Bay to Birdwood - Part 2 (the full story)
Being so close to Adelaide from AOA in Tanunda, I decided to enter the Bay to Birdwood Classic. Well, what an event!
After a late start, Lieka and I drove down in the Austin A110 Mk 11 Westminster to Adelaide on the Saturday morning from Tanunda and booked into our motel a few kilometers from the West Beach Park starting point. By evening the motel was full of entrants and their cars.
Up early on Sunday morning, 5.00 am, so that we could get in line to enter the park oval at 6.00 am. We arrived at 5.45 am and there were already about 20 or more cars in front of us.
6.00 am and things started moving. There was no stop to the cars moving into the park and once in we were directed by marshals as where to park. There are two entrances, a west gate and an east gate, so cars flow in from two directions and park in rows one behind the other. There is a centre area left clear for the cars taking part in the concours and preservation class and then as it was 60 years of the mini they all parked on either side. It was also 60 years of the Harlinger 4 x 4 and about 15 of these parked behind.
After parking, I made a bee line for one of the food tents and bought egg and bacon buns for breakfast. Good thing that I went early, as soon the line for food or coffee was a mile long.
The cars kept coming in and the east and west car parks started getting full.
In the end there would have been close to 1700 cars parked at West Beach Park with only a few starting from Modbury.
At 8.30 am the start was announced and the concours, preservation, minis, Haflingers and special guests moved out of the car park two at a time. The road is closed off so the two cars can drive down side by side until the next traffic light. By 8.45 we left the car park and were on our way. The cars soon split up mostly into single file on their way through the Adelaide streets
Driving through Adelaide the streets are lined with thousands of spectators and once out of Adelaide spectators are parked along the road where ever they can find a place to park.
The trip took us 2 hours for the 70 km run and at the end we did not go into the museum grounds, as we had visited there with AOA, so took the right turn, collected our rally book and badge and continued on our way back towards Queensland.
The Bay to Birdwood is the biggest event of its kind in the world and has been going for 39 years. It is one of the best organised events that I have ever taken part in. Everything works like clock work, the marshals and police are amazing with controlling all the cars.
Of course you have to get a few that don’t want to pay the entry fee, so gate crashed the event as it winds its way along the route out of Adelaide.
