Hey - the 420 boys made it to civilization!

This is a final post from 450.
We’d like to thank all those who contributed, and also make a special thanks to cars 420 and 92. Wouldn’t have been the same without you.
The entire Bash this year netted over $1.3 million - a fantastic effort.
Our 450 raisings exceeded $10,000, with an aim for more next year.

Special thanks to;

Alan and Gerald from Lennox Motors - specialists in Mercedes when we need them, and dedicated Bashers and workshop crew as well.

Paul from Pedders in Lilydale. Our suspension held up fantastically this year!

Brett from Brightsparx Autoelectrical. He did a great job on the wiring in the car - above and beyond the call of duty.

Brown-Davis 4WD specialists in Bayswater provided a bashplate under the car that we were unable to break (we tried…)

Darren and Martin- unofficial members of this year’s car 450 team. You were there in spirit, fellas (minus the snozing Marty).

Thanks also to our families for allowing us the time for the event. It’s for the charity, but it’s GREAT FUN too. Thanks to Jon, Andrew and Matt for being great team-mates in the car.

It’s been fun, it’s been rewarding, we feel like we’ve contributed towards helping disadvantaged kids. Now it’s time to detox the livers. See you next year.

450 signing off now.
Regards, Iain.

Well it has been a while since a 420 update was posted and I believe Iain in Car450 has done an admirable job of keeping all up to date!

In Car 420 we decided to miss the final evening at Yeppon and limp the ailing Car 420 down to the Tex onsite facility in Gladstone for repairs and a new “Roo bar”

I would take this opportunity to thank the members of Car 92 and 450 for the unscheduled “Fun Stops” along the bash route. I would also thank my fellow team members for the comraderie along the way. A special thankyou to Alan and Barney in mobile workshop Echo for keeping Car 420 in the bash.

Thankyou to the sponsors and crew for raising +$25000 for needy kids in the 2008 variety bash. We look forward to raising more funds in 2009 and look forward to your ongoing support!

Mick Kirwan, John Williamson, Ross Gamble and Tony Richards! The Team in car 420!

Some photos from different days of the Bash.

Good Day to anyone following our blog!

Thanks to G Hampton of Qld, who has pledged a donation to Variety on the SMS number we posted on the ‘blog. Someone is out there! Apparently, the FT fanclub is in action.

If anyone else would like to contribute, plese text us on the number posted earlier (SMS to 0439 117 560).

Final day of the Bash today, with a round trip out into the hills and hinterlands. JD flies out today, so we’re going to miss that trip. The 450 team will compensate with a quick round of golf.

A big dinner last night here at Yeppoon, and the presentation dinner is on tonight, and the Bash Finale after that. Rumour has it that Andrew was the karaoke king in the bar after dinner.

Yesterday consisted of some of the best dirt road driving we’ve seen in the event with some great challenging sections.

Yesterday 450 , with some guilt over the earlier sardine incident, put some air freshener in the cabin airduct for 420. Apparently the stuff was quite strong. Very strong. Wasn’t appreciated. There you go, we try and do the right thing … The 420 boys had a bit of fun by putting a full tube of bearing grease up the exhaust of 450 and car 92 at breakfast. There may well have been hilarity as we drove off, with potentially environment damaging plumes of smoke … unfortunately we didn’t notice anything. Nice try though. The rivalry thing with 450 and 420 reached a truce, and the 420 blokes, feeling a bit antsy, turned their attention to the unsuspection ‘virgin’ bashers in car 92.

Here’s a rule for the bash - choose your enemies carefully. At lunch, the 92 boys took a shot at the 420 lads with a waterpistol. Unfortunately for them, 420 were fully loaded with pots of beer, a liquid they were willing to turn into weapons of alcoholic destruction. Soggy, and not realising the pandora’s box they’d opened, 92 responded with some lunch on 420’s windscreen. Some time later, with cars full of food, beer, chips and who knows what else, both cars escaped.

We caught up with both teams at a pub stop later where the windscreens and door handles again copped some treatment with sauce, eggs, and vegemite after 420 gave 92 a friendly nudge into their parking spot.

Even Mick from 420 gave the thumbs up when Baz from 92 finally dumped a few ‘trough lollies’ near the 420 air inlet - the implications of which are kind of obvious. Well done Deano, Baz and Rosco2 from 92!!

92 finally managed to pass 450, a feat they’ve wanted to do since day one. They beat us to the finish line, well done! The drag up the final road to the resort was quite amusing - I’ve never seen a wider HQ holden.

The cars have made it though the majority of the event in great condition. Car 450 had the one roo strike, and a flat tyre, but is going great. 420 had a few more dramas with their engine issues and the five roo strikes, but finished in fine form too. Car 92, the 6 cylinder HQ we’ve talked about finished in great nic as well, a tribute to good preparation for the first timers.

We’ll post a few more messages here, and some memorable pic’s, but this entry winds up the daily entries for car 450.

If anyone else really is out there, thanks for taking this trip with us!

Welcome everyone to our day 7! BLOG entry!!-CAR 450

If you’d like to pledge a donation, contact us by SMS on 0439117560. Tell us your name, the donation amount, and whether you’re supporting car 450 or that other car.

Car 420 haven’t updated for a few days. They managed to strike five roo’s on the night run to Charleville the other day, we THINK that’s a bash record. Well done fella’s. The car is running well, provided an eye is kept on the temperature.

Car 450 is still running exceptionally well with only a change of the air cleaner at lunchtime. Andrew was our driver for the day with Iain anoying the heck out of him as navigator, Andrew did a superb drive keeping the pointy end of the car forward most of the time and all four wheels on terra firma except for a couple of occasions with a “YA HOO” from the bistro which housed Matty and J.D.

Car 420 blew some more cash from his printing machine on trying to annoy us but with a leisurely cruise we hardly saw them all day, but I believe they smell like flowers! GO FIGURE?

The day started of rather chilly again from Barcaldine and continued through the tiny town of Jericho,a quick visit to the local school which has around 10 students was a blast with Wilbur Wild and Mike Brady singing “Waltzing Matilda”.

We then continued on for around 300km’s of winding dirt roads which contained varying surfaces which made the driving interesting, bulldust, roos, cattle, grids you name it we had it.A great BBQ was put on by the boys in truck 45 and cold beer which was welcomed in the middle of no-where (Claude River Crossing).

We then continued through to Tresswell to another outback school and then on to Springsure for a short visit to the Queen’s Arms Hotel where the German backpacker barmaids whern’t sure what had hit them!! We are now stopped for the night in Emerald before our final leg tomorrow into Yapoon.

Hello to Mrs J.D,James,Joshua & Jayden- J.D.

Back on the road yesterday, and it turned out to be quite a long one. Car 420 bribed the officials a tidy sum to make car 450 remain behind them as they limped along on 7 cylinders. If we passed them, a $5000 fine was due. All for the kids, of course. Well, after multiple cooldown stops, we finally made the first fun stop with Mickey and Minnie mouse holding a wine and cheese tasting. Augmented by the Karate kids offering to try and beat the mouse traps for $20 a pop. It all went well until someone decided to try it with their tongue…

Lunch was at Adavale. The pictures do the talking, there’s NOT a lot there.

We dutifully stod with car 420, despite some shenanigans and sudden stops. Pushing their car behind ours at the fun stop was ruled invalid for the fine (thankfully). Was very funny though!

We progressively dropped further behind as the day went on, arriving just in time for speeches at dinner. We DID manange to make all the Pub stops (we think) and created a few of our own. The boys swapped cars during the afternoon. The 420 boys taking the chance to ride in a car that didn’t break down every 10 minutes, and the 450 boys revelling in -AIRCONDITIONING. Apparently Iain is a cheap bastard and should have fixed it in car 450. Harden up, boys!!

Group photo’s today, and off on the drive to Emerald. We’ll report again from there.

Hi.

The car 450 team are lounging around this-morning, planning some car maintenance and thinking about brekky before heading over to the Charleville Racecourse for some Olympic spirited competitions.

With a few minutes to spare (for the first time in five days) we thought we’d fill in a few gaps from the previous days.

We had several phone calls with the boys from 420 yesterday, and into the evening. The repairs to the car were slow, but thorough, and a few related matters needed to be dealt with as well. Finally, late in the evening, they were on their way. While we sat haing a quiet meal in Charleville, the 420 team was headed out of Moree for an evening/overnight trip to Charleville. Late in the evening, around 11pm, the were doging roo’s and other wildlife on the catch-up run. We expect to see them here, no doubt bleary eyed, during the day.

The boys will fill you in on the events, but it sounds like another amazing effort from the Mobile Workshop team, and the 420 team for pushing on through.
Mick, a personal comment from the heart from the car 450 boys from last year - good on ya for NOT listening to the advice from the Broken Hill Taxi driver. Obviously, you’re not %^&*ed yet!

Car 450 is plugging on well. With stops to clean the air filter and check the mechanicals, we’re travelling OK, despite roo hits and some testing road conditions.

It seems an animal of some kind managed to reach the height of our bonnet to dump a load of manure on it yesterday … given the height and the dried up state of the “number 2’s” (and the fact that they admitted it last night through fits of laughter), we strongly suspect the animals from car 92. Jealousy from the HQ boys against our fine German enineering, we suspect. The response of placing one of our Pedders “no bull” stickers over their windscreen was swift, if not strong. It did take their driver about 5 k’s of driving to notice it though …

More from us later. See ya.

We have had some questions from people wanting to donate to Variety on our car’s behalf. We will chase up some more detailed information from the officials today. Any donations made before the end of the event will go into our car’s tally. All funds, regardless, go straight to Variety, but it’s nice for us to know what difference we are making. In the meantime if you’d like to pledge a donation, contact us by SMS on 0439117560. Tell us your name, the donation amount, and whether you’re supporting car 450 or that other car.

Well another day has been done and dusted (pun intended).

After a very hearty breakfast at Moree, complete with a public “stoning” of one of the officials for several crimes against humanity (and other officials), we were off. With our team down to one as car 420 sidelined with engine issues, we approached the start line only to have a member of our team from 420 (not naming names here, ROSS!!) publicly throwing a full cup of hot coffee all over our vehicle. With a quick detour to the carwash to remove said coffee, we were off.

With 627km ahead of us, the first 254km to lunch at Dirranbandi went by without a hitch. Lunch was put on by the locals and the kids must have had a bike decorating competition at the local school prior to our arrival. There was some fantastic creations but for me, the one who decorated his bike like Batman and then to see his face when the Bash Batmobile drove in, was priceless.

Once we departed the lunch stop we had a 375km run into Charleville, where I am typing this up now. After our eventful day 3 with the kangaroo we were keeping our fingers crossed that there were no more surprises in store on the run into town. Guess what…..we almost had a complete set of our Coat of Arms imprinted onto the car. A herd, squad, pride, gaggle or whatever they are called, of emu’s suddenly darted out from the scrub on the side of the road. Unbeknownst to me, our driver, JD, hadn’t actually seen them until I shouted “EMUS”. They all lived to continue on their merry way.

After a short funstop with the Karate Kids, we arrived into Charleville safe and sound. Tomorrow is a layday (thank god!!), although there are still activities to be completed.

Love to Lis, Clem, Xander & Xavier.

Iain adds a big welcome home to Jen, Aidan, Nadia and William. See you soon!

Everything started out as planned on day 3, until at breakfast the boys of car 92 arranged to bribe the officials, relegating cars 420 and 450 to the back fo the field for the start. Fortunately Mick of car 420 caught wind of the deal and we promptly upped the ante so car 92 started with us, third last. Nice one.

Once we finally got rolling it was business as usual, overtaking (in a safe manor) the more leisurely of the entrants and taking advantage of a few mistakes in direction, thanks to the dependable directions of our “Navman” for the day JD. That was of course until “the incident” with Skippy.

With cruising speed reached we were gliding across the dirt when a rogue Kangaroo spotted us and decided to attempt to head us off. Unfortunately the engineering of a Kangaroo is not quite up to the build quality of of our German tank and after removing our driver side mirror and denting the driver’s door he was no more. The “chinese” lads of car 350 stopped, with a few other curious and thirsty on lookers and helped us deal with the damage so the door could close and we could get on our way. Anyone interested in some Roo with black bean sauce can contact car 350 or come to their next yum cha!

With that unpleasantness behind us we continued on to Carinda, and most importantly the Carinda hotel for a beverage or two. With less KM’s today it gave us a bit of time to stop and enjoy the stops and the local’s hospitality.

After lunch at Carinda we headed off to Rowena, with car 420 heading off ahead we settled into our pace and kicked back for a while. Until we hit about a K out of Walget, where we saw the unfortunate travellers in car 420 at the side of the road, with the bonnet up! It seems the boys had overheated and had a minor fire which was now under control. After many minutes of head scratching and posturing the mechanical aid team rocked up and were able to determine the problem which is what we were all hoping not to hear, a head gasket! With a beer or two to drown their sorrows they headed off, now at a leisurly pace of under 80km/h to Walget to attempt a repair. Being caring individuals, we stayed behind them to make sure they made it OK, for about 200 metres at which point we decided, bugger em! and headed off on our way to Rowena. After a fun stop in Rowena we kept motoring on without a hiccup to Moree where we are stopping tonight.

The last we heard car 420’s repairs in Walget did not do the trick and they are on their way, still at 80km/h (ha) to Moree. I wonder if Moree have any repair places open on a Sunday? Good luck fellas!
Andrew, signing off for now.