John's Smarties Run to the Manning
15 April 2022 / Words and pictures – Peter Rodgers and Roby Leckenby
John’s Smarties Run to the Manning – Run Report
Words and pictures – Peter Rodgers and Roby Leckenby
The Rain God’s smiled favourably upon us for the first time in months as our run, went ahead after two previous cancellations due to rain. Even though the weather looked a little dubious, we had six vehicles with eleven members on board for our run. This included David and Trish Paff our newest members from Taree in their newly acquired ND, one of three other ND’s on this run, accompanied by the NB Heritages of John and Keiran.
We set off from the Port Macquarie Service Centre with Keiran in the lead, having decided to keep our roofs open despite the likelihood of rain. In the end it was a good decision, for even though rain threatened during the day we all stayed dry.
Being the first weekend of the NSW school holidays we had to contend not only with significant traffic but also many drivers whose highway skills were in abeyance. This was sadly demonstrated by a five car accident near Kew soon after we had passed by, leaving the southbound lane closed for most of the day.
We met up with our run organisers and leaders, John and Susan at the Flow Bar Café in Old Bar where morning tea was much enjoyed.
After morning tea we drove out to Wallabi Point to enjoy the view as well as testing our skills at avoiding numerous potholes. Continuing the drive, it was off to Manning Point and more pothole avoidance together with a few oncoming vehicles lacking courteous and skilful drivers.
The Greenhouse Café at Nabiac was our final stop and lunch venue, which gave us the opportunity for a good long catch up. We got to know David and Trish, who being long term residents of the Manning shared some interesting historic information about the area including that the Café was originally a saddlery. One of the highlights of the day was the smartie guessing competition organised by John and Susan: we were asked to guess the number of smarties in a jar with the closest guess winning a prize – the jar of smarties. In the end everyone was a winner as we each received a box of smarties as consolation prizes.
Nabiac is a lovely little town with many interesting shops though there was some concern that Roby may have been abducted by aliens or taken off in an MX-5 that caught her eye, but fortunately she had just gone pre-Easter shopping.
All good things come to an end so it was back into our cars for the drive home, which took somewhat longer than expected due to roadworks and heavy holiday traffic. Thank you John and Susan for organising a fantastic day.
