It was a pretty misty and cold morning when the assembled members and friends headed off to Bethany in the Barossa.
I had designed the run to cut across to the Barossa via Nairne, Mt Torrens, Mt Pleasant, over to Lyndoch and then up the Barossa Hwy to the edge of Tanunda and then right to Bethany, watch out for the speed camera on entering Ta-nunda!
I was driving our MG6 which is not an old enough vehicle according to the Gawler Club officials to start with but when I mentioned that I was bringing 8 more cars they relented and we were able to park under the trees on the other side of the central lawn plus we had Dale Hancock & Sheryl Olney in their E Type who came across from Aldgate independent-ly who had secured a great spot under the awning area just near the roaring fire! Well done! From that spot we were able to expand the area as more came, at that stage there was still a misty rain to dampen the grass.
There were a total of 15 members and Keith Bowler had three friend along, Jane Littlejohns, Lorraine Gaigar, Alcun Voeringer ( Alcun is a German exchange student whose father owns a garage in Germany so he was amazed seeing all the variety of old cars on display.)
Keith was in his 1974 Rover V8 with Jane driving as he had been bitten by a spider while working on his car and had a very nasty bight on the back of his hand. Cameron & Rae Mighall in their very potent yellow MGB Roadster; Peter & Cheryl Barreau were in the delightful Austin Healey BJ8; Peter Casley had his Father& Mother along for the ride in his immaculate Orange Holden Monaro; Don Greiveson joined us in his Peugeot ( he opened the bonnet and had a great time talking to a number of converts plus had a bonus when one mentioned that he had a radiator in his shed that he didn’t need any more!) and Stan & Lorraine Quick came along in their Mercedes Benz. My MGC is still not ready so we came in the MG6 Turbo and Roy & Noreen Smith came in their modern.
There were many old cars already parked and there was a steady stream for the next hour as more cars arrived.
The feature for the day was a smaller version of Tom Kruse’s truck built on a golf buggy platform but it has all the looks of the real one in the Birdwood Museum. This little replica is taken all around SA schools for children to see and hear about how the mail & supplies were delivered to outback regions. The children can drive it up and down on their ovals and it is an inspiration and revelation of the tough times he survived.
I think we were pretty happy about the weather on the day. We were able to venture out of the sheltered area and walk around looking at some very well-known and some very valuable examples of the cars either we grew up with or our parents would have been familiar with. On our way home we could see the dark grey clouds over our way and sure enough we had a pretty decent shower of rain which lasted several hours.
Mike Greenwood - Events
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