Sep — Vietnam Vets

VIETNAM VETERANS MUSEUM — SEPT 16TH CLUB RUN PHILLIP ISLAND

                                        

The day start­ed with sun­shine at Croy­don North when Kay and I left for the run to Phillip Island, after that the weath­er var­ied from sun to rain on the 90 minute drive.

 

There was a small group that left from the clu­b­rooms at 9am with more meet­ing at the BP Lang Lang at 9–30 am. Unfor­tu­nate­ly Jeff White did not get a lot fur­ther as one of his rear axels decid­ed to remove itself from the car,with oth­ers stop­ping to assist includ­ing Rod and Sharon/Peter and Cynthia/Pete Cor­ri­g­an and oth­ers it was obvi­ous­ly a tow truck job. Pete Cor­ri­g­an stayed with Jeff for a while why he wait­ed for the tow truck.The oth­ers start­ed to con­tin­ue on except for Peter Char­man he had turned off his 6 volt ear­ly while it was hot and it would not start,luckily Cyn­thia was with him and she came to the res­cue push­ing the ear­ly while Pete got it started,well done Cynthia!!.

 

Well after all of these events we all made it to the Muse­um, Ray and Di Eaton met us there as they were stay­ing at their hol­i­day house around the cor­ner, our lunch host Aldo also arrived and we set­tled down to a love­ly morn­ing tea of huge scones with lash­ings of jam and cream along with cof­fee. We then went into the Muse­um for a guid­ed tour, this place is a bit of an eye open­er from the sto­ries that are record­ed to the immense col­lec­tion of very large planes,Helicopters and Mil­i­tary Machin­ery includ­ing a Per­son­al car­ri­er and a Tank all under cover,well worth a sec­ond vis­it to take it all in. While we were inside the rain and hail changed to sun­light and stayed with us for the rest of the day.

 

After the Muse­um tour it was time to take a short 10 minute dri­ve to Aldo’s house at Rhyll. Aldo had been work­ing hard to set up his out­door under­cov­er area for lunch, BBQ’S run­ning and a drum fire burn­ing nice and hot, we set up one of our club gazabo’s that I had brought along for extra cov­er and we all set­tled in. Aldo had pre­paired hand made burg­ers spe­cial gar­lic mar­i­nat­ed steak,snags and chick­en legs and wings,we start­ed to cook and folks start­ed to get drinks and with the com­bi­na­tion of Aldo’s and Kay’s pota­to sal­ads and green sal­ad we all enjoyed a great lunch.

 

Aldo’s large block allowed all of us to park on site with room to spare next to his love­ly old hol­i­day house that he is ren­o­vat­ing and expand­ing up to a sec­ond sto­ry to take advan­tage of the ter­rif­ic water views he has. After lunch all of the guy’s did the usu­al inspec­tion of the car’s, new mem­ber Har­ry Bul­man had his new car there and it cre­at­ed lot’s of inter­est when he said he was hav­ing trou­ble with his bon­net catch and release fit­ting not work­ing the way it should. Lots of atten­tion and expert advice fol­lowed, Bruce Gra­ham put up his hand to rec­ti­fy the problem,after refit­ting the plate and adjust­ing the release cable the bon­net was closed and declared fixed only to have it pop open by itself straight away? a sec­ond attempt did fix it to the sat­is­fac­tion of all present.

 

After a great day and the after­noon sun heat­ing west we start­ed to pack up and pre­pare for the dri­ve home. Kay and I were among the last to leave and head off, just past the Lang Lang prov­ing ground site we noticed 2 ear­lies stopped on the road side, it was Dar­ryl Dunn and Bruce Gra­ham they moved of to the ser­vice road out­side a farm house and we fol­lowed to see what the prob­lem was. Darrel’s car was steam­ing!!  The radi­a­tor was hid­den by a cloud of steam, Bruce sus­pect­ed that a lack of water was the prob­lem and being our res­i­dent mechan­ic for the day after fix­ing Harry’s car his diag­no­sis was cor­rect. After we cooled it down with some water Dar­ryl man­aged to release the radi­a­tor cap,by this time we had an audience,the fam­i­ly from the farm had arrived with con­tain­ers of water, Dar­ryl start­ed the car and water was added it soon became appar­ent that it was bone dry it set­tled down with lot’s of H2O.With that done we thanked the farm folk and head­ed of,some time lat­er on East­link near Ring­wood we passed Dar­ryl and Jeanette going along at a good pace and gave them a toot and a wave as we passed.

 

So end­ed anoth­er great run. A spe­cial thank you to Aldo for his hos­pi­tal­i­ty and orga­niz­ing the Muse­um morn­ing tea and tour.

 

Stay Hap­py and Safe.

 

Jim and Kay.

 

Those with an Ear­ly                                                          With­out an Early

Har­ry and Rose­mary Bul­man                                          Jim and Kay Bishop

Peter and Cyn­thia Char­man                                             Aldo Gianchino

Peter Cor­ri­g­an                                                                     Rob Martella

Daryl and Jeanette Dunn                                                  Kim Radinic

Ray and Dianne Eaton

Bruce and Lil­lian Graham

Rod and Sharon Grummitt

Gar­ry and Heather Hodge

Trevor and San­dra Read

Derk Tuik

Mark and Janet Waghorn

Jeff White