Weather at Balnarring

Hot News

Jan 2009

Oliver’s Lake, Horesham

Mar 2009

2009 Australian blokart Open

Supported by Melbourne Metro Windsports

There was a good turnout from the Melbourne Blokart Club to the Waratah 100. Russell Whitehouse, Phillip Burns, Greg Devine, Mal Taylor, Chris Galvin, and yours truly, Brian Campbell joined the locals from Gippsland, Kem Brown and, Dave and Sandi Abberton for a tough endurance race. I hope I have remembered everyone - if not, I apologise.

The north-westerly wind forced a venue change from the main beach to the ‘pad’ at Shallow Inlet. Instead of doing 10 laps of 10km each, the 100km had to be done the hard way, 750m at a time in a tight triangular circuit. This meant that a GPS was absolutely mandatory. Unfortunately, only two of us had them, so we were the only official entrants and the rest were there for the fun of it. That did not stop their tenacity in the race in any way. After a standing start (the traditional dial-up was not possible due to kite buggies at the start line), it was on for young an old.

Everyone was racing around the circuit in the healthy breeze, averaging about 40-50km/h. The first 10km seemed to fly by. I was beginning to wonder what was so tough. Dave snapped a pulley whip and needed a quick pit-stop. This gave me a chance to slip past. For me, everything was going well until about the 30km mark when I looked at my GPS to see how far I had gone and to my horror, there had been a glitch and the distance counter had reset. This effectively put me out of the race. Like the others without a GPS, I was having far too much fun and just kept going.

After sixty-something kilometres, it was too much for me and I pulled over. Everyone else had had a break except Greg, who had gone non-stop since the start. For that matter, I cannot recall Mal having a rest either. Anyway, Dave was the winner of the race. He was definitely a force to be reckoned with. For sheer determination and endurance, I have to take my hat off to Greg and Mal who demonstrated what endurance is all about.

Finally, I would like to pass onto the organiser, Kem Brown, our gratitude for organising this fun event. We certainly look forward to coming back next year, this time with a reliable GPS.