Chittering Veteran Car Day
Mitchell Crocker
On Sunday the 19th of November the club attended the Chittering Veteran Car day hosted by the Veteran Car Club of WA. We were up early that morning preparing for the long day ahead, however, when we were about to head off to Jim’s house our S Series Valiant refused to start. Dad then started frantically searching everywhere for the jump leads in order to start our car, but we couldn’t seem to find them anywhere. Dad then made a quick call to Jim to let him know that we couldn’t meet up on time.
To cut a long story short, Dad found the jump leads after a long thirty minutes of tearing up our garage. We then managed to get the valiant started and we finally headed off. Our luck suddenly changed when we saw Jim and John cruising along Gnangara road just ahead of us. We easily managed to catch up and followed them to the meeting point on time.
When we arrived at Puma Gingers Service Station we could see by the line of Valiants parked that there was a great member turnout. After filling up and having a quick chat with fellow members we headed off in convoy to the event.
As we arrived it was to our surprise that our car was actually a part of the main show. After all of the members parked in the line we noticed all of the gleaming chrome bumpers around us. We started to stress a little since we had forgotten to wash the car the day earlier. I then quickly grabbed a towel from the boot and tried to wipe down every bit of our valiant as quickly as I could without any other members noticing. It came up a lot better than we expected and we were relieved that our car was now presentable. Now that our S Series was clean as well, the line of Valiants looked great and they attracted a lot of attention.
All of the members had a look around at all the other cars on display and also at the many stalls on the oval and in the hall. There was entertainment on the oval as well and a few club members commented on the good music which was sung live at the event. It was surprisingly hot so everyone had set up their chairs underneath some shady trees and had a chat. I didn’t want to mention the flies, but they were unbearable. However, Peter Tonkin found an innovative solution to this problem. Just simply attach a branch to your hat!
For those members who didn’t have a branch attached to their hat, Jim had some Aeroguard and kindly shared it with everyone.
Unfortunately for John Ingham, the Aerogaurd didn’t seem to work as he was bitten on the lip by a large flying ant!
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The day went really well and some members caught up with people they hadn’t seen in years. The other clubs seemed really friendly and Cameron even met up with someone who had taken their Holden Kingswood to Adelaide recently to drive in the Bay To Birdwood so Cameron was very excited to tell him that we were there watching it too!
Many of us had bought raffle tickets and checked them throughout the event hoping one of us would win something. Later that afternoon, we heard an announcement over the loudspeaker asking for the owner of the vehicle with the license plate ‘RV1 1962’ to go to the main tent as they had won a prize. Everyone in our club recognised the plate straight away. It was John Ingham’s! But where was he? Cameron and I went looking for him but he had already heard it while waiting in line to buy a milkshake on the other side of the oval. He found out that he won $100 Auto One voucher! Everyone was very happy for him, Congratulations John!
Larry then arrived at two o’clock to lead us his house in Chittering and had come to the oval so that we could all follow him to his home together. We packed up our chairs and got into our cars but what happened was a repeat of this morning. Our car wouldn’t start, again! Everyone then had to wait for us to get our car started. Jim reversed his car to reach our car’s battery which was in our boot. Both Jim’s and our car have their battery in the boot so it was a tight squeeze in between other classic cars on display to get to ours. When close enough, the jump leads were attached and our car started right up after a couple of attempts.
Then we all followed Larry along winding roads to his house to be greeted by an interesting looking person sitting at the front of his driveway.
We drove along the trees onto his property to see Lynda and their dog waiting for us near the house. We entered Larry’s shed and we all had a look inside of it. We could have spend all day looking but we then decided to go inside and have some afternoon tea.
As we were going inside we managed to spot some kangaroos near Larry’s shed but they quickly hopped away once they noticed us.
Lynda had prepared a delicious afternoon tea waiting for us in the house. Everyone thought that the food set out for us was great. Everyone was so grateful to her for organising all of the food for us and we all would like to thank her again, it was delicious!
It was soon time to make our way back home. We got directions from Larry before heading off. We knew that quite a few members live south of the river and would have a long drive back. Lucky for us this time our car started and we had no more engine related problems.
On behalf of us all from the club, thank you to Larry and Lynda for welcoming us into your home. We all had a great time!