Without my lovely wife/on-board-’nag’ivator/photographer this year, there’s a bit of a paucity of images. Sorry folks… it ain’t easy steering crossplys across excavated freeway roads, while photographing through the windscreen.

On the plus side, the weather was much cooler than last year, and we didn’t have a cattle truck road-raging alongside.

Check the gallery.

Wednesday Feb 15th, 2012.
Cruise the freeway at Twilight to Mandurah…
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The Cranksters have a little tradition – usually around mid-winter when the weather gets real cold and thoughts turn to baked goods, and plenty of ‘em – of meeting early on a Sunday morning and heading up Greenmount Hill, past Mundaring, and up to a wee spot known as Bakers Hill. There’s a small but renowned bake shop where they really know how to make a darn good pie…

If the thought of leaving behind 42 varieties of untasted pies hurts too much, you can always unhitch the caravan and stay the weekend. There’s a Tavern next door for a dram or two of Scottish fluid to warm your heart.

A sunny day, perfect for a run up to Mundaring in the Hills for the Annual Cranksters Pipeline Picnic.

Over 200 cars joined in this year and the Crankster lads organised a great gig with event Tshirt (cool design by Sparky), goody bags and a raffle with varied and useful prizes (air compressor/adultshop toys/screwdriver set anyone?).

Thrilled to see Rob’s 57 black Baby Bird and Crawford & Susan’s 60 Big Bird burning the carbon from the sparkplugs scaling Greenmount Hill.

Pics in the gallery.

Yesterday was a scorcher, the type of day your shorts are reeaally gonna stick to the vinyl seats!

So a freeway cruise for the roundtrip to Mandurah (about 160kms for us) was a bit of a gamble, when the vintage cooling system tends to be a little hot-tempered. But the clouds rolled in, the temperature dropped somewhat, and it turned out to be a lovely evening (with a welcome breeze in Mandurah).

Turns out the biggest hazard was not overheating, but dodging atomised effluent spraying from a cattle truck en-route. The driver seemed intent on a Duel-type pursuit of the 57 Chev.

Numbers were down this year due to the hot conditions (we saw just 2 Tbirds), but it was a relaxed mid-week cruise. Stalwart Bill wasn’t going to pike out – here’s him running alongside in his beautiful Big Bird.

See a few more pics in the gallery here.