2018 NATS

We left Wheel­ers Hill Pub Thurs 27th Dec 4 pm had a good & hot run through Mel­bourne for a few hours, then out on the high­way head­ing to Dim­boola for the night, dur­ing our run we passed a tow truck car­ry­ing an ear­ly head­ing back to Mel­bourne, it belonged to Ray & Gaye from the Melb Chap­ter, could not be start­ed, Peter Cammo’s ute stopped run­ning as well, nei­ther caused by heat, unless it was fuel related.

Derk’s ute got a bit thirsty on part of his trip 12 litres gulped in, back to cam­mos, appar­ent­ly when fill­ing up radi­a­tor it was spit­ting out steam, so it was pret­ty hot.

How­ev­er we con­tin­ued on our way to Dim­boola, arriv­ing at our des­ti­na­tion 9.pm and we met up with Ian & Jane, after a qui­et wine & Bundy, we retired to pre­pare for anoth­er day. We met Ian & Jane at 7 am out­side Car­a­van park office & WERE ON OUR WAY , we had a good safe dri­ve whist fill­ing petrol tanks & all the nor­mal duties on a road trip, chang­ing lead dri­vers a cou­ple of times, we stopped at Coon­alpyn, to fill up with fuel, only to find the ser­vo i thought was out of town was in fact not, so with a lit­tle bit of pres­sure on us we took things a lit­tle easy until Yumali, as we where get­ting clos­er to our des­ti­na­tion we didn’t fill right up, wait­ing for cheap­er fuel, todays trip was real good no rush, the day was not quite so hot & both engines per­formed ide­al­ly, arriv­ing at Mur­ray Bridge race­course app 11.30 am to see most of our club mem­ber rar­ing to go we all got through Scru­ti­neer­ing ok, had some lunch, then back to motel, GAME ON. 

29th Jan­u­ary, 2018
Today was the show and shine, we arrived nice and ear­ly and set our cars up. We also set up the club gaze­bos with the help of oth­er mem­bers. Was a good turn out of cars and peo­ple for the show and shine. 

30th Jan­u­ary, 2018
Run to Bird­wood Muse­um. Left Race­course 8.30. Good run in con­voy, maybe a bit slow, no mishaps.
Left about 12.45 to Hah­n­dorf. Town was full up, half an hour to find a park with Trevor & Aaron Read look­ing, found 1 in IGA. 
Had lunch with Reads and fam­i­lies, joined by Chris Fox and family.
Nice dri­ve back to Motel on Free­way. let the ute loose a bit, 
Movie at Race­course “Sun­day Too Far Away” .Big crowd enjoy­ing the movie with app 5 sec­onds view­ing of the FJ ute.

31st Jan­u­ary, 2018
Car Skills course day at Race­course. Drop­ping golf ball into glass, nego­ti­at­ing for­ward and reverse into garage, etc .every entrant had a ball los­ing them­selves in their own dust from slides & wheel­ies, it was a time tri­al of course, my first time at that, thor­ough­ly enjoyed it,
Lunch with mem­bers at Fox­ies at Motel, good afternoon.
Evening
Picked up at 5.30 in Minibus tak­en to Race­course for Pre­sen­ta­tion night din­ner and raf­fles etc. Great meal, Cold night, Great Band, Silent Auc­tion got me anoth­er small car­ry bag. Just what i needed.
Mem­bers not lucky this year, no tro­phies for EMHC, except for Dri­ving events, list in Mag.

1st Jan­u­ary, 2019
Farewell break­fast at Stu­art Reserve cooked by Bikie Club, a lot of chit chat between all clubs. Most of us drove on to “The Bend” race­track at Tailem Bend. After a lot of sign­ing papers we start­ed on our laps of this very new impres­sive Race Track. We start­ed with 2 laps at 60kph. Slow dri­vers were sup­posed to go at rear, did not hap­pen, sub­se­quent­ly slow­ing down yours tru­ly and 1 oth­er ute. After pulling into pits and park­ing cars out in the park­ing lot, a lot more chat­ter between friends, next thing the Pace Car dri­ver was call­ing out for dri­vers to do 1 lap at 100kph. Well about all raced back to their cars, jumped in and tried to get up front. I fin­ished up in the mid­dle which suit­ed me, as the cars were much faster than myself and cars behind were quite a lot slow­er than me, or was it the dri­ver! So with Michael Del­zop­po urg­ing me on, we decid­ed to go and catch up to the tail end of front dri­vers, we man­aged to do this feat with the old ute rock & rolling around the track. Good job by the Ute and I could not have dri­ven any hard­er, my dri­ve was approx 90kph.
This was a great fin­ish to the Nation­als, I feel every par­tic­i­pant would agree.

After the laps, all involved start­ed on their way home or to halfway town, Dimboola.
We head­ed to Man­num on the Mur­ray for 3 days. then Christys beach anoth­er 3 days. caught up with fam­i­ly & head­ed Home.

Mem­bers with EarliesMem­bers without,
Paul & Elaine Annetts.Gar­ry Allen.
Peter & Lin­da Cor­ri­g­an & Connie.Gary & Les­ley Beardsley.
Ray & Judy Edsall.Alan Del­zop­po.
Chris & Jane Fox. & Angus, Chloe, Olivia.Michael Del­zop­po.
Richard Fox.Brett Hall.
Rod & Sharon.Grummitt.Ray & Janet Howlett.
Gary & Judy Hislop.Alan New­some & Wayne.
Jason & Janine King,Bren­ton & Lyn Scheir. & Aiden
Ian & Jane Maclean.Glen & Vic­ki Sherry.
Bar­ry Maxted.
Aaron & Lisette Read, with
Kaela, Zahra & Tamsyn
Trevor & San­dra Read
Tim & Luke Sells & Michelle
Derk Tuik
Steve & Sue Whiting