We played a more extreme version of this game called fugitive. We had very thick bushland roughly 2km long and 500 metres wide, one side had the ocean and the other side was fenced off.

Two people were the fugitives, one had a small rock wrapped in a bright red shirt, we called that the 'money'. The other had an empty green backpack that we called 'drugs'. Each fugitive started on opposite sides of the map length ways (2km). All you had to do was exchange the package with the other fugitive and then make it back to your side.

Everyone else (5-10 kids) started right in the middle of the map, we called them the 'bad guys'. The bad guys would blow a loud whistle and then count to 15 seconds, then the search began. The bad guys often split into groups of two and fanned out, most of the time the strategy was to have one or two bad guys lay in hiding somewhere near the middle and wait for the fugitives, the rest would have whistles and constantly shout, making as much noise as possible and trying to sort of scare the fugitive into a corner. There were lots of strategies though, sometimes we had someone climb a tall tree and use whistle signals to tell us where to go, sometimes everyone hid, sometimes everyone stood still and just watched for movement. One of the particularly nasty strategies was to shoot rocks into bushes with glove guns and listen to see if anyone got hit.

Over the school holidays the fugitives got to make lunch boxes with food and water and plant them around the forest in secret stashes in the morning while the bad guys played super smash bros at home - because the games would literally go all day. The bad guys normally had backpacks to support them.

I remember vividly hiding in waist deep water under a coffee rock outcrop while two bad guys sat above me eating lunch, you always had to have someone watching the beach in case the fugitives swam across, but it was very open so it was easy to watch. One of the bad bad guys was 'on post' and the other was a 'runner' who brought everyone on their team intel and food. I held my breath, desperately trying to to make waves. The tide was rising and I was starting to panic, luckily the other bad guys thought they found fugitive two, they blew the whistle and the bad guys sprinted off in that direction. I crept up, covered in mud and filth, drenched wet. I grabbed their lunch quickly and darted off toward were I suspected my fellow fugitive to be. Turns out that my team mate figured I was trapped on the beach after he spotted the two guys on post, he backtracked around and threw a massive rock down a small gulley, the sound made the bad guys converge on that location, he saved my life from the bad guys - I remain eternally grateful.