DRIVE YOUR OLD CAR DAY 1/9/2025

Spring had finally arrived, so time to head for Bethany. The first day of Spring is promoted by the Federation of Historic Motor Vehicles SA as “Drive It Day” in SA, to be out and about and seen in your historic vehicle. To this end, the Gawler Veteran Vintage and Classic Vehicle Club as usual had organised a run to Bethany Reserve; with anyone interested invited to join them there.

Ten cars gathered at the Murray Bridge Railway Station in readiness for departure, including Graham & Maureen Edwards daughter and son-in-law, Warren and Sharon Pratt’s Holden Calais. We also had three cars from Coonalpyn, the drivers are not members of our club, but had contacted me and asked if they could join us. No problem. After letting everyone know where we were going and handing out the run maps and instructions, we headed for Mount Pleasant, our first stop. We encountered some light drizzle along the way, but nothing too serious. Indeed there was a little bit more at Mount Pleasant as we enjoyed smoko, with the ladies having to stand beneath the hall stairs for a while to keep dry, but it soon stopped, I even commented that I was casting a shadow, but it was not really very sunny. It was, however, the last of the drizzle that we were to encounter for the day and with no wind, it turned out quite nice after all.

With the bakery just over the road, quite a few partook of their wares. We were amazed at the size of Noel’s Cornish pasty. It looked so good that Vicki & I bought one each there as we passed through on our return, for tea when we got home. The looked so big, we weighed them out of interest, to find that each weighed nearly half a kilo! And yes, they were good! But where were the Coonalpyn blokes? Some had seen them branch off towards Birdwood. Maybe we were going too slow for them, or maybe they had tired of our company. We later saw their cars at Bethany, but I did not catch up with them to talk to, so we don’t know.

Anyway, after Mount Pleasant we had a very pleasant drive down Mengler’s Hill, with very good views across the valley, then on to Bethany. As usual, an excellent array of vehicles awaited our inspection. Down on numbers I felt, probably the recent wild weather scared a few off. The beautiful big Jags that Brian salivates over were not there, but still some interesting stuff, including a twin engine Mini, one engine in the front, one in the back!

We sat around and yarned over lunch, had another quick look around, then all went our own way home, in our case via a winery to buy some bulk port, to top up the keg. Vicki & I had a good day, hope you did also.