Friday, October 17, 2008

Day 10 - Friday, October 17, 2008


Alvis tour participants, L to R foreground: Tony Hannam from Queensland, Maureen Cole from NSW; 2nd row: Helen and Chris Storrar from the UK, and Chris Higgins from Victoria, riding one of several historic trams in Bendigo.

A rest day in Bendigo, riding the Bendigo Vintage Tramway system and touring the Central Debra GoldMine.

We took the service lift to the second level at a depth of 68 meters to tour the gold mine shafts and see what it was like for the predominantly Cornish miners working the mine from 1939 to 1954. Level 13 is at 711 meters depth, much of which is now flooded. The only light in the mine shafts was generated by the battery powered lights on the provided hard hats.

Several cars were being fettled, including my mount, the Boothman 1927 12/50 TG, with its cracked exhaust manifold. The patching we did few days ago has proved ineffectual, so we resorted to a JB Weld patch (my son Brett knew that was coming sooner or later) which appears not to be holding either. Next step is a manifold bandage with two retaining hose clips.

The Galloway 1961 TD21 Saloon has lost its radiator overflow pipe, and although not serious, does require attention, particularly with hotter days ahead.

Quite a few of or contingent, over the past week, have fallen foul of “The Dreaded Lergy”, some quite seriously, requiring full day bed rests, or, in some instances, hospital visits. So far, Martin and I, in car #1, have managed to avoid such inconvenience. Some have suggested it might be Mad Car Disease!

Tomorrow, off to Echuca and the Murray River.

4 comments:

Bryan Norfolk said...

I am following your tour with great interest. Please give our best wishes to Mike Hirst from the UK.
Good luck for the rest of the tour.

Hazel and Bryan Norfolk

belloface said...

Do you have a map to show me your route later?

Unknown said...

It's true, I was. :p

Dale P said...

Hi John,

Doing a great job of the web log. I have put the map of the route on the ACCV website, www.alvis.org.au
Its just under the link to your log.

Dale