Geelong Holden Day 2011
The Geelong Holden Day is done and dusted for another year, and I think it would be fair to day that the Holden Day for 2011 has been one of the best ever.
This year we were back at the Showgrounds, and thanks to a wet summer and some irrigation on the oval, all the show and shine cars (over 500 of them) were parked on the grass on a beautiful Autumn Day.
The day actually started on Friday for some, who went there the day before and marked some of the lines and did other preparation work before the action started on Saturday.
Saturday morning, and the faithful members of our great club were arriving before 6 am for final preparations for the day. The bloke with the long arms (me!) got the job of banging a few star pickets in – only then, was I allowed to have a bit of brekky being cooked up on the club trailer. Dimmies on the barbie are usually a pretty good thing, but for some reason they weren’t so popular at 6.30am!
Cars started rolling in early, and we had entries from interstate and country Victoria, as far away as Adelaide, Swan Hill and Mildura.
Most of us had many jobs on the day, including attending the gate, parking and marshalling and judging. My hat goes off to the ladies at the registration desk, who did a superb job of keeping the paperwork and entries organised, and locating a safety vest in “Big bloke” size for me.
Fletch (Classic Restos) was there, and spent the full day filming and talking to people. His show aired on C31 last on Thursday 24th March. The show can be viewed online at http://www.c31.org.au/schedule/view/episode/16619 . I thought the coverage was very good, although I noticed that he totally ignored a WB van with a Statesman front (and only a small amount of rust). Maybe next time.
By the time the judging was finished, the trophies handed out, the rubbish cleaned, and everything put away everyone was pretty much pooped – and the pizzas and a couple of beers went down a treat!
A long day, but a huge success. The feedback has been very positive, and I even had a couple of people say to me (on their way out), that we should be very proud of the excellent job done on the day.
Most importantly, the Club donated $3000 to our chosen charity - "Our Women Our Children", who provide humidicribs and the like to the Childrens section at the Geelong Hospital.
The challenge now is to make next year even better!
Cheers
Perry
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