50 Kays of Grey

The weather was bleak indeed, but the dauntless Illawarra Chapter was game for its annual Daylight Savings run on Saturday, 18 February. Car after car rolled into the Hungry Jacks lot, Haywards Bay, champing at the bit to outrun the storm. The thunder rumbled overhead, prompting collective mumbles from club members as to whether to proceed topless or not – to drivers of convertibles, the irresolvable existentialist question. To be, or not to be? Prudence won out and most battened down the hatches, except for some hardy out-of-towner from Bathurst, who decided to crank the heaters and immerse himself in what became a thick, blindfolding mist redolent of the set of the Hound of the Baskervilles.

Before setting off, we were given the run sheet with the route to be taken, but whether we followed it is a complete mystery to most, even now, as we proceeded into a fog so dense, so completely impenetrable, that you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd strayed onto some haunted, moody moor straight out of a John Buchan novel.

Undeterred, we were keen to seek out some of the kinkiest, most sinuous and wending B roads to be found south of Gerringong and we certainly weren't disappointed. The terrain was sometimes testing, particularly in our insensibly lowered MX-5, where every bump and pothole is magnified such that it feels what I imagine driving on the moon must be like. At one point I had to ditch my passenger (the talkative ballast) over a particularly trying speed hump, lest we'd still be see-sawing atop it. Gingerly, the MX-5 hitched up its petticoats and scraped its way over; thank goodness for its steel corset – that underbody bracing – bestowed upon it by the prescient Mazda Corp, who knew the punishment we hardcore enthusiasts would mete out on their cars.

We drove in clingy convoy through a waterlogged Kiama, into a misty Kangaroo Valley (so 'Gorillas in the Mist' my mother proclaimed!) and concluded by climbing up into the foggy bosom of Robertson (again, so 'Brigadoon') to stop at the beautiful Robertson Inn for an early dinner.

As per their website, the Robertson Inn is 'one of Australia's last fully wood constructed hotels'; all of the rough-hewn beams and buttresses visible from beneath, making it an appropriately atmospheric setting for the tone of our run thusfar. Against the backdrop of this, and the lovely food on offer, most club members turned to talk of how many times their LSD kicked in in the rain on the way up (Limited Slip Differential for those less technically minded!) and the usual argot of the truly auto-addicted.

It was a most enjoyable run through a foggy gauntlet of back roads and as always, the company was terrific! Many thanks to organisers, Hella & Mark Underwood!