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PINNAROO CAMPOUT APRIL 23-24 2016
13 Enthusiastic club members made the trip through the park to Pinaroo on a cool morning. The Webb's in Marlene’s 1933 Ford Roadster left an hour early than the others as her top speed was just 40 MPH.
Vehicles that made the weekend run were
Darrell & Monica Jenkin—1972 XY Ford Bronze ute
Len Jenkin - 1968 white Mercedes Benz
Ronda & Graham Doshe - Brown Valiant
Glen & Merrilyn Altus - Red 2000 Datsun
Michael Turnbull - 1982 brown XJ6 jag (belongs to his cousin)
Ray and Dee Phelps - Modern Car
Marlene & Wayne Webb - 1933 Cream Ford Roadster
  On arrival to Pinaroo it was a bee line to the local Bakery for a delicious coffee and cake. At 12.30 we met at the Football oval and about 25 cars assembled to leave for a tour of Greg and Michelle Thomas farm “Ups and Downs”, a property of 10,000 acres with many sheep and 1000 acres for cropping. Greg gave a talk about his collection of tractors which he had been collecting over a period of many years and he has 130 tractors, not many were in running order. His first tractor was a DH 22 daisy Howard. His vision was to eventually restore some of them but he began collecting them as not to see them end up on the trash heap and go to scrap steel. The many brands he has are Fordsons, Oliver, McCormick-Deering, Case, Hart, Fordson Major, Chamberlain, Massey Ferguson, John Deer, International, Massey Harris and many more.
The only two cars he had were in a very rustic and rust bucket condition and he wanted someone to identify them and we viewed them in the paddock under a couple of trees.
Meanwhile the ladies eyed off Michelle’s lovely garden.
It was a very informative afternoon topped off with a delicious afternoon tea of scones and cream, cakes etc. put on by the Murray Mallee club.
As usual the Bordertown crew were one of the last ones to leave. We all met back at the Football Club rooms shed where we engaged in some socialising and cooking our own tea and pooling our salads and sweets.
Sunday morning bright and early at 9 am we met at the Wetlands where we participated in the Tappet Cover races on a timber track. Then we entered into the games section vying for the Conrod trophy. Games consisted of golf ball bag, egg and spoon race, horse and jockey races and quoits. There was much anticipation and excitement, especially in the jockey races.
Morning tea was again supplied by the Murray Mallee club and the Bordertown Crew won the Conrod trophy with our 12 members. Murray Mallee had 17 members, Murray Bridge 12 members, and Riverland Club with 12 members.
It was an enjoyable weekend with pleasant weather and many new friendships were made.
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Club Memorabilia Night “Thanks For The Memories”.
Most people call them ‘senior moments’, I think it’s more like losing the plot, which is what I did in the ‘Oh my God it’s Christmas’ newsletter when compiling the coming events and forgetting to include Andrew Read’s new club activity he’d called a ‘Memorabilia Night’. A small silver lining was at least picking up my deficiency about a month before the night’s due date enabling it to be given a good plug at the meeting beforehand and allowing Secretary Dave to get an email reminder out to everyone...phew!
It must have worked okay because an almost perfect – bordering on slightly too warm – February night found around 30 people at the clubrooms with Neil Smedley having as reliably as always delivered and set up the barbeque trailer, several cooks getting various meats sizzling while the ladies caused a couple of tables to sag under the weight of a variety of gourmet salads. Mustn’t make this a story about tucker but dessert consisted of Marlene’s cute and fancy decorated violet Valentines cup-cakes and Deidre’s still warm from its moments before removal from the oven lemon meringue pie. Gonna pick a winner Steve? All I can say is that after several cup-cakes and a huge piece of warm pie...the winner is.....an impossible to separate tie!
 But enough on food and male fence-sitting diplomacy and the official part of the evening started inside the old school with Neil Smedley outlining in incredible detail the club’s history going way back to very first meeting of the South East Restoration Society at the Old Mill Museum in Naracoorte on 26th July 1973 and at which our current President Darrell Jenkin was in attendance (I think he must have been about 4 years old). The detail of Neil’s research was quite astonishing and Neil gave me his notes later which certainly deserved to be retained for the future and which showed Andrew Read attended his first meeting on 28th March 1974, Neil Smedley on 18th April ’74 and Ray Phelps on 26th September ’74 (with no record made about that last one as to whether or not Deidre took pie). From those early days it soon became clear that it wasn’t easy or convenient for Bordertown people to be a part of a club based in Naracoorte and so by mutual and amicable agreement in the early months of 1980 our club set itself up as its own entity.
As Neil gave his nostalgic presentation it was clear the bench-top in front of him was laden with all manner of artefacts and it eventuated these belonged to our next two speakers, Jennie and Pieter Jacobs. Hard to do justice to all the many and totally varied objects Pieter talked about, US memorabilia, American Civil War items, assorted objects of kitsch, mechanical gizmos...you had to be there. When it was Jennie’s turn we heard not just about the history of her antique dolls on show but of their providence too, where they had been discovered, and then Jennie moved on to numerous antique medical instruments; fascinating, if not a little scary.
 John O’Brien was next up reminiscing about his 1927 (I think?) Buick commercial vehicle long gone interstate to a funeral director with no shortage of financial funding who has since spent squillions transforming the Buick into a jaw dropping multi award winning historic hearse.
Remember the TV show The Comedy Company? One segment was about Uncle Arthur and his slide show nights. Well, we had our own slide show next up when Jeff Creaser set up his rotary projector (remember them) and screen and man did the loud and excited nostalgic chatter begin to flow in earnest as we saw young men now grown old, once long dark hair now turned grey, happy playing children now with children of their own, cars that were old even back then now long moved on to new homes, old interesting and quirky historic Bordertown buildings long demolished and replaced with boring modern cubes: as newcomers to town these old slides were just as interesting to Helen and I as they were to the life-long locals who were having old memories jogged and rekindled.
As a closing statement and not as a criticism, toward the end of the night and with 30 or more of us crammed in a tight cluster watching the old fashioned picture show it did start to get uncomfortably warm and so, only as an observation and considering we have so much money in the bank...why aren’t the clubrooms air-conditioned? Our memorabilia night was a ripper, if we hold another make sure you get along to it and maybe even contribute, and that’s why I mention air-con once again, as I did in the last newsletter. Meanwhile, congratulations to Andrew Read for coming up with the great idea of a Memorabilia Night and to everyone who gave a presentation...well done.
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Pine Hill and Serviceton Stations Historical Day
The freshly washed gleaming luxury coach had seating for about 60 and I think half the seats were taken by BVRC members. The occasion was April’s National History Month Sunday outing and this year it was a gem. As we headed north then east for Pine Hill Station we were shown huge areas that had once been wide expanses of impenetrable native scrub and other areas that had been dense forests of tall native pines – now all cleared. A4 colour photos were passed around of native animals that once roamed these local lands; now extinct. Another area had once been enormous rolling sand dunes filled with prolific wild life and nomadic well content Aboriginals; the latter two are long gone, the former have been transformed into roadway materials. First disembarkation was at the site of the now demolished Pine Hill Station and wandering out several hundred metres from the road we stood beside two small stone chimneys. We had with us a photograph of the old station buildings taken in the 1980s and clearly showing their chimneys and with a very distinctive three trunked tree in background. All that remains now of this truly historic and quite massive 1800s slab and daub and thatch building are the two lonely chimneys and the tri-trunked tree. So sad. From there we went to the Pine Hill School; now also gone BUT the nearby Glenelg tree was truly spectacular. From the road it certainly looks ‘ho-hum’ and maybe that’s what has saved it from too many trampling tourists with their trash and vandalism because the closer you walk (and walk and walk), toward the tree the larger and larger it grows. Standing under its natural arch I was staggered it loomed about two metres higher than the top of my Stetson. A wonderful hidden gift from Mother Nature.
But it was time to be moving on and next it was the contentious SA/VIC border and enthralling stories and anecdotes – too many to record here – about the drama debate and debaclism of mapping this ‘line in the sand’ long before the GPS was even dreamed about and when mechanical clocks set in Greenwich London were the only means of navigating and chart reading all the way by sail around the other side of the planet; fascinating stuff.
By then we were running late for our final visit, the Serviceton Railway Station and its afternoon tea and I will not write too much as I doubt there’s a reader among you who has not visited this stunning architectural wonder from the golden age of rail. Being given a free hand to explore the depths of the various dark and gloomy basements, the dungeon and the prisoner cells below the station, the various offices, ticket booths and waiting rooms of the main station complex, plus going upstairs to the secret hidden accommodation rooms cleverly hidden under the roof eves by the architect in his design, well, what a ripper end to a ripper day for this newcomer to the Tatiara.
About the only slight negative to the outing was that it was so action-packed that it was long after fully dark by the time we returned to Bordertown and having never dreamed it would go so late I didn’t have my night driving glasses and thus I was forced to continued to sit back in a comfy passenger’s seat while Helen steered us home...so maybe that wasn’t such a negative after all.
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| Marlene Webb and friend Megan Hurtig dressed to the theme of Marlenes 1933 Ford Roadster |
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| Megan Hurtigs grandsons in the back of the 1933 Ford Roadster |
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| Darrell, Brenton, Len and Wayne relaxing by the river |
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| Rob and his winnings in the raffle |
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| Marlene & Monica loved this green vehicle |
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| Deb, Monica and Marlene liked this colour |
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| Brian Redden from Cudlee Creek with his Bedford truck |
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| Wayne and Brenton admiring the engine |
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| Deb Sharpe's dream car |
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| Deb Zilm and son Ethan |