Hi, this web site was created by me through an interest in Computers, Off-Road Racing, also by the lack of interest by the media to cover this type of 'alternative motor sport'.

I currently live ~30 kilometres from Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) at the foot of the Dandenong Ranges where I have lived since I was born (Oct '66). I work Full Time as an Electronics Test Solution Design Engineer and only a 6 minutes drive from home.

When I turned ~18, I joined Rover Scouts and a short time later I attended my first 'buggy event'. It was called Buggy Bash at Mt. Moriac here in Victoria. I enjoyed the event along with gaining experience in working with engines, the Rover Crews buggy was a shortened VW floor pan with a fullspace frame 'tab-welded' to the floor pan. The motor was a VW 1600cc motor on a stock VW Beetle trans-axle, it went very well, spending as little money as possible, it went exceptionally well.

In 1985 I had the opportunity to experience the highlight of the Rover calender Mud Bash. This was held at Big River, just past Marysville (Victoria). In those days Mud Bash was a real test of man and machine, where you drove the vehicles along flooded trenches, idled nimbly along slippery logs, dropped into deep ditches, to only try to get out the other side, drive between posts staked on the side of a very slippery hill (most were usually knocked down), a Moto-karna that had at least 2 dams that you had to also negotiate, a long and slippery hill climb (passing unlucky cars perched in trees off the side of the road didn't really make you feel too safe), the "night tour" was almost an all night navigational exercise where you had to drive for upto around 20-30 kilometres with only your head lights to guide you in the fastest time you could manage. Some Crews took lighting to the extremes, copying the lighting setups that are usually found on rally cars, not all of the lights would come on if the engine was not running (those that did light didn't last long running off the battery), if the engine was idling and the lights were lit-up, the engine would stall from the load placed on the 2 or 3 alternators bolted at strategic points around the engine, so for the lights to run properly the engine had to be running at above high idle position (it made you wounder how with this load on the engine, the car could climb a hill without extinguishing the headlights ...)

I only attended Mud Bash that one exciting time, unfortunately it didn't continue there for too much longer so it was moved to Ballan (near Ballarat, Vic.) and a few years later the organisers purchased their own property ~20 kilometres from Yea (Vic.), the Rover park that is now named "Mafeking Rover Park", Mud Bash will never be as it was in the early days, but now they have competition from other Rover buggy events.

Later in Rovers I attended some of the other buggy events they had to offer (well we did do other activities but this is my buggy orientated web page) one of the was called Bush Rally where it was a predomently a speed event where you raced around a set track in the fastest time possible, dodging trees was a challenge, but even more challenging was dodging trees when the rear end of the buggy tracked to its right, well while I was cutting it close to a tree I didn't realise just how close the rear end of the buggy was getting to not being able to "pass" the tree, unfortunatly I found out too late that the clearance to safely pass the tree was no longer there, this cause the buggy to lift cleanly off the track and placing it back gently onto the track again, but the next problem was that we were facing the wrong direction with a bent rear torsion housing that was "pulled" back at least 45 degrees and shorting out the electrical system sufficiently to re-start the engine before boiling the battery and burning out the whole electrical system forward of the shorted wiring, not easy to shutdown a motor that is self running from the alternator and the controlls are cut off from the engine....

Buggy Bash at Mt. Moriac only lasted about 2 years (that I attended) then it moved to another property nearby at Rokewood, this property was well suited to the buggies in its first year because the property was so wet that anything heavier than a buggy would sink in the soft ground, even the towing / recovery vehicles had trouble navigating across to a stuck vehicle, one overly large Rover buggy (really a Mud Bash car) was going fairly quickly across the empty paddock when , _plonk_ it stopped dead in its tracks, sunk to its chassis without leaving any sign of an entry ditch. In 1988 while competing at this event I had another buggy mishap, while travelling at around 100 km/h (~60mph), I hit a drainage ditch the wrong way and end-overed the buggy 3 times and 2 sideways and landing back on its wheels, well the 7 hrs that my navigator and myself spent in Ballarat Base Hospital was a long time, with nothing to eat since about 8 o'clock in the morning till about 2 o'clock the next morning, it was a very long (and hungry) wait.

Near the end of my stint in Rover Scouts the crew started to drift away from buggies, and so did my interest in Rovers, well having a space cage that I purchased second hand from somebody that didn't have a use for it and building it up slowly while I was still in Rovers, nothing prepared me for what Real Off-Road Racing was about or like, I found a buggy club that allowed me to carry on my interest in buggies and racing them against others, this club named V.O.R.R.A. (Victorian Off Road Racing Association Inc.) gave me the chance to build a competitive racing buggy that would hopefully run like the ones that I keenly watched on the American Video's of the sport. This club runs under the rules of the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS) and the rules of FIA, with the modifications to the buggy and the new motor that I was using in place of the 1200cc VW motor, this buggy would "really fly".

I started my first Real Off-Road Race in 1992 at the last Victorian championship race at Puckapunyal, in Rovers you think your going fast, but here you don't know how slow you are going until a class 1 or class 9 pass you, they come up behind you so quickly and overtake you that you don't have time to try to work out how they can see through your dust and your lost in theirs, SCARY, I did try to follow one of them using their orange light as a guide, it works until you start to think if there was a corner that they went around or a big tree, well I stopped and sure enough there was no track and quite a few trees, racing in Rovers has nothing on this, over a 20-120 kilometre lap you usually cannot remember the track well enough for your next lap, also alot can happen in a lap, it could rain and flood some ditches that were dry the last time you went through, or an unpassable section could be re-routed, well anything could and can happen over a lap.....

Now after several years of racing some Club, State and National Championships, I think I am really going places, I may not be Australia's top Off-Road racing driver but I am getting the most enjoyment out of the sport that I love ;)

Catch this link here for the stat's on my Buggy.

Aside from all the above, I have decided to begin to do Karate for fitness and staminar for the long events that I compete in. I am doing the GKR style of Karate and am enjoying it emensly, I am doing this about twice a week, or more on some weeks....

I begun Go-Kan-Ryu (GKR) on the 2nd of August 1999 and proceeded to obtain my yellow tip (First grading) on the 13th of that month, then I upped my level to Yellow belt on the 14th of November, then graded again for my Orange tip on the last week of training for 1999 on the 20th of December 1999.

Thats where I am now, and I am really enjoying this extra activity, I started this through an interest I have had for a long time, but knowing an Instructor at work helped me to actually "give it a go"... Thank you Sensai Sarah :o)