Southern Cross Gold Anniversary Rally to Coffs Harbour

The evening of Monday 7^th November sees James RS up in Albury awaiting the start of the Southern Cross Gold Anniversary Rally that will kick off to-morrow at Bethanga just over the Murray  river into Victoria. The Touring Road Event runs from the 8^th to the 19^th of November and finishes up at Coffs Harbour in time to greet the crews to the Australian Round of the World Rally Championship. James RS will be following the event for the first two days and will leave the crews at the Moe Hillclimb at Haunted Hills late on Wednesday afternoon. Prime interest in the event for Type 49 Racing fans will be the Escort entry of Chris Wallace. Chris is paternered by Jim Gillingham and the pair are entered in Chris's square nosed PRC spec RS 2000 and I nice and clean car the rs 2000 is. The crew are hopefull of a good run in the event and are looking forward immensely to the challege of the Southern Cross Rally.

Day One of the Gold Anniversary Southern Cross Rally saw the competing crews start at Historic Bethanga scene of previous Southern Cross Rally starts and the crews made their way east of Bethanga before the first special test on the Jarvis Creek Plateau. Crews then followed the old rally route down to Carboor for lunch before again following the original rally route down to Whitlands for a Khanacross and a special test . Then crews headed off to Mansfield for the overnight break before venturing on to Pakenham on Wednesday Morning and making their way down to Sale via the Haunted Hills Hillclimb track for the overnight halt for day two. The Chris Wallace Escort Mk 2 looked good and sounded fine with its Lowndes sourced 520X cammed big valved Pinto howling along nicely through the days stages.

Caught up with Chris Wallace and his navigator Jim Gillingham via facebook to get the lowdown and dirty on their SCR so far. After day 1 the team was in 11^th out right and looking good but the team was afflicted by a spate of minor issues on day 2 that saw them with the bonnet up pondering the engine at Pakenham and a late arrival at Haunted Hills after the sweep and their runs at Moe didn’t count and finally a sheared alternator bracket left them cutting and running to Melbourne with the intention of repairing the car and re-joining the event in Sydney for the final stages down to Coffs Harbour. A bit of bad luck for Chris and Jim but they will in the true spirit of the Southern Cross press on and aim to get to the finish. At the end of the event in Coffs Harbour the Wallace Escort recorded a finish but well down the finishing order after being further afflicted by alternator bracket issues in Leg Two and having to miss some sections of the rally to further repair the car. But the boys pressed on to the finish and did their best to cover the event and its gruelling stages. The event was won by the immortal Ross Dunkerton in a Datsun 1600.