Mount
Mulligan 30th Anniversary. 24/04/2005
We all awoke to moderately overcast weather after
experiencing light showers and the loud thump of techno music throughout the
night from a Rave party held over 4kms away! Terry handed out some tricky
Treasure Hunt & BrainTeaser quiz questions for us all and organized games
for the kids to participate in. Meanwhile Charles had risen early and was busy
marking out some mini gymkhana courses to test our driving skills. These
consisted of witches hats placed in an arrangement on soft riverbed sand which
had to be navigated around whilst being touched by the driver’s
hand, driven without loss of motion and not crossing your previous wheel
tracks. The highlight of this competition was Peter unsuspectingly unlocking Anthony’s
hubs just prior to him driving the course. This promptly had him bogged in the
soft sand and the source of much laughter for everyone. The next course
consisted of negotiating a steep climb and descent of the nearby river bank as
slowly as possible but without stopping.
After
the gymkhana Gordon and Shirley kindly took Lynne and I for a tour of
inspection of the Mt Mulligan mine ruins in their new GXL TD Cruiser and many
other club members followed suit. Gordon certainly knows the ruins well and showed
us the mine shaft locations, extractor fan vents, showers, locomotive turntable
site, processing and loading plant site, brick kiln and station masters
premises all in air conditioned comfort!
Back
at the campsite everyone relaxed and prepared for Happy Hour but not before
Terry issued everyone with another Treasure Hunt & BrainTeaser quiz!
Despite the intense bribery & brainstorming between club members to answer
the quiz, Roger & Megan’s dog Basil, with some help from a local randy
Dingo, managed to distract all campers who visually witnessed their um “public
lustful affection”.
With
the afternoon gone we all started to have dinner and our comical neighbors
Malcolm & Don were soon providing entertainment. Malcolm started cooking a
tasty chicken stir-fry despite missing several ingredients and being heckled by
various others regarding his cooking abilities. With so much constructive
criticism about Malcolm got distracted from the job at hand and “lost” his half
cooked chicken stir-fry altogether via someone hiding it … maybe Nick knows who
that person was? After receiving so much heckling and cheek Malcolm then
discovered Don had already eaten with others. This disheartening news and the
decline from neighbors of free chicken stir-fry inspired an alcohol fuelled
Malcolm to eat the delicious chicken stir-fry himself on the ground direct from
the fry pan with his two new best friends “Sabrina &
Indy”!
After dinner everyone proceeded over to the fire and a
“w-i-d-e” variety of jokes were shared and stories told. A certain group of 19
mischievous individuals who stayed up to all hours of the morning apparently
broke into and entered Dave Bowers “HOT CHIPS” van, rolled Don up inside his
own swag whilst asleep and entered Steve Pennington’s camper trailer to cause
havoc! A finale of toasted marshmallows and luscious grappa helped us all
to have sweet dreams. An entertaining Sunday to say the least : )
Justin Drew