Saturday, October 9, 2010

DQ's back in town...after spending the last week at this years annual Australian Velocette Nation al Rally....

 Well a week away at the Australian National Velocette Rally for this year proved a bit of a revelation....
I'm renaming it "The Great Australian Velocette Submarine Rally"....
Did it rain.....every other day it seemed... yes they sure had some in the Northern Rivers area of NSW where it was based at the coastal town of Lennox Head ( it was belted around a bit some months back when a waterspout/cyclone hit it, de-roofing many houses...)...
250mm some days... local roads closed due to flooding, made it a nightmare for the dedicated organising team to get any of their planned ride routes on schedule.
The camaderie from the group of over 130 people with over 90 bikes, including 72 Velocettes was excellent and I counted around 60 Velos on the road on Thursday, the last day I participated.....
So where is Lennox Head....??
As mentioned, it's a sleepy coastal resort town in northern NSW, Australia some several hours south of the Queensland border.... "X" marks the spot-
Australia's a pretty big place and it was pleasing to see members from all of the States and two Territories bring Velocettes....
A montage of Australian State and Territory licence plates on Velos....












As well we had a good contingent from New Zealand and two Californian's...Mick Felder and Gil Loe attend.
NZer Cheryl Mickelson, pictured below, is a great supporter of the marque in NZ, edits their news sheet, contributes a report to FTDU the Aussie Club magazine and rides Velos and races in Historic events there with husband Neville also over with his father Jack, pictured to the right with John Jennings from Western Australia, former Club President and current Club Secretary.



The record breaking Velocette , built and ridden by Stuart Hooper was a prize exhibit at the Rally and as Stuart and Keith Canning had just completed a rebuild of the machine in readiness for a further attempt on his current record of 139.001mph at Lake Gairdner in South Australia next February and had yet to start the bike, they confidently decided the rally was the place to do this.
Rollers started the engine, running around 14-1 CR at the first attempt to the delight of the large crowd....
A few pics, below, record this and give a better view of the machine.






And finally a pic or two more from the Rally....




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

that little MOV looks really good in the 4th pic from the bottom.

My Bikers World said...

Wow! I have almost forgotten about velocettes, when you've done this post! Nica to see such rare thing even in Australia.