The Hillclimb was substituted for the sprint that was originally scheduled to be run at  Calder Park Raceway when the Jane organisation almost doubled the circuit hire, the Victorian/Geelong organisers were left with little choice of venues for the speed event hence the selection of Mt Leura.

Situated at Camperdown, about 114km west of Geelong, the hillclimb is conducted over 803 metres of the tourist road to the Mt Leura lookout, the road was closed to the public with the pit area in the adjacent showgrounds, this venue is used for Australian and Victorian Hillclimb Championship rounds as well as club events.

As the event was very popular the field was split into two groups, the morning group for classes N – ZE included Ian Curwen-Walker, Bev Waters, Arthur Ruediger, Mike Greenwood, Wes Bray and Tim Edmonds. the afternoon group classes A – Z,  included Fred Neild, Bob Bazzica and myself, everyone got a familiarisation run up the hill and then competition started running in class order with 3 runs each.

We arrived for the pm group just as Bev, Arthur, Wes and Tim were about to have their final run, as early morning travellers from Geelong they told us of encountering very heavy fog for the latter stages of their trip making driving very difficult. The fog had lifted by the time we were travelling so we got to see quite a bit of the countryside.

Fred Neild was driving his Pre MGA TC Special with Bob Bazzica double entered in  class X, I was entered in class Y, Post MGA Specials in the V8 roadster, the track encompasses three turns on the way to the finish, a high speed first left a short run to the second right then onto the third a sharp left then onto the finish, climbing all the time.

Unlike Collingrove it’s quite a distance to the first turn which can be taken at high speed, it would help to have a tall first gear for the V8 as I had trouble containing wheel spin off the line and was virtually foot flat in third gear through turn one.

Bev Waters ran second in class R - MGBGTV8, with Arthur Ruediger fourth. Mike Greenwood placed first in group S - MGC GT& Roadsters, Wes Bray placed fourth in class W -  FWDs, Ian Curwen- Walker placed sixth in class P – MGB GT BL & later and Tim Edmonds fifth place in class ZD – MGs post Jan 2000 exc, Fs

Fred posted fastest time in class X -  Pre MGA Specials for a win with Bob taking third place, I managed a third place amongst all the race cars in class Y.

This event was also included in our Club Competition Championship series.

What was impressive was the TAG HEUER timing system that was used, owned and operated by the Ararat car club, the same system was used at the Motorkhana on Monday with all the timing being centralised quite some distance from the test sites( we could do with this ), this is the system the Sporting Car Club has purchased for Collingrove where it is possible to run 2 cars on the course at the same time.