QRC Rally Round 1

1 March1997

The QRC Rally Round 1 was held on the first of March in Gympie area. All the regulars turned up early to help set up. We met up with David M, Martin G, Simone M, Steve W and of course Rikki (our start man) at the Big Pineapple Service Station at Gympie.

We proceeded up to the top of Widgee range to our starting point 'The Ratten Road Stage". Here we had some morning tea while we were briefed about the stage and its roadblocks. We left Keith and Rikki behind to set up the start while the rest of us proceeded into the stage to prepare it for the rally.

Our finish point was not far from the spectator point of stage one where the first car was due at 1.15pm. So David took Steve, Matthew (a friend of ours) and I across so we could watch the cars in action for a change and to have a chance at taking some photos and a video. This was the first time Matthew had seen rally cars in action (except on TV). He was pretty impressed. As we had to meet Ralph and Big John at Gympie at 3pm we didn't get to see all the cars through.

Even though Big John was waiting for us when we arrived we still had to wait another hour for Ralph to turn up which he didn't end up doing. We spend this time getting drinks and something to eat as well as giving cheek to a well dressed man being chauffeured in a dark green LTD. He was having trouble putting his tie on. It turned out to be "The Honourable Michael D Veivers MLA" - the Minister for Emergency Services and Minister for Sport . (He gave me his business card.)

After a few phone calls we started back up the range again. On the way we ran into Keith who was on his way down to tell the stage commander of the stage before ours that there was a bee keeper in their stage. He was collecting his bee hives so he could take them down to Moree. The problem was he couldn't leave until 6.30pm as he had started loading and didn't want to lose any bees, but the first car was due to start at 6pm. In the end Keith and David had to stay with the bee keeper until he was out of the stage which is another story again as there was some road building and towing involved. While this was going on John P and Doug T had also arrived at the start.

After dinner everyone went into the stage to take up their positions at the check points for our 8.45pm start. Instead of the sixty-odd cars that started there were only thirty that came through our stage which meant an early night in theory. As usual it wasn't by the time we cleared the stage and returned it back to normal, set up camp and settled down to have a coffee or a Port . It was about 1.30pm when we got to bed.

There were no major problems with the rally cars except that Adrian Buckmanis rolled his Honda Civic but he still went on to finish the race with no windscreen and a bit of panel damage. The rest were minor problems with fuel etc .

As usual there were good comments about our stage and how great it was to see us there which goes to show you how much they like and respect the Subaru Car Club for the constant effort we put into it.

Thank you to all the people who helped out on these rally stages as it is really appreciated.

Danna Peters SC 346