For the ninth time in two months, a bushfire near the Lake Macquarie community of Martinsville has sprung back to life.
While the fire near Pringles Road, in the foothills of the Watagan Mountains, has reignited, five members of the Martinsville Rural Fire Brigade have been further south, assisting fight the blazes in the Blue Mountains.
The brigade's captain, Luke Masters, is part of the strike team from Martinsville helping out in the Blue Mountains.
On Monday, he saw an alert on his mobile phone, indicating that a fire had reignited back home on what has become very familiar ground for Mr Masters and his fellow volunteer firefighters.
"I saw the pager and said, 'You're kidding!'", Luke Masters, a 23-year veteran of the Martinsville brigade, said. "Nine times in two months.
"But it doesn't surprise me with how dry it has been."
The 30 firefighters from the Martinsville brigade have repeatedly returned to bushland around Watagan and Pringles roads to quell the flames, since the first blaze broke out on October 26.
As Mr Masters told the Newcastle Herald last week, before this latest outbreak, the Martinsville brigade had clocked up 1742 "incident hours" this year.
"Since January, we've done more than the past three years put together in incident hours," he said.
Read more: The Martinsville fire that won't die
With the arrival of cooler weather in the past two days, Mr Masters said he felt "more comfortable" in having the strike team head to the Blue Mountains.
Back in Martinsville, local firefighters have been joined by four other NSW Rural Fire Service brigades from the southern Lake Macquarie area to track down and extinguish the latest blaze in the bush.
Luke Masters said the five Martinsville firefighters and the brigade's heavy tanker were due to return home from the Blue Mountains in the early hours of Tuesday, in time for a community carols event on Christmas Eve. After all, the brigade is integral to the Christmas celebration.
"We're taking Santa in on the fire truck," Mr Masters said.
Read more: The brigade that fights the flames and protects the community
