KEV’S AUSTRALIA DAY CRUISE
What better way to spend a sunny Australia Day than cruising with your nearest and dearest?
A SURPRISING NUMBER OF FORMER STREET MACHINE FEATURE CARS WERE PRESENT, PROVING THE GEELONG CAR SCENE’S PROPENSITY FOR TURNING OUT MEAN MACHINES
WHAT did you do on Australia Day? Get your hands dirty on the neverdone project car? Work for the man? If you were in the vicinity of Geelong, hopefully you managed to join me, Street Machine shutterbug Chris Thorogood and a few hundred other car nuts for a day on the road. Kev’s Australia Day Cruise was the place to be, with 400 cars of all kinds and more than double that number of people eager to hit the streets with their mates.
Kevin Boland began holding his Australia Day meets so that car people could hang out with friends and cruise around the southern countryside. The entry fee is a handful of your finest shrapnel, all of which is donated to The Gordon’s Student Support Fund to help students who can’t afford their tuition. Even though the event itself is only a few sun-orbits old, Kev’s been running and supporting this worthy cause for 32 years! This year’s cruise raised $1700 at the gate, all of which went straight into the fund.
“We started the fund with leftover union money when International Harvester closed in 1982,” Kev said. “Since then we’ve helped thousands of needy students with fees, books, transport and even food. My wife Jo and I ran Kev’s Hamburger Van for 24 years in a car park in Geelong, and it was a regular hangout for car enthusiasts. I also ran Kev’s Family Day car show at St Alban’s Football Club and Kev’s Cruise For The Farmers to raise money for Buy a Bale.”
Members of Old Skool Street Cars Geelong help Kev run the show, and the Gordon TAFE East Geelong campus car park was filled to bursting with shiny sheet metal by 9:30am. With the majority of cars there coming from the 60s and 70s, there was clearly a distinct preference for old-school iron. A surprising
number of former SM feature cars were present, proving the Geelong car scene’s propensity for turning out mean machines.
Soon enough, people began firing up their engines and heading for the open road. Kev’s event isn’t so much an organised cruise as the starting point for your own. Some people gathered their mates and headed inland to Inverleigh or Moriac, while others pointed their cars north to the big smoke. Chris and I jumped into his parent’s stocko EH wagon (his Chev was out of action at the time) and joined a column of cruisers heading out into the peninsula.
With so many roads to drive and towns to visit, we did our best to catch every group of cruisers we could. Thankfully the weather was absolutely stunning, without a cloud in sight, and every few kays we’d happen upon another mob of classics filled with friends and families. Around places like Portarlington Pier, Indented Head and St Leonards, the roads were packed with cool cars.
The venerable EH longroof performed flawlessly all day, and eventually it was time to head home. Kev’s Australia Day Cruise was a cracking gathering and the perfect start of a superb day on the road, so if you haven’t been before, make sure you whack it in your diary for next year!
AROUND PLACES LIKE PORTARLINGTON PIER, INDENTED HEAD AND ST LEONARDS, THE ROADS WERE PACKED WITH COOL CARS