Healey’s West                                                                                                               April 2008 February 2008

We set off in our BNI on Friday 14^th March to meet up with Noel Gorn and Mike Hopkins (travelling in Noel’s BNI) in Norseman, via Lake King and Esperance, for the trip across the Nullabor for the National rally 2008.

 

The trip did not start off well for them as they were delayed a day and a half due to Noel having to replace his clutch at the eleventh hour. They were going to camp out each night as a practise run for Mike’s bicycle tour following the Rally.  However after the first  night they realised that they had camped next to the freight rail line and Gt Eastern Hwy and what with trucks and freight trains passing all night they didn’t get much sleep, but Mike made some new friends with kangaroo tics.

 

We waited for Noel and Mike at Norseman and the weather was starting to get hot. We finally took off together late on the Friday afternoon and it was a mad dash to Caiguna for our first overnight stop.  This was to be the first of three long very hot days and the boys decided that they needed to sleep in a real bed and have a good shower. Noel had installed his own version of “airconditioning” that looked more like a torpedo tube hanging out the passenger side window and we named it the “bazooka”.  He called it the Nullabor Cooler. The next three days were to be in excess of 45 degrees.

 

Saturday 15^th as promised was a real scorcher. The dynamic duo, with Mike driving, took off before us as Arthur had an argument with a big green steel pole that  put the wheel alignment out and a dent in the front right mudguard. Fifty kilometres down the track we discovered that we had left a mobile phone at the motel in Caiguna so a round trip of 150 klicks meant that we had become very familiar with that stretch of road. We also decided to put our hood up as we were frying in the hot sun with hot winds.

 

We caught up with the duo about 11.00am with Mike very sheepishly saying “I hit a kangaroo. We became airborn and frightened the hell out of Noel.”   But Noel was not amused as the ‘roo was already dead before they hit it and he wanted the car to make it to Sydney and back to Perth.  At least Mike now has bragging rights with his UK friends that he has driven the Nullabor in a 50 year old Healey, hit a ‘roo and survived to tell the tale. This is not the end of this tale.

 

When we arrived in Ceduna that evening we learned that it had been 50+ degrees across the plain that day.  Sometime later the boys turned up at the same hotel and decided that after such a harrowing experience with the ‘roo, the extreme heat and Noel’s engine overheating, they needed some luxury that night.  So much for the camping out!  For the rest of the trip their camping gear became excess luggage.

 

We had a wheel alignment done at Ceduna and found that the little nudge given the steel pole actually improved the steering. At Ceduna we parted company as the odd couple wanted to go the shorter way via Broken Hill and we elected to take a cooler route via Mildura and we were to meet up in Dubbo for the final run to Port Stephens.

 

Mike kept in touch with text messages and the tail end to the kangaroo story. 

When they arrived at Broken Hill and parked the Healey, while they were standing there  a mongrel dog came rushing out straight at the car  and stuck its head underneath the car and started eating the well roasted ‘roo meat.

 

Noel and Mike’s excitement reached a peak when they ran in to heavy fog crossing the mountains on their way to meet  Nigel Egginton at Lithgow. There was mad panic when the wipers wouldn’t work and with a hard top and side curtains on they were unable to stick their hands out to clear the windscreen. Now we have all had moments like these but coming from Mike what was a potentially dangerous situation became a humorous tale.

 

We arrived in Port Stephens late on Wednesday without too much fuss except when we backed the BNI in the dark in to a low retaining wall to put a small dent in the rear left mudguard so now we had a matching pair. We were the first people to arrive at the resort for the Rally followed a couple of hours later by Nigel and Mike.

 

Travelling to the National Rally 2008