With the arrival of the Dores, Lomas/Phillips, Van Oosteroms and Dewars we hit the road.

First stop Benalla.

“Whoa!” I hear you say. “What?, Benalla. You live there” – well how many art galleries feature NUDE ART. (And how often these days do you get the chance to titillate some of your best friends?)  Yes – Benalla Gallery displaying the top Nude art from an international competition intended to put Benalla on the map. Well I fear it didn’t personally but you have to see it for yourself before accepting my judgement and I’m fairly sure my most base objectives were not realised. However we have gained some “culture” with little expectation of any more being added over the course of the next few months.

Anyway, onwards. Next stop Wagga Wagga to overnight. Dinner at the RSL with Fay (Judes sister).

Each days travel was carefully calculated? and so with very little effort we made it to Bathurst for night 2 and then Tamworth via Sofala for night 3, finally into Warwick for the 4th night. Somehow we forgot to take many photos.

Thursday evening and all the travellers are ensconced – 110 in all with perhaps 50 Sprites and one Cortina and a Sprite UTE. Registration and welcoming dinner, catching up with old friends but bed was attractive very early so more socialising had to wait.

Well let the competition begin.  Good Friday saw Alex Robertson and me eagerly offloading the racecar at Morgan Park Raceway at the most uncivilised hour of 8.00am. Day 1 was scrutineering, practice and regularity runs. We did badly at all of this – the car overheated and so did we. With nothing else better to do we worked on it that evening and prayed that we achieved something for the next day. Saturday dawned (bloody early again) and after one serious attempt by Alex to set a new land speed record I clambered in to a very hot car. Two laps saw the gauge reach around 300′ so being very conscious of the cars ownership I pulled  into the pits. A ‘quick’ head gasket change didn’t remedy the problem, so our ‘race’ was run – all over red rover by about 11.00 o’clock of the am. Thereafter the weekend became very sociable. Jude was to also drive the motorkhana on the Sunday but the car was too broken so the Paynes dropped out of contention for inclusion in the Vic team. Unfortunately the same plight befell Alex for Queensland but the Cane Toads did still take out the top honours for the weekend. The Wombats (Vic) did come in second – a valiant effort.

Nevertheless the event was once again a resounding success (for most) with the chance to catch up with so many friends from around the country , sharing our common interest and  spreading heaps of bullshit about our past successes and our well known prowess as serious racers. This is the joy of Spriting. Such was the involvement in all things Spritely “muggins” me forgot to take any photos. There’ll be plenty in the next club mag though. I did manage some of the last supper though thanks to the I-phone –

Is this what we were in 1964?

And the winners are………..

SCCQ

Warwick to Moogerah on Monday, an hours journey, we now sit overlooking the waters of the Lake. Here ’til Tuesday 29th (Bob’s Birthday) then Robyn (Jude’s other, younger sister) and the Paynes head west.

Yee- Haa!