Woke to a beaut Friday morning, did some last minute shopping and headed off to Jules place to meet and head off to Greta valley, Steve, Jason, Jules, Brownie, Jeff, Vince and Pam. The early starters. Off at 12.30 and a quick stop at Amberley for a bite to eat than on to Greta. Started setting up and soon found that there was a big camp site all ready setup, gates don't open till 4 but the Mainland Riders were all organised by the time we got there.
Every thing was setup and going well by the time the other PMC guys arrived. THEN the power went off about 6.30 until 9.30, The pub without power meant no food being cooked so we ended up with some unhappy hungry campers, we got talked into bringing the breakfast forward to Friday evening, so a few of us got stuck in and started the barby and turned out a few big meals, 2 sausages, 2 eggs, 2 rashes of bacon, 2 toast and a hash brown for $10 was a lot more popular than I thought it would be. Kept everyone happy.
Saturday dawned rather crisply with a good white frost, I had wondered why I was cold in sleeping bag camped out on the top of the hill. The day started off slowly but gradually people began to arrive, we had a few wee issues with people thinking that they could camp on the top of the hill, which is the pub car park, some accussed us of trying to be high and mighty and looking down on the peasants, all I can say to that is 'it feels good'. No where the club camps is actually owned by the pub and not the caravan park and due to lots of legal reasons paying visitors are not covered up there.
Anyway we cooked breakfast again on Saturday to another lot of hungry campers. The Greta Valley Vollunteer Fire Brigade set up a sausage and burger stall and sold them for the afternoon and evening, sorry they didn't do as good as they hoped.
Rob and others took a good few riders for a jaunt around the country side, left at 1 and back at 4 and in time for the games run by Richard and Jason helping out. James won the iron guts competition again. This year we held the games outside the pub, next year we have been asked to hold them at the rally site so we may look at that again.
The evening was very pleasant a quite warm, The Ataries played in the pub were not as popular as last year and were maybe a bit too loud for the area they were playing in. Gary a drumming busker had approached the club about playing at the rally and we decided to let him have a go. This year we also supplied a fire in a bath and Gary played from the breakfast tent near it, we got some pretty good feedback about that. The night went on to the wee hours and this writer managed to stay sober and still have a good time.
We have had lots of complaints about our advertised reduced prices at the bar, they were not reduced as much as were expecting but did not have a lot of control over that, but with having some serious disccussion with the publican have come up with some 'major' changes to next years rally. $2 cans of beer, $4 cans of spirits were mention and a major prize draw in the offering so stay tuned.
Sunday morning we awoke to quite a wind blowing, it was OK for those in the camp but for us on the hill it was a bit of a nightmare packing up.
After packing up the 27 club members left and headed to the Nor'Wester in Amberley for a coffee and de-brief. All in all it was a good rally, a little up on last year so hopefully with what happened over the booze prices it doesn't effect us for next year.