MOTO X VOLUME 2 NUMBER 5

electronics, ~;photography, combat
shooting, conservation, outdoor living
and, of course, 4 x 4 club.
Peter Achterberg
MEERKAT AND WILDGOOSE 500
Those wild farmers at Barberspan don't
give you much time to recover. Just a
few months after their last bush bashing
session up it comes again and
Austin's "Major Domo" or to be more
accurate "Enforcer", Brian Elridge
calls out the names of the volunteers
from amongst the ranks of the faithfull,
promptly informs us in the nicest way
that we should' be at the Elgro Hotel at
not later than llh30 on Friday 24th
Feb.
At llh15 after an expidition from the
wilds on the Free State with my assis-
.tants Frikkie, Ian and Tony, one of
whom was seriously ill (hangover) we
arrived at the meeting place. Trembling
in my boots, I looked around, nobody
there. Half past eleven and up rolls
Gordon and Pierre, so we all sit down
and discuss the remarkable similarity
between the Four Wheel Drive Club
and the Army, you know "hurry up and
wait". Anyway to cut a long story short,
at 12 o'clock on the dot up rolls Austin
and Brian, Keith and Kevin, Franscois ,
Chris (it's always good to see Chris, at
least we know he has not skipped the
country with the Club overdraft) Peter,
Clive and Carrol.
Exactly 12h30 Brian has persuaded us
to get organised and follow him to the
golf club, which we promptly do,
arriving there from three different
directions. We are then parked about
10 metres from the start/finish line of
the round the golf course circuit which
gives us a good view of the action as well
as a few minor heart attacks when some
of the competitors, under or over estimate,
and drive rather close to us. We
were then called together and given our
instructions, and introduced to our
guides who were to take us into the
wilds of Boputhaswana and abandon
us. We were the last to leave as our
guide was also running a refuel stop for
the motorbikes, and had to round up all
the precious liquid before we could
leave.
Arriving al our marshalling point about
150 km from the start we had just
enough daylight left to set up camp, unfortunately
we could not have a campfire
as there was a difficulty in finding
dead thorn trees amongst the live ones,
so we had to be civilised and cook by
gas. We also had to guard the fuel
dump as our guide had a much more
comfortable place to spênd the night.
On Saturday morning when the jackals
went to bed, we got up and struck
camp, and moved across the road to
where our marshal's point was to be.
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There we would provide a double function
of being marshal's and also
stopping the competitors immediately
before they crossed the public road. At
about five past ten the first vehicle
arrived. It was Bobby Olthoff in the
Nomad, and from then on we were kept
quite busy. Thanks to the organisers the
competitors were pretty well spread out,
very few of them were less than one
minute apart. The first motorbikes
came past just after 12 o'clock, most of
them heaving sighs of relief when they
heard that they could get fuel a hundred
metres down the track. When the
competitors reached us the general
opinion was that this year the route was
quite difficult and this was borne out by
the number of people who did not
finish.
Wehn four o'clock in the afternoon
came around we closed our marshalling
point, and the gate to the main
road, then started to sweep back along
the route, where we collected half of
someone's exhaust system and inspected
a dead Toyota Landcruiser to make
sure no none needed assistance. On
reaching the position of the marshal up
route from us, we headed back to
DelaryviIle at high speed, where we
found Peter, Gorden and Pierre who
looked as if they had just stepped out of
a lovely hot bath, also my wife Liz who I
was doubly glad to see as she had
brought the money for the beer.
After a quick run down to the golf
course, where I gave all the reIevent
documents to John Salters (who was
cooking the books), we returned to the
hotel and straight to the showers where
we added our quota of sand to the
sewerage system. When we were nice
and clean we went outside where we met
Brian and Austin who looked as if they
could do with a bath, even though it was
dark.
Later we all went down to the prizegiving/dance
and braai which was up to
the usual Baberspan standard, Le. the
food was delicious and the refreshments
flowed like water. At various intervals
all the other marshals rolled up, and we
met all our old friends and made some
new ones, listened to all the hard luck
stories, and at a disgraceful hour on
Sunday morning collapsed into bed.
The Barberspan was over for another
year and thanks to the hard work put in
by Chris Mattie and Ian. it turned out
to be an enjoyable event. most probably
the fun event ofthe year.
Vic Herron
NEWS
FOR SALE: CJ. 7 Engine, 258cu. in.
Done 9000 Km's. Complete R500 ono.
Tel. Ray 22-4850 (home) 43-5528 (work)
Congratulations to Urshela and Kevin
Redmand on the birth of their little boy,
as well as a belated congrats. to Ray
and Rosslynd Cohen on the birth of
their little boy. (2 more potential
members).
Moto X S.A. Vol.2 No.5 Page37