Wellington is out in western New South Wales. It’s normally a fairly quiet regional administration centre, but then at Easter 2011 a bunch of little Renaults and their enthusiastic drivers arrived…. For most tourists, Wellington is best known for its caves – so for our first outing we headed there and promptly put all the cars in a line for photographs. No wonder the town seemed to be full of “Froggy” motor cars. We were also very pleased to have “Ned” our “tail gunner” of many Musters along with us again (second last photo).
We assembled as a group for photographs at Hermitage Hill, a B&B/reception centre with restaurant (where we had some great meals and our official meeting) and some lovely old buildings dating from the early 1900s, when it was built as a hospital.
Our other trips took us out to the Burrendong dam, a local winery, the little township of Mumbil (what a great name) where we had lunch at a country pub, the Barton family homestead (family of Australia’s first Prime Minister), and for morning tea at a rose garden and restaurant.
Without doubt, two special features of this Muster will make it particularly memorable for everyone. The first was that we were privileged to host a very enthusiastic group of Floride and Caravelle enthusiasts from Europe, who were doing a tour organised through the RCCQ; the second was to watch Frank’s “The Jet” historic wooden speedboat in action on Burrendong Dam. “The Jet” has a modified Renault 4CV engine and still remains the holder of the Australian water speed record for its engine size class , at about 100km/hr, since the 1960s.
