During the March this year, I was fortunate to participate in a charity fund raising event, aptly called Bangers to Bluff. As the name implies this involved driving an older car from Auckland to Bluff, selling the car when the event finished and donating the proceeds to charity.

A banger was defined as any car that was registered, warranted, and was purchased for $2,000 or less. I was in a group of three people and we purchased a tidy four cylinder 2006 Toyota Camry with 197,000km on the clock for $2,000. There were 17 Bangers entered and 41 participants. The oldest Banger was 1988 and the newest 2006, and interestingly 5 of the17 bangers were Toyotas. On the trip only one car broke down, due to a faulty alternator which was quickly and easily fixed.

The trip was well organized, and we took 11 days to travel to Invercargill with interesting stops along the way. The trip was set up so that the largest towns we stayed in were Wanganui and Invercargill and we avoided the main highways whenever we could. We very much took the scenic route, travelling 2,900 km from Auckland to reach Bluff. We stayed in pleasant middle of the road motels and each day started with a briefing of the various highlights for that day.

The first day was from Auckland to Te Kuiti, where we had a Fred Dagg theme evening there. The second night was in Wanganui, and our third stop where we spent two nights was in Martinborough. This is a lovely town with lots to see and do, and it also helped staying at the Margrain vineyard.    The next day we proceeded via ferry to Blenheim, and as you know the ferry service over Cooks Strait the past 6 months can only be described as incompetent and hopeless. We had a six hour delay that meant we did not get into Blenheim until 1.30am the next morning.

The next day was one of the highlights of the trip, driving the 180km over the Molesworth track to Hamner Springs. This road is only open for three months of the year, and it is fairly rough but quite passable in a modern car. We had a glorious day as well. Those that have not done this, I highly recommend it, as this was the first time for me. The next day was a leisurely drive to the mid Canterbury town of Geraldine, and the following day it snowed as we travelled to Mt Cook to stay at The Hermitage. On the way, we stopped at Fairlie, where there is a great pie shop. I keep my 1939 Chev there, so it was a good opportunity to show group members the car and to take it for a drive in the snow.

The next stop was Oamaru, over the snowy Dansey’s Pass. The road had been closed over the previous night but reopened at 10.30am, so there was very little traffic on it, and this is another iconic New Zealand drive. It is very scenic travelling through Central Otago to Oamaru, from where we headed to Balclutha.    From Balclutha we drove to Invercargill and hence Bluff via another scenic road through the Catlins. Our end destination was Invercargill where we spent two nights.

The trip was a lot of fun with great people. There was a large amount of socializing in the evenings, with high tolerance to alcoholic drinks required. We had a lot of fun along the way, and each town we stayed in had their own unique attractions. We raised close to $90,000 for charity, which was a huge success.
​
This trip has now become an annual event for the Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay, here in Auckland. They keep it to under 20 cars, which means it is still a relatively small group. It is well organized, and next year’s trip is filling up fast.
I strongly recommend it, and plan to do it again in either 2025 or 2026.

If any club members are interested in this, please do not hesitate to give me a call.       All the best. Cheers William




       


     

During September and October last year Christie and I spend just under four weeks completing a fascinating motoring trip following the great Mississippi River from its beginnings near Minneapolis in the very north of the USA to where it flows into the sea at New Orleans in the deep south.

This was an organised tour with nine couples. It was organised by Sam Murray who owns and operates Gilligans Tours Limited. He is based out of Waimate in the South Island of New Zealand. This was the same tour company that did the Route 66 tour we did three years ago. As with the Route 66 tour, this was well organised and we had a lot of fun. Sam is a great tour leader, and everybody on the tour was from various parts of New Zealand.

Why the Mississippi? Before the railways the Mississippi was a vital arterial route in opening up America. Even today the river is important for the transportation of goods, and is full of American history. You are following in the footsteps of Mark Twain’s fictional characters, “Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn”. You travel through nine states, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. Each state is different and shows the diversity of the USA. As you head further south, Civil War history becomes evident, and the climate changes as well.

The tour is a self drive trip, we rented a Mitsubishi Outlander which was ideal. We were provided with a detailed GPS system but we still got lost but not for long. All of us had done Route 66 prior to this trip so we were experienced with driving in the USA.

We started in Minneapolis, in the North of the USA on 26 September 2022, and were all surprised at just how cold it was there. During the night temperatures just about dropped to zero degrees. For the next seven days we drove through a number of small towns and cities until we reached St Louis, the second largest city in Missouri behind Chicago. Towns such as La Grosse, which was a French fur trading settlement, Galena, an old lead mining town, where General Ulysses S Grant called home and where he become the 18th President of the USA, Savanna which had a strong Indian presence and Hannibal, the home town of Mark Twain, where a lot of his two famous novels were based. All the time we crisscrossed the Mississippi River.

We followed the Mississippi through Cairo, virtually a ghost town now, left the Mississippi and detoured to Nashville. This was to look at the current music scene and to go to a concert. I enjoyed Nashville. Following this we travelled to Memphis, a declining city, the main purpose was to see the Elvis Presley Museum and his house at Gracelands.
By this time, we were in Tennessee which is a former Confederate State and part of the American South. We now cross over and go to Clarksdale which is in the State of Mississippi. Here we start to see numerous plantations and cotton growing for the first time. We stayed at Vicksburg, scene of a famous battle in the Civil War. Our next place to stay was Natchez, a trading town firstly developed by the French, and it later became an important slave trading town. Along the Mississippi, a lot of the early development was done by French traders and settlers. As a result, there are a lot of French named towns and geographical features. Our next stop was Baton Rouge in Louisiana.
The last city of our Tour was New Orleans. This is an interesting city on the Bayous of the Mississippi. It is one American town that you can get good food, has its own cuisine and a thriving music scene. It is also a very old city with a strong French influence which can still be seen today.    

Each day began with a meeting after breakfast about the forthcoming day. We would generally meet at a few of places of interest, like museums or points of historical interest and for lunch. The rest of the time you could drive at your leisure. You were free to stop and explore various places that interested you. The tour takes 23 days which means the distance travelled each day is not onerous. We drove 3,515 kms which equates to 153 Kms per day. A few days we rested but we seldom did more than 200 kms in a day, we were on both main highways but a lot of our travelling was on secondary roads.

The cost was $NZ 28,495 per couple. This included all accommodation with breakfast, car hire, car insurance and economy plane fares from Auckland to the USA. Additional costs for you include personal health insurance, fuel (less than half in price compared to NZ), museum admissions, meals etc. Since travelling to the USA three years previously prices have gone up by about 60%. Previously our exchange rate was at 70 cents, during this trip it was around 55 cents, which made things more expensive, although our exchange rate has recovered to 64 cents since then. Prices may look expensive but what you see and do, is good value and it is a trip of a lifetime. We had a fantastic time and all the couples on the tour were a most relaxing and enjoyable group. We really enjoyed all their company, and there were a great many conversations over drinks.   

​The highlights of the trip for me were many and varied. I enjoyed driving from north to south seeing the changing geography and climate of the USA. Minneapolis was cold autumnal weather, New Orleans was warm and humid. It was great to gain an understanding of how important the Mississippi River was and is to the transportation in the USA. It is historically and culturally important, is the soul of the country and it had a huge influence on the opening up of America. I enjoyed seeing the differences of each state, the south being quite different to their northern counterparts. I have an interest in the Civil War so it was interesting to travel to various places that you knew as names, but now they were places. I really enjoyed the musical aspect of Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans.  This is a bucket list trip.    

Hello everyone, this is Wayne Sullivan with a short story of this years Beachhop.
 
Beachhop always delivers, even when the weather does not. Waihi and Thames coped a bit of the rain but for most of the day the skies were blue with fluffy white clouds. At Onemana on Friday it was fine but a bit windy and on Saturday at Whangamata it was fine all day and perfect for the night cruising on the evenings which I did on Thurs, Friday and Saturday nights.
 
So good to be a part of it.
    
The array of vehicles is mind blowing from original to the highly modified and all worthy of respect for the effort put into them. I was able to catch up with some fellow club members at the various venues and must say they represented our club very well. And a special mention for all the bands, they really do make Beachhop the festival that it is, well done Mr. Roper.
 
Also I managed to consume vast quantities of fossil fuel, ha ha.
 
   
My only senior moment came on my way to Beachhop on Tuesday afternoon , as I rounded a corner on SH25A I came across a SUV that had stopped in my lane. What the driver was doing I don't know, but they weren't thinking road sense, that's for sure. They did not appear to have spun out. As soon as they saw me , the SUV moved at a slow pace to the edge of the road where it should have been. I had already made the decision to go around him rather than trying to brake too hard as I was going downhill. And with my luck a car was coming from the opposite direction but the gap was big enough .
 
From my first sighting of the SUV to when I passed by was only about 3 seconds from watching it on my camera later on. I have posted a video of it on YouTube .
 
As the saying goes, expect the unexpected.  
 
Had some great accommodation , a lovely B&B in Whangamata at a good price so will be back next March.  
 
 
Please enjoy these photos.

​Plenty of Classic Car shows to go to here. I think I have been a ‘car guy’ all my life. I just love the old petrol burning things. Not P.C. in this modern age but I can’t help it. So this week we were off to MUDGEERABA. (Where do they get these Australian place  names?). 

This one is a regular, beside a Pub, farmers market type thing, food, play areas for the kiddies and good luck if you can find a car park.  
Not for your Classic of course, easy parking right there. There they were, all shapes and sizes. Yes there were Cadillacs with air bags, and Hot Rods with dump pipes.

​A very original XU1. Bathurst petrol tank, correct cylinder head, long 1st gear.
It was owned by a Guy in Hellensvale who bought it off his best friend who had it for 40 years. WOW!

​Are there any of you Mustang ‘historians’ who know about this one. I never knew that. All sorts of stories about cars in this world.

​I was interested to compare the size of a ’66 compared to the newer ones as I wait for my new one to arrive from Ford, and sit beside our ’66 fastback in the garage!

​Fine weather, car people, fresh coffee, full house of cars- what more do you want?

I don’t remember these! So there you have it . Another fabulous day in the Gold Coast Car Country.

By Rodger and Lola Anderson.