Hunter Chapter's Australia Day Picnic
28 January 2019 / Written: John Purcell, Photos: Mark Gray, Barry Luttrell
As the perfect location for an Australia Day picnic, Awaba House park on the shores of Lake Macquarie is hard to beat. And what a great choice it turned out to be. With temperatures nudging 40 degrees, our scenic spot provided us with plenty of shade and a warm, but welcome breeze, making the temperature a little more bearable.
Two runs were organised to arrive at approximately the same time - the first from the Central Coast starting at Ourimbah with 4 cars, and the second from Cessnock with 5 cars. From Cessnock our group travelled along the back roads through the vineyards in a loop towards Maitland. As I was watching the outside temperature start nudging 37 degrees, Mark Gray informed everyone that we had precisely 1 of each model MX-5 in our little convoy. Yep, an NA, NB, NC, ND and a NDRF! So a celebratory photo stop was made outside Scarborough Winery with the cars all lined up in order. A lovely sight indeed.
At the final turn toward the lake, our convoy was joined by 2 more MX-5’s, driven by John & Sharon and Trevor & Theresa from RPM chapter. Perfect timing! Chris Cameron, Barry & Jenny Luttrell and David & Elaine Gazzard had arrived early to secure a shady picnic spot and a parking area for all our MX-5’s, so we quickly unloaded and settled in for cool drinks and nibblies.
Our picnic was attended by 23 club members and together we raised over one hundred dollars for the Careflight Helicopter. This came from the sale of Lamingtons and Party Pies generously donated by David and Elaine, and the addictive ‘get your gold coin closest to the bottle of bubbly’ donated by Chris & John. A few hardy souls also went out into the sun to partake in the inaugural ‘croquet challenge’.
Many thanks to everyone for braving the temperatures to come along and contribute generously to the fundraising, especially to our RPM chapter friends making the trip up to join the fun.
