Today was a drive from Manjimup to Denmark. It turned-out to be one of those days you can expect when you are touring with a group of 90+ year-old cars.
Before we even got going, Wes had a cracked distributor cap and couldn’t get his car to get out of bed in the morning.
First stop was at the Diamond Tree just out of Manjimup where one of our touring party (Hans) worked for a brief period as a fire spotter (before he moved on to the Gloucester Tree for several seasons). The Gloucester Tree in Pemberton was our next stop, followed by lunch in Pemberton.
Moving swiftly on, we passed through Northcliffe and headed east to Walpole. Not long out of Northcliffe, Bob & Marilynn Horgan’s car (Florence) started to misbehave. At various roadside stops (followed by very brief periods of travel), the following items were replaced: condensor, carburettor, coil, HT lead and the complete distributor. Finally the problem was diagnosed as a partially blocked fuel line from the tank (the quickest of all to fix). Florence then took off like a startled horse and no-one could keep-up!
Very thankfully, our charmed luck with the weather kept holding-out, and all these repairs did not have to be done in the pouring rain.
At Walpole, an itinerary change was called for, and some cars headed straight to Denmark, while others just lopped the tree-top walk from the schedule, and covered the rest of the plan and finally arrived in Denmark on dim headlights at about 5:30.
The day was completed with a lovely meal at the Denmark Tavern celebrating the 80th birthday of one of the most popular members of the club – Alan Jeffree.