Northgate Venturer Dinner

We attended the Northgate Venturer Fundraiser Dinner on the 18th which was a fairly good night, most people being conned into going by the reputation of Bunny's webber roast, Bunny's Mum's apple pie and the promise that the venturers wouldnt be cooking, only serving. We decided to go dressy which most of us managed though Marc really took the cake with the hat, scarf and all. None of us did well with the pinyata, throwing coins at the bottle or heads and tails but we did get a bottle of wine for compensation for running out of vegies (I think the wine was more appreciated than the vegies anyway). Aside from the games we kept ourselves entertained by totally destroying our candle in its glass holder and learning that pepper flairs up when put into flame. Other things to note was how damn cold that hall is and Daniel trying to eat a rock out of the candle holder. Congratulations to the Venturers for a pretty good night, I thinkthey made about $400, so well done!

Mudbash 2005

Mafeking Rover Park, Victoria

"It smells like Camp around here..."

What better time of the year for it to finally bucket down with rain than the weekend of Mudbash? Actually we were quite lucky in our trip it only really rained when we were driving over stopping at my Mums in Goroke half way on the Thursday and going from Horsham to Mafeking on Friday. Setting up in the rain was a big fat pain in the ass especially the 20 X 20 marquee we brought with us but eventually we got it all up more or less. After pouring out bean slime next to the entrance of the marquee and being told he had bad campcraft skills, Brendan spent the rest of the weekend commenting on how bad everyone’s campcraft was. Saturday started with re erecting the Marquee, which hadn’t made it through the night before going off to investigate what Mudbash is all about. Mud, as it turns out.

The set up of the park is amazing, all built with motor sport in mind so there are some great spectator areas, and the area its in is quite scenic, even if it is wet. There was so much effort put into some of the cars with a heap of V8's and some very nice paint jobs. Some of the stand out events were the tug-of-war, especially when the drive shaft twisted in half of one car which then hit Roger, the V8 mini, and the obstacle course was amazing with huge cut out ditches full of mud and pretty hard core stuff, nothing like the obstacle course at Sandblast. The first car over the second obstacle had its exhaust ripped off but they just put it back on the bonnet and they continued on. The hill climb was pretty full on and few cars made it and the motorkhana was good for some photo opps but the main race was mostly out of the way and the triple challenge and spring pull didn’t have much to them. The Army had a display and also did a couple of demos with the armed personnel carriers, which was also something different.

One very stand out thing with Mudbash was the epidemic of Drizabones, maybe it’s just because it’s a lost culture in SA now, but it was unbelievable how many drizabones there were. Another thing which stood out was the wanky extras most crews had with them, like the fire thingy which held burning wood stacked up over a metre high with a huge chimney, surprising that it didn’t end in tears, it seems Vic Rovers haven’t learnt much fire safety.

All in all a pretty good trip for the six of us (Brendan, Michael, Terri, Marc, Daniel & myself) with Craig, Julian and Ski also came over from SA. It was definitely good having the marquee even if it didn’t rain much during the actual weekend and we never lacked for food which was good. Quote of the weekend goes to Brendan “it smells like camp around here…”

A whole bucket load of photos from Mudbash can be found Here