Northgate Xmas in July Dinner

The third fundraising dinner was just as good as the previous ones with the Hillcrest Scouts helping out on the night as well as the Northgate Venturers. Crew beanies or formal? We picked formal, someone had to add a bit of class to the event and why shouldn’t it be us? Unfortunately due to mishap with our candle at a previous dinner we were given crayons and stuff to colour in rather that set fire to. Georgia managed to get her very own dillybag in the silent auction ready for wine moot and I picked up the most touchy feely scarf ever, knitted my our very own group leader. Just like a real Christmas dinner we ate too much and didn’t really want to do anything afterwards except sleep.

Pool Night

After postponing the Goodies night until the school holidays we went out to the Holden Hill Pool Hall for the night where we were also graced with the presence of Undies and B2 who filled us all in on a huge amount of gossip. There was a lot of reminiscing especially when we pulled out the recently acquired Watergully Venturer photos from the hall earlier in the night. Anyone want a Watergully shirt??

SA Branch Scout Hike

Rovers and Venturers ran a number of night activities at this year’s Scout Branch Hike held in Mt Crawford Forest at Chalk’s campground on Saturday the 24th. Ash, Brendan and I went up to help out and organised a few activity things, including the NONT jelly activity which was so god the Lyndoch Venturers turned up with their own jelly activity after getting the idea from us. With the team of Rovers mostly coming from EV theme team setting up and running everything went relatively well, being so similar to EV in the organisation and running, although there was probably a bit of excessive stressing on Craig’s behalf at the start. The most popular activity was by far the bucking Bull with a huge line up. I heard lots of really positive feedback both on the night and at our district leaders meeting (Mindari) from lots of different leaders, even if some weren’t so keen on how the rest of the weekend went.

Lego Night

Anstey had a very cool Lego Night at the Hope Valley Scout Hall with the Beefacres Venturers on Friday night with a few other Rovers dropping in. Ash probably had the most interesting collection of Lego out of us all but other lego was brought by Simon, Brendan, Chris and I. Id even gone to the extent of swapping my bike for my sisters lego to make up for everything which has gone missing over the years. A great night with pizza, popcorn and cookies thrown in and once the Scouts left we progressed from the den into the hall and set up the projector and got into some Futureama. Congratulations to Brendan for organising his long overdue first Rover activity, hopefully something we will do again in the future. Is it just us or did everyone have a lego street sweeper in their collection?

Once upon a NONT…

Night Observation & Navigation Trial
27th-28th May 2006

This year saw the biggest NONT for a number of years with 113 participants in 29 teams which included 9 venturer teams, 2 Leader teams and even one team all the way from Victoria. NONT 2006 was run by the Anstey Rover Crew with a lot of support from across the state and as the title indicates the theme was fairytales and nursery rhymes.

For those of you who don’t know what NONT is and have been living under a rock for the last year, the Night Observation & Navigation Trial (NONT) is a SA Branch Rover event run by the previous years winners. There are a number of aspects to the event including navigation, observations, theme and activities spread out over this years 238km course which spanned from Eagle on the Hill, through the hills and Finniss through to Prospect Hill.

Grants from the Tea Tree Gully Council, the Office for Youth and the Office for sport and recreation allowed a number of new event and promotional initiatives while lowering the cost to a mere $2 per person. This year saw the introduction of geocaching and mystery checkpoints in the course along with a BBQ at the start, extensive Radio coverage, maps supplied to teams along with bound course notes, extensive promotion activities and the restoration of the NONT trophy. We also introduced a Venturer specific class and a leader specific class to broaden our horizons and cater for more participants. It was great to see the extra teams in these classed and congratulations to the Belair Venturers for taking out the venturer class, which finished at the halfway point.

There was a fantastic array of costumes seen at the start point so congratulations to the best dressed as you had some pretty though competition even including a car transformed into a dragon.

Best Dressed Male
David Macmichael – Bloo Rover Crew
Best Dressed Female
Leslie Burge – Pt Noarlunga Rover Crew
Best dressed Team
Hook and the Hookers – Lyndoch Venturers

There were some outstanding efforts throughout the night at the various activities which ranged from the Big Bad Wolf (Peter Hann), Jousting, Humpty Dumpty, the Emperors Old Clothes and the Frog Prince through to Sleeping Beauty, the Sword in the Stone and the three blind mice. A number of teams would have left the Humpty Dumpty activity a lot poorer after their run in with the Troll and the Tooth Fairy (thanks to our Anstey Old Boys!). There were also a fair number of green arms and hands seen at the halfway point following the frog in the pond activity (Thanks to the BP Guild).
For once the halfway point, the Gingerbread House, was a hive of activity under the watchful eye of Margy Wright who came all the way from Victoria to supervise the catering. It was great to see so many Rovers and Venturers all packed together, tired, but obviously still enjoying themselves, so much so that they were very reluctant to leave and continue the course.

It was a very long night with most teams finishing in the morning light and the last two teams from Pine Forest signing in at the finish at 8:30am. At the end of a couple of weeks worth of scoring the trophies and placings were decided… Activities Trophy
For the most outstanding effort, teamwork, participation and achievement at the activity checkpoints.

EGA 4 BVA - Theatrical Activities Rover Crew (TARC)
Theme Trophy
For the most outstanding achievement in the theme aspects of the event including costumes, bonus items, theme questions, keeping humpty until the end and their once upon a NONT story.

Brothers Grimm- Pine Forest Rover Crew
Most Observant Trophy
For the team with the most observation markers, course markers and hazard markers correctly recorded.

Little Red Riding Hood- Pine Forest Rover Crew
Navigators Award
For the most outstanding achievement across the navigational components of the event including the number and order of Observation and hazard markers recorded, the number of geocaches found and the number of mystery checkpoints located.

Ali Baba and his thieves Sheherazade and Jack- GRovers
The Wooden SpoonA new perpetual trophy was donated by Anstey for the wooden spoon recipients, that is the team in lucky last place. This years awardees were particularly deserving, despite having by far the best dressed car, the Kullari Dragon, the team had to pullout of the course at halfway due to a broken clutch and weren’t able to hand in their book as it was left on the roof of the car at a servo never to be seen again. Well done anyway!

The Kullari Dragon

Venturer Class: 1st Nicolocks and the 4 Belairs 2nd Gretel – Beefacres Venturers3rd Hansel – Beefacres Venturers4th The Three Little Pigs - Aberfoyle Park Venturers5th Team Misteeq – Aberfoyle Park Venturers6th Kintaro 7th Loco 8th Hook & the Hookers – Lyndoch Venturers9th Blackhawk Leader Class: 1st They mostly come out at night… mostly – Glen Osmond2nd Peter and the Three Wolves - VariousRover Class:
Equal 1st The Brothers Grimm- PFRC Equal 1st Little Red Riding Hood - PFRC 3rd Ali Baba & his Thieves Sheherazade and Jack- GRovers 4th Bloo 5th FPR- Lones 6th Golden Nugget- Pt Noarlunga 7th Aesir 8th Hansel & Gretel- Ex-Blackburn & Pine Forest9th Speedy- Pt Noarlunga 10th 5 short of a good time- Crew 64 11th Indians-Pine Forest12th Grovers 13th 8 short of a full deck – Crew 6414th Discombobulated - Ridgehaven15th Scot none – Scots Own Rover Crew, Victoria16th EGA 4 BVA- TARC 17th Barra - Pt Noarlunga 18th The Kullari Dragon Thank you to all of the participants for attending and making Once upon a NONT such a success and for all of the laughs you gave us along the way. Thanks also for all of the positive and constructive feedback that was passed onto us, it was great to hear that our efforts were appreciated.

There is over a page of people to be tanked for their support and contributions for NONT so for this space I give you all a big blanket THANK YOU!!! We’d particularly like to mention Andre Freund who put in a huge amount of time and effort into the event and gave us a huge amount of guidance. Thanks also to the members of the BP guild and the BP lodge who helped with admin, catering and activities as all of our staff were critical to the event. For our communications thank you to the Scout Radio Activity Group.

Congratulations to our Venturer teams, you all added something to the event and we hope you return next year. Congratulations also to both of our leader teams who were both new to the concept of NONT and yet did outstandingly well. In the end They Mostly come Out at Night… Mostly from Glen Osmond came out on top and came third overall, well done. Lastly our congratulations to our joint winners, “The Brothers Grimm” and “Little Red Riding Hood”, both from Pine Forest Rover Crew for an outstanding effort across all aspects of the event; theme, navigation and activities. We hope your fairytale castle provides you with hours of fun and we wish you all the best in running NONT 2007. we also hope that all other activity organisers have a good look at their activities and see how they can be revamped and promoted to see a similar increase in participation across the board.


Congratulations to all teams, a fantastic effort all round. Photos for NONT can be found at www.salmond.net/moment.
The End.

Ted Whitworth Award Presentation 2006

Anstey acted as the Honour Guard for Pine Forest at the unifom night of the BP Lodge for the presentation of the Ted Whitworth Rover Award to Scouting for community service. It was great to have five members of the crew attend, the biggest honour guard to date and the same number that Pine Forest had attending. We were all looking very tidy in khaki uniforms all round and crew scarves. Marc took up the position of flag bearer as Crew Leader as we only had our crew flag and Pine Forest doesn’t have one.

The speeches, toasts and food afterwards were generally the same as always though we were a bit more vigorous with joining in the singing than we have been in the past. It was great to go along and we even found some more helpers for NONT so it was a very productive night. I’ve even found a new challenge, collecting the ring pulls off cans to be recycles into new hip joints.
Thanks to the BP Lodge for having us and congratulations to Pine Forest.

AdVenture Expo

Adventure Expo is a Branch Venturer activity held at the Glenelg Activity Centre, which provides the opportunity for all activity groups to have promotional displays or run activities with venturers to help get the word out about what Venturers can go and do.

We ran a NONT display outside with Julian’s car and our banner and inside we had a display with all the info and flyers and our newly made giant beanstalk, inflatable castle and the creepy manikin doll, Anastasia, dressed as a Fairy. On top of this we ran a matchbox navigation activity which comprised of a large town/ street play mat which our very talented and would be town planner, Brendan, altered a bit which had 3 different NONT style navigation courses worked out on it including a Crow’s Foot. The aim was to have a practical activity, which sort of emphasised what NONT navigation was about while still being fun. I think we picked well as the activity went down pretty well, better than I expected considering it was inside with not much going on. Hopefully we will get a few Venturer Teams along to NONT this year, fingers crossed.

We were also running around helping set up the EV display and activity, doing jungle style air brush tattoos. This also seemed to go pretty well, but then when do tattoos not go down well? I was a little concerned with the set up as I hadn’t touched all the gear for a couple of years but it all went ok and now we have everything together to run it whenever. Something to keep in mind for the future.

Other than that it was a good night, started way too early for us to get down there and set up in any reasonable time and it was a bit all over the place with the organisation of the Expo but oh well. We finished off the night as we have the last couple of years at Café de Villi’s.

Surfmoot 2006

It was an extra long Surfmoot this year due to the inconvenient placing of the Australia Day holiday on the Thursday. A fairly large SA contingent went over this year and three of us from Anstey, Marc, Brendan and Myself went over with Daniel on the Tuesday night staying at my Mum’s before getting to Surfmoot Wednesday afternoon. From Mums house until about lunch it was pretty smoky due to all the recent bushfires and from the spare room window you could see where the fire had gotten to the week before, right at the back fence of the first row of houses. We were by far the first of the contingent to arrive as we expected and picked out the best sport we could before heading off for tea in Anglesea for some pretty good pizza. Aesir rocked up later that night with a few others coming in drips and drabs through the night.

The reason for going so much earlier was that we were on the 4WD expedition, which was planned for Thursday, but due to a complete fire ban and a 45 degree day is was postponed to Friday. we went for a drive around the place and found an apparent "nude" beach we were told about, which want really nude, but with some nasty rips and lachies down hill battle with the sea we went back to camp. Pizza again for tea and as wed been their before we sorted ourselves out pretty quick, unfortunately it seems that the rest of South Australia seemed sowewhat incapable of making a decision about anything let alone what to have on a Pizza.

4WDing was fantastic, some fantastic views around the place and really nice scenery even though there were salad rolls for lunch. We found a fantastic Thai restaurant in Torquay with the best red curry ever, it was so good I made everyone go back again the next night.

NONT Course Drive V 2.0

It took a while to finally get on our way for the second and more thorough drive of the NONT course after Simon’s car not starting, dropping of flyers at Pennington, getting to Marc’s house, some more specific route planning and lunch on the way we finally made it to Eagle on the Hill. The course we picked out seemed to be pretty good, challenging but very nice scenery and different areas, though admittedly we did take a few wrong turns and get a little misplaced at some points. Just after half way around we veered off course and went down to Milang to the caravan ark to have a look around to come up with questions for the Treasure Hunt at Supersplash. Since we didn’t leave Milang until 4:30 we well and truly missed catching up with everyone on the bike ride and finished the second half of the course around 8ish. we then went into town for tea at Cafe Michael 2.

Northgate Venturer’s Christmas Dinner

This was the second fundraising Dinner Northfield Venturers have run but this time it was a 3 course buffet dinner which was absolutely fantastic with stacks of food that was really really good. Marc, Brendan, Daniel and myself went along and finally got the opportunity to show off our new Crew beanies. We were also quite lucky to have the Peace Boomerang for the night as it was going to Craig’s bike ride in the morning so we made the most of the opportunity and spoke about ti to everyone at the dinner and showed it off and got everyone to sign the page and make any comments about it. This was pretty good as there were Venturers, Leaders from Joeys, Cubs, Scouts & Venturers, the Hillcrest Group leader and District Scout leader, parents, Rovers and Scouts so it was a fairly broad range of people that we spoke to about the boomerang. Once again a big thanks to the Northgate Venturers who put on an even better show than last time.

Scrooge

Brendan, Marc and I went to show our support at the Northern Light Theatre Company’s production of Scrooge at the Shedly Theatre on the opening night. This is mainly because Daniel is in the show and plays a number of different parts from the Town crier to a Clown (with quite possibly the most embarrassing clown costume ever made). The show was pretty good and as it was the opening night there were a few technical difficulties, which made for good entertainment, the best of which was the goatie falling off the ghost of Christmas present in the middle of a song. The other negative was that there was also a blue light disco in the other side of the building so the toilets were shared and police standing at the doors of them. After the show everyone was then kind enough to escort me to Woodhouse for a conference.

Almost Summer…

We had a very productive Crew and NONT meeting on Sunday, and so it should have been since it went for the best part of the day. Nevertheless we still got through everything, and picked a theme after going in circles for several months. We had a BBQ lunch out by the pool almost like its summer, with the exception of a covered up green pool, which got an uber dose of chlorine for good luck and even the garden got weeded while we were waiting.

And All That Jazz

Having a Friday night off of scouts Daniel, Brendan, Marc and Myself went out to Club 199 which on Friday nights is a Jazz Club. It was a really nice venue with mood lighting, tables and booths upstairs with really cheap drinks to go with it. Not dingy smokey atmosphere that some people associate with Jazz clubs. The band was pretty good and played a fair bit of Miles Davis and Michael Buble amongst other stuff. The Sax player had an uncanny resemblance to Damian and one of the others looked like Sam from Lord of the Rings. Possibly better was the few people who got up and danced who were pretty damn good at what they did. We even saw a couple of people that we knew. Afterwards we headed off to San Gorgios for some very fine pizza. Funnily enough we went to a resturant the next night called Jazz, though spelt JAHZ.

Recharge 2005

A fairly small turnout for Recharge this year, especially for Anstey with Brendan and Myself sharing a tent and meals with Daniel and Michael who came up for Saturday. Nevertheless it was a nice enough event, based in the middle of the grassy and somewhat boggy Oakbank Racecourse which fairly nice weather all weekend.
Following the Ramble we are now quite proficient at packing and setting up everything, which was pretty evident when we arrived, although long wet grass and Hills climate was quite a change from red sand or rock and warm nights. A small, smokey fire featured all three nights with a fairly quiet and relaxed atmosphere with the exception of Benny and Rob’s arguments about politics.

Saturday Brendan, Michael and I went off the Birdwood Motor museum which was interesting and every 5 seconds or so I would wish I had a camera! We then travelled to the Giant Rocking Horse for a climb, again wishing for the camera and came back down for lunch. There’s nothing like the smell of woodwork and the toyshop has a whole stack of old school toys including a lawn mower, which actually turned when pushed. All I bought was a small flying cow which bobs when you push its base… we were also convinced to go for a walk through the animal enclosure which was packed with different things; swans, peacocks, galahs, ducks, sheep, chickens and so forth which were all eager for some food. We even saw a duck with a cleft pallet, which I kept trying to feed. During the night the 100 club was run once again, unfortunately resulting in the lowest thing I have EVER seen while ive been in Rovers, boys actually peeing into bottles at the table so they could continue drinking....

Brendan and I want into Hahndorf on Sunday and back to camp to pick up Craig. We then went the Birdwood wine and cheese for tastings and although I will never ever touch goat cheese ever again, there were some nice cheese and wines. The highlight of the weekend was probably going Geocaching, which neither Brendan or I had done before, since Craig had the GPS and info on some local Caches. So we went back to the horse and ended up tramping through the centre of a national park in Charleston which was very picturesque and had lots of native orchids only to find an easy track around the fence to get back to the car.

The standard boat races and drag race were run Sunday night with the handbag and beer bottle toss and a pie eating competition. Our Apple Pie was commandeered by Craig as a makeshift birthday cake for Kirsty though he was less successful at finding a candle.
Monday most people ended up going to Grumpy’s for wood oven pizza for lunch which was nice enough, although it was over an hour wait to actually get it. Daniel tried making friends with the giant goat out the back too. Never park your car within reaching distance of a goat on a rope….

There are a small number of photos from Recharge Here
More photos can also be found at Aesir's Website and another report at the Recharge site

Dukes of Hazard

Whats better way to celebrate your Birthday than going to see a movie about a sexy looking car? I'd been looking forward to seeing this movie since i first heard about it being in the pineline 3 or 4 years ago and I recon it was worth the hype. thanks to Brendan, Michael, Ash and Marc who came along to see it too.

Dinner at the German Arms

To celebrate Ash's short visit home from the NT we all went to the German Arms in Hahndorf. While the food and company were good, the service was pretty abismal or completely absent at some times, so bad in fact that we added it to Wayne's Blacklist.

Roverball 2005

After weeks of anticipation and costume preparation, for me anyway, Roverball was held at College Park Scout Hall and organised by Blackburn Rovers. We were able to get most of our Crew along, even Alex made an appearance. This years ball had a Rock and Roll theme so think Grease, Elvis, Poodle Skirts and most important of all – The Juke Box. Id even managed to bring bubble gum and had something resembling a milkshake with a straw to get right into the theme. Surprisingly pretty much everyone was in theme with the Blues Brothers, Austin Powers and Marilyn Munroe all making appearances, though it was Crew 64 which got all the prized for the best dressed. There was lots of dancing, though not much by us, and even a limbo competition. Well done to Blackburn for a great night.

Photos can be found Here and there are more on the Aesir Site

Anstey Hill Hike

What better to do on a cold wet day than go for a hike?? As a bit of practice for our trip to central Australia we thought a short hike up Anstey Hill would be in order, especially since I at least had never gone to our namesake hill. It also gave me an oppurtunity to look at the revegitation sites for a potential service activity. Daniel, Brendan and I went uphill and did a fairly large loop but by the time we’d reached the top it had started raining pretty heavily. Despite the rain it was a fairly nice walk but I'm sure the lookout would have been good if we could see further than a few meters in the surrounding fog. We didn’t hang around long at the lookout since the hum of the power lines in the gloom was a little unnerving.

Lawn Bowls

Alex organised for us to Play Lawn bowls on Sunday at the Clearview Lawn bowls club (think Footy club but astro turf instead of an oval). Seven of us managed to get there with various attempts at flat-soled shoes for bowls, I took the ugg boot option. We were shown the basics starting with the little pictures each set of balls had to throwing the kitty, scoring and eventually how to bowl the bowls to curve the right way. We then started playing in pairs and swapped partners before playing a team game, girls VS Boys. There was some natural talent amongst us, Alex and Michael especially so they became our captains. Lachie and Alex’s friend Kat became our seconds and Brendan and I became the not so significant starters (so if we stuffed up it could be fixed by our following team members). After 3 games we decided a draw between the teams was a good place to finish. We then progressed to Norwood for free ice cream at the Baskin and Robbins Ice cream place at its official opening and met up with a few others and then went to Villanova’s for lunch. It was definitely an enjoyable morning, partly due to the really nice whether and party cos its not the most strenuous of sports, some of us would even consider playing socially during the week….

All Class, No Ass Boot

Aesir held their second Boot for Spiro, Matt Voller and some other guy called Alex who we eventually worked out was the one wearing the sheep pelvis on his head. This all class, no ass Boot party was held at their hall in Beaumont and even included a spa, which you may recognise from such memorable boot parties as B & B Boot and Triple J Boot. There was a small crowd, with Aaron's estimation of 50-75 people possibly exaggerated by seeing double or triple by the time we arrived. There were some good speeches and trophies and much drinking. We even managed to get Dougal and Aaron to do the broomstick spinning thing, Dougal just managing to roll over the broomstick and Aaron actually jumping over the broomstick but then falling down a hill. We eventually left after things started going down hill with the Viking helmet, may we never ever have to see it again, and went to the pancake kitchen for tea after following some fire engines for a while.

Aesir's Christmas in July Dinner

Aesir Rover Crew kindly invited us to join them to celebrate christmas in July with a dinner at their hall, on the night we had about 8 Anstey people and 5 Aesir people attend. Arriving just as Stuey was leaving as the desert had been forgotten, we found that the boys had done a pretty good job of decorating and setting the table complete with christmas crackers and candles, something Im sure was regretted later on. The meal was pretty good, esspecially considering how cheap it was, we all had finger food, soup, roast and cheesecake for desert. this was all toped off with some classy Christmas music and a visit from a local possum. Thanks for inviting us, Im so glad we didnt have to clean up and that they werent my table cloths!

A couple of photos can be found Here or more at Aesirs site

Anstey Quiz Night 2005

About 90 people attended the 3rd Anstey Quiz night at the Illingworth Hall including Rovers, Old boy’s, parents and friends. The night had everything from a potato Eiffel Tower complete with an accompanying harmonica rendition, a hat for alcoholics complete with spew bag and a hat to put on grapes to keep flies away, 150 blown up rubber gloves and 22 flavours of jelly.

The hall seemed a lot more spacious than previous years and after a bit of culling, there were fewer questions and a much better pace. We had lots of games this year; the Mintie wrapper competition, the bottle toss, the Glove of Love, stand up/ sit down, potato carving, Mad Hatters, and what items were on tables. There was much contention between the two tables competing for the jelly shot competition, one having taped their shot glasses together, eventually this was decided by a crowd vote and we never want to hear about it again. The Quiz itself seemed to go well with a lot of flashbacks in the TV theme songs round and the monopoly board to fill out and we even had an Anstey Pot luck special round with questions from each crew member.

In the end Pine Forest was the winning Rover crew and second overall by 1 point, taking home the Rover trophy with first overall going to the table of Alex’s friends.

Thanks to all of our sponsors, to everyone who came along and to those who helped with the organisation and cleaning up afterwards, we really appreciated your support.

Quiz Prep

there has been a stack of Quiz prep for this years quiz night. the weekend before was spent going through the questions and getting the TV themes for the audio round which was the biggest blast from the past. as a bit of time out we all went for a look at our neighbours house directly opposite just because the was a open inspection on, a bit too small for my liking. The cash and carry expedition was pretty good, lots of impulse buying there and the rest of the week Brendan and I made jelly shots with michael coming to help on fri night too.

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