Advertisement
Published: November 27th 2015
Well it was that time again, Friday 20
th November and we were heading out of town for a weekend away.
It was the Toyota Landcruiser club’s end of year wind up and trophy night and we were looking forwards to it, This is a big night in our yearly calendar and its always a good weekend and 80 of us would be descending on a small town just 45 K’s east of York called Beverly which is in the wheat belt.
Beverley is a quiet, historic wheatbelt town located on the banks of the Avon River. It is a typical wheatbelt town with an attractive main street, a couple of museums and a sense of peacefulness of a Western Australian country town, it is located 130 km east of Perth and was established in 1838 by Charles Simmons, the Colonial Surgeon at the time, named after Beverley, a town north of Hull in Yorkshire, England.
I collected Caroline from work and the freeway, heading east was just a nightmare, it possibly took us over an hour before our roads turned from major arterial roads to much quieter scenic country roads, heading towards
Come fly with me!!
A splendid example of Art Decothe town of York.
We had never been this way before and it was spectacular, Roobie was hitched to jack and the sun was still shining after a blistering hot day on Friday and our weather this weekend was supposed to be “Cooking”.
Once we had cleared York, we only had a 45 minute run in to Beverly and we were soon pulling in to this pretty little town with a population of 1700 people.
We found the caravan park and when we pulled in there were masses of people all from the club and we soon managed to find our pitch and set up our bed for the night.
Roobie takes no time at all to set up, and with just a light Doona for tonight as the night time temperature was going to remain high.
No sooner were we done but we were being shepherded down to the hall for a sundowner. This is when everyone takes a drink and some nibbly things and we just sit with our friends, chat and get sloshed whilst the sun goes down.
We
needed a shower so we slipped away and showered, changed then went back to the hall as we were having roast lamb rolls that were being prepared for us that we had pre ordered and one of our members Gordon did all the carving and the rest was buffet style and it was really good.
A film was put on for us, it was a 1958 Australian Film called Smiley gets a gun about a young boy named Smiley Greevins who desperately wants a gun. A deal is made between him and the local police sergeant that if he gets 8 nicks (marks on a certain tree) for his good deeds he will get a £2 rifle. He has several adventures and is accused to stealing some gold. Smiley runs away but the real thief is caught and Smiley is rewarded with a gun.
Now Friday is a bad day for us to socialise as we are just so exhausted from a busy week, then what with the two and a bit hours to Beverley we could not wait until we got in to bed, though seemingly this was one the minds of many
of our friends as when we slinked of to bed load of people followed, though fortunately to their own beds.
What a nights sleep we had, all the windows and vents were open in Roobie and the night air just wafted over us, there was not a sound and we both slept soundly, personally we just love sleeping as close to the outdoors as we can.
I was up with the lark, well the Kookaburra to be specific in this case and when safe to do so I took Caroline her coffee, the morning was warm and it looked like the weather forecast of 38 degrees was going to be spot on.
When it was safe to engage Caroline in conversation, I asked her ladyship if she would like me to do bacon and eggs for breakfast, this was acknowledged as an affirmative action so I set about opening the outside kitchen and doing everything outside, so not to disturb her.
We had deployed Roobies awning and it keeps the sun off us perfectly, but as soon as the smell of food cooking emanated from our camp we
Come fly with me!!
Beverly main street had hoards of people wander by and stop and chat.
I had promised one of our members Mark a demonstration of the HF radio network as soon as breakfast was over Mark wandered over so I set up the lap top and sat him in Roobie with the headphones on whilst I sat in Jack and booted the HF radio up, so as I spoke to Meekatharra base over the radio, Mark could hear everything over “VoIP” on the laptop.
With my demonstration all done Caroline and I walked in to the tiny town of Beverly and it is as pretty as a picture.
When this trip was being organised by Mark and Debbie Bogars, they would feed back updates of how the trip planning was going to the TLCC W.A committee and as I am a committee member we naturally heard all the bits and pieces associate with the trip, apparently the towns paper shop was getting extra newspapers in and the bakery was stocking up and I think its our social responsibility to support these little towns and spend our cash in them, to keep them alive.
We walked down the main street and grabbed a morning coffee at the bakery and also the newspaper, well we wanted to do our bit, there is something just so different about country people they are just so welcoming and friendly, we did have to giggle as it seemed the whole town new there were “Outsiders” in town, still they were very welcoming and had offered to open the aviation museum for us free of charge.
I was fascinated with the fact that this tiny Wheatbelt town had an old British vampire jet and an aviation museum in it, it just seemed odd for its geographic location to anywhere, so I had to do some digging.
Beverley Aeronautical Museum was built in 1967 to honour the local inventor Selby Ford who, with a cousin Tom Shackles, built a biplane which they called the 'Silver Centenary'. It is a great story which is recorded in detail in the Museum. Neither man was a flier and yet they designed the plane in chalk on their garage floor and it flew successfully in 1930. Later it was taken to Maylands Airfield where Major de Havilland and
the famous female aviator Amy Johnson flew it. Sadly it was never licensed because, being designed in chalk on a garage floor, there were no blueprints
We were going gliding this morning, well I was Caroline like a few of the other wives were coming along to take picture, we got back to Roobie, got our stuff together and all the gliding crew met in our vehicles just outside the caravan park.
It wasn’t too far to the gliding club, or the Beverley Soaring Association as it was called and we all parked in the shadiest spot as it was very open and the day was hotting up.
We were given a safety brief and walked around the gliders we would be using today and told that each glider is stripped right back to its individual components once a year, by the technicians, we were also told that “Thermals” or pockets of rising hot air are only triggered at a certain temperature and at this time of year thermals would be virtually guaranteed, Harry our instructor a British chap who was ex RAF said the Beverley Soaring association had some members
who had been airborne for over 7 hours and had covered over a 1000 Kilometres in a single day all because of the amazing weather conditions and the fact that these thermals are so abundant.
We drove down to where the gliders would be launched from and they took the mobile control tower down with then along with a Piper Pawnee tug plane that would tow us skywards, we were all given numbers and mine was number seven,
Sitting outside in the sun and watching the gliders being towed was really great, though I was a little disappointed as they had a couple of student pilots who seemed to be getting a lot of airtime and it seemed to slow the proceedings down, certainly as this had all been pre-booked for us
We started queuing at about 11.00 am and by 2.00pm we had only just got the pilot number 4 so I felt we would be sitting there until about 6.00pm and I was honestly not prepared to do that, but on the positive side, a couple of our ladies had managed to have a fly.
We
Come fly with me!!
Beverly Post Office Circa 1910 drove back to Roobie and had a sit down, we had past the sizzling temperature of the day earlier and it had started to cool.
I think it was about 4.30 when we were all beckoned to the hall, so we wander over for drinks and Ice cream provided by the club and started to get ourselves ready for the evening.
We both broke off and went back and showered and changed then regrouped with everyone before we flooded the hall on mass and took our seat, Mark and Deb and done an amazing job of decorating the place and we were sat on the Red table.
The place did look magnificent and the town hall is such a pretty building and a splendid example of Art Deco and was opened in 1938.
The evening was awesome, the very articulate Brendan Parker was our MC for the evening, so we had jokes stories, and trophies to hand out for various things.
As they say, all good things come to an end, well it did, we all chipped in to do the washing up and tidying
Come fly with me!!
Hanger51 (Not really) the hall up before we left and everyone got in to it, I washing on Washing and Caroline was on wiping, because if it wasn’t done this evening it would only have to be done in the morning and some of us were heading home.
This was our third end of year round up with the club and it was been a really fantastic time.
Foot note: I honestly believe things happen for a reason, and as I didn’t get the opportunity to go gliding which I was not sore about, but the $200.00 bucks I had set aside for gliding was donated to Blazeaide, as this week the town of Esperance in Western Australia as been gripped in the hands of a massive bush fire and many hectares of land have been lost, sadly along with some peoples lives and property and their will be families who will be doing it really tough this Christmas and for many years to come.
The Toyota Landcruiser Club of W.A has donated $1000.00 along with our weeney donation and the proceeds from our club night on Thursday 26
th November so we hope it
Come fly with me!!
Loves young dream, Trev and Peta will help.
Kj
Advertisement
Tot: 0.684s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 38; qc: 44; dbt: 0.4612s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
SkiSet
The Ds
Bah! Humbug!
How disappointing Andy, that you didn't get to soar ... but, at least you can take solace in the fact that your donation will go to a good cause. I am always amused by the fact that we now seem to live in an age when everything seems to have to have a fancy, schmanchy name these days, which often leaves you wondering just what it actually means or what it is that someone really does when their "official" title on their business card really doesn't give you any inkling as to what it is they actually do. :) Back in the "old days" it would just have been a gliding club and everybody knew what that meant, but today, it's a soaring society. Guess it's not too hard to make the same connection in this case but, guess I'm just old school and work on the principle of calling a spade a spade, then everybody knows what's going on. :) Sounds like you had a great time anyway even though you didn't get to soar with eagles. :) Love & hugs, J xxx