Category: Drives

MBCNSW July 2025 Night Drive – Seven Bridges 0

MBCNSW July 2025 Night Drive – Seven Bridges

Our July 2025 night drive was a bit unusual.  Instead of the suburban outskirts where we normally drive, this was an inner city route.  I generally avoid inner city routes, as they are so hard to keep a group together at night.  The advantage they have is they require less travel to get to and from the route from most participants. The Seven bridges...

Longreach Trip – Summary 1

Longreach Trip – Summary

Our fourth annual road trip in classic cars was the most ambitious yet.   There is nothing better than using these cars as they were designed, while seeing parts of Australia I would otherwise never otherwise venture to.   All while in the company of a great bunch of guys.  It is not the destination that is the point of these roadtrips. The formula for these...

Longreach Trip – The Cars 2

Longreach Trip – The Cars

Our almost 5,000km road trip to Longreach had seven cars participate.  All seven completed the trip successfully.   Of the four such road trips we’ve done, this one probably pushed the cars hardest.   Yet we had the fewest mechanical issues.   Most of the issues were comparatively minor. As well as the seven core participants, we also had an eighth car – a 1989 420SEL –...

Longreach Trip – Day 8 – Bylong Valley and Putty Road 1

Longreach Trip – Day 8 – Bylong Valley and Putty Road

Our final day of the trip started much the same as the others.  We set out from Coonabarabran at 6:30AM as we headed towards Sydney.   It was quite cold and overcast, so we had to take it slow to ensure we didn’t hit any wildlife.  I saw a couple of kangaroos plus some feral cats.   According to my car’s outside temperature display, at one...

Longreach Trip – Day 7 – Inland Northern NSW and Warrumbungle NP 2

Longreach Trip – Day 7 – Inland Northern NSW and Warrumbungle NP

The penultimate day of our trip had us starting in Queensland not far from the NSW border.   Yesterday we had finished up in St George.   The morning was yet again quite cold and we rolled out of the hotel at 6:30AM.   Our breakfast stop was the bakery in Dirrenbandi, about an hour away. We we drove south, we were greeted with a very impressive...

Longreach Trip – Day 6 – Southwest Queensland 2

Longreach Trip – Day 6 – Southwest Queensland

Day six was a shorter drive than usual.   This was largely because we are travelling through Southwest Queensland, a very sparsely populated part of the country.  There are only so many towns that have good accommodation facilities for our party. We started in Tambo, to another very chilly morning.   Our party was only six cars, as one of our group had an issue with...

Longreach Trip – Day 5 – Longreach 3

Longreach Trip – Day 5 – Longreach

The fifth day of our trip would be the day we finally arrive in Longreach.   This trip has been much more about the journey than any one destination, but Longreach is the furthest point from Sydney we will reach.   It also marks the transition from our journey there to our journey home. We started out early in Barcaldine.  As with our start in Monto,...

Longreach Trip – Day 4 – Central Queensland 2

Longreach Trip – Day 4 – Central Queensland

After travelling mostly northwards for the last few days, today would be heading west.   We started out In Monto at 6:30AM.   Due to the clear skies it was quite cold and frosty, 3.5C according to the car.    Our first destination was Moura, almost two hours west along the Dawson Highway.   While the day started cold, it was already warming up by 7AM. Around...

Longreach Trip – Day 3 – South East Queensland 3

Longreach Trip – Day 3 – South East Queensland

Our arrival into the sunshine state brought with it heavy rain overnight.   By the morning, the rain had stopped, but a thick fog was over the region.   Visibility was down to only a car length or two in various sections. I was quite keen to do the Mt Nebo road for our final crossing of the Great Dividing Range before we headed inland. Therefore,...

Longreach Trip – Day 2 – Gwydir Hwy and New England NSW 2

Longreach Trip – Day 2 – Gwydir Hwy and New England NSW

The second day of our classic car road trip to Longreach and back started in Grafton.   As we were able to stick with the planned route, we slept in and met at 6:15AM for a 6:30AM departure. Our first two legs were to take us on the Gwydir Hwy across the great dividing range to Inverell.   Our route up NSW has largely had us...

Longreach Trip – Day 1 – NSW Mid North Coast 3

Longreach Trip – Day 1 – NSW Mid North Coast

The first full day of our 8 day road trip to Longreach and back started in Maitland.  Due to a major landslide on Thunderbolts way, we had a lot more distance to cover than originally planned.  If we were going to make it in a reasonable time, we were going to have to be very disciplined around timekeeping and stops. To try and maximize...

Longreach Trip – Day 0 – Sydney to Maitland 1

Longreach Trip – Day 0 – Sydney to Maitland

Our trip to Longreach in classic cars starts tomorrow morning.  One of the things we learned in the first of these trips is that it is a bad idea to try and start out from Sydney in the morning.  I would be doubly worse on the first day of school holidays.   Therefore, the first leg of the trip starts from Maitland. This means there...

Planning a 4,800km road trip to outback Queensland 4

Planning a 4,800km road trip to outback Queensland

The last three of our big classic car road trips have headed south towards Victoria.   This year it was time for something different.   We are heading north to Queensland.  Due to extreme temperatures and the propensity to flood, we are going in Winter. I’ve never been that far from the coast in Queensland, so this trip was an opportunity to see a totally different...

MBCNSW May 2025 Night Drive – Sackville Ferry 0

MBCNSW May 2025 Night Drive – Sackville Ferry

Our May 2025 Night drive reprised a route we used back in August 2023.  That night, we had one of our very rare breakdowns, which we were keen to avoid this time. We had a great turn out on the night.  I think it was largely due to the terrible weather we’ve had in Sydney over the last month.  Now it seems to be...

MBCNSW March 2025 Night Drive – Hawkesbury Lookout 0

MBCNSW March 2025 Night Drive – Hawkesbury Lookout

Thursday was the March night drive for 2025.  It had been a rainy day in Sydney the day before and in the morning, so at lunchtime, the prognosis for the drive did not look good.   We only had a couple of sign ups and the weather looked iffy. Luckily for us the weather cleared up and we were set for a good drive.   Our...

MBCNSW February 2025 night drive – Berowra Ferry 0

MBCNSW February 2025 night drive – Berowra Ferry

Yesterday was the MBCNSW February 2025 Night Drive.  For this drive, I brought back an old favorite route – which we last used April 2023. Our route started in Turramurra.   We had a pretty good group of cars show up to the meeting point.   I went in my 1981 240D, and on the drive we also had a W108 280SE 3.5, my old W116...

Classic Jalopy