This year’s Corroboree (the 35th) was organised by the Motley Crew 4WD & Social Club (based in Marooka), and was held at Kalbar Show Grounds (Kalbar is just of the Cunningham Highway - turn left a few kms before Aratula). I believe around 240 vehicles attended the event, which was organised and run extremely well by Motley Crew - an impressive amount of effort had been made and the Corroboree was a very enjoyable success.
Ivan and I decided to drive down on the Friday morning, and as John and Lorraine (Lynch) were of the same mind we joined forces, meeting up with them at Jindalee Maccas at around 11am. Unfortunately some poor soul had a fatal car crash earlier that morning, closing the Cunningham Highway for most of the day. This meant a bit of a detour for us, driving through the centre of Ipswich and following a path parallel to the Cunningham Highway, although we there were tailbacks in Ipswich is was much better than expected and we weren’t held up very much at all.
By the time we arrived at Kalbar it was a hot, sunny day so while the area designated to our club for camping was over generous in size, we were looking for the shadiest spots we could find. Once we were all there (next came Simon and Emily, then Brent, Amber and the boys and lastly Miles and Lochie) we were all around the edges of a large open area! As well as a good size, our camping area was ideally placed for everything on offer, canteen, event hall, trip registration, demos and the toilets and showers. The only slight downside was the bands booked for Saturday and Sunday were playing off the back of a truck parked a little bit close to our area - didn’t need to attend the bands we could hear it all clearly while drinking outside our tents. Fortunately the music finished each night at 11pm, although I did note that Miles and Lochie, who were closest to the band truck, managed to fall asleep both nights and snore through the music!!!
Various trips were organised by Motley Crew, some of which were self guided with maps and directions provided, but they also had access to a private property near Boonah that used to be a 4WD Park. So three times a day all those booked on to trips would line up, be designated a colour for each different trip, and be taken as one big convoy out to the property. On arrival there were different holding areas taped off to match your trip colour so you all ended up in nice neat lines ready for each trip leader. Fantastic organisation - they’d even had the foresight to put up a portaloo! Have to say there was some very enjoyable off roading to be had at this property and everyone enjoyed themselves enormously. Initially, it looked like there was going
to be a problem with not enough trips available over the weekend (each vehicle was issued a priority ticket so that they could get at least one trip over the weekend) and this led some of us to hold off booking onto anything for the Saturday (we did a small self guided drive). This turned out to be a good thing apparently, as Motley Crew decided to just repeat what trips were available three times each day so there were plenty of spaces available for those who were booking on Sunday and hadn’t used their priority tickets on Saturday. In fact most club members got in three different off road trips in one day.
On the Friday night we all attended the meet and greet, followed by the Trivia quiz (we fielded two teams but didn’t do too well). On Saturday Night Bagman was the entertainment on the truck and was very well received, and on Sunday night the NRL final was televised and was well attended (Go Cowboys!), followed by Kerry Kennedy and Double Barrel on the truck. There were also lots of other demos, stalls and entertainment over the weekend, as well as sizzling heat - well into the 30s for most of the weekend.