the style of those we had seen during our Winterheat visits.  It relied heavily on firelighters for its flame and was not a blazing (hah!) success.  Our next (dramatic) attempt was in 2010, very much our own design, sparked (hah!) by Nick finding an almost hollow log in the search for firewood.  That (big-nosed) Fire-king was our best sculpture ever though the event was marred significantly by Nick's burnt hand and ensuing trauma to all.

It was a few months before we very carefully tried again, at Yowah - and happily there were no injuries that time.  We've lit a few more fire-kings since then.  It is not always possible to find suitable logs and even when we do, some work better than others.  We are still perfecting our technique and based on our most recent effort, have some more modifications to try.