The alarm awoke us all very early at 5.30am. As advised by Camp Quality officials we drove to the marshalling area and –well—no one was there. We even beat the security people there.
After a short while all entrants started to arrive.
Different cars, different colours and all sporting some type of noisy, smokey attention getting device or attachment to their vehicle.
It was very exciting to see the fantastic variety and marvellous designs and modification each entrant made to a “traditional” family type car.
The High Rollers (Rolls Royce), the Fun Police, the Spooks, Bogger Mobile
(Our 2nd cousins) Super Mario’s, The Nuns on the Run, The Limousine, The Clowns, The Three Richards (except that only two were called Richard) and many many more.
After a short speech and outline for the day the official photographs of the day were taken. GROUP PHOTO
More photos can be found at TREVOR CONNELL'S twitter site (click name to view)
The event commenced. As each vehicle left the marshalling area all drivers were breath tested to ensure they were under the Drink Driving limit, of course all were.
Setting of out of Bendigo the Navigator (Laurie) was on a virtual learning curve.
The driver Darren was trying to make it easy by driving carefully.
Through town and soon enough we were on the much promised dirt road.
The dust of the cars in front was somewhat thick as we were about midway in the line of cars.
Carefully following the map references and information points on the rout sheet we found ourselves deep into the Bendigo Mountains.
Boy some of the roads (if you can call them roads) were really rough, uneven and quite uncomfortable—but that just added to the excitement and fun of the morning.
Along the way several of the slower cars (us included) were past by the more experienced and eager vehicles.
At one point through the one of the many sections of the State Forest, on a very steep and curvy climb one of the vehicles in front could not make it up and over the hill.
The whole convoy came to a stop. The problem- a vehicle stalled during the climb and refused to start.
After a very short period of time (5 minutes) the car managed to move on and then one by one all cars managed to go on.
At lunch time we arrived at Ballarat.
All cars were instructed to park in one of the parks there. Well, all the dust, mud and other mess on the cars was something very different to the shinny, bright and good looking cars that left Bendigo a few hours earlier.
The distance between Bendigo and Ballarat is approx 80 kilometres but this short journey took us all of 4 hours to get there.
After lunch we all received a refresher briefing as to incidents and route changes.
Driver change to Rob and off we go—onto Geelong.
The roads again were though State Forests and very steep and precarious mountain climbs.
To enhance the journey we had to encounter a slush pit.
Some of the leading vehicles went through OK and in doing so further sloshed the mud for the others.
Sadly one of the participants managed to get bogged and this held up about 30 plus cars on a track no wider than the average hallway, or so it seemed.
As other participants knew that the Snot Rocket was a 4WD we were asked to come on up and help tow the car out. Much easier said than done!
As our car arrived at the bog—the problem was solved and our services were not required, a little disappointed we moved on. (Oh well , don't worry guys I am sure they'll need you in the future- TEAM AFRO to the rescue).
The rest of the last leg to Geelong was uneventful except the dust and bumpy roads continued.
Arrived at the motel, checked in and then went straight to the Geelong Cats AFL Football stadium for dinner.
More exchanges of information and finally at the end of the night an award for “Turkey Of the Day” was presented to the vehicle that attempted the wet track route and fail to make it, ending up with a fish tank style car..
Back to the motel, and all went to bed tired and ready for yet another day.
Again more great photos of the day at BOOGER MOBILE'S blogspot.
