Bathurst is over for another year after Holden takes the crown

Well after a fun filled week at a chilly Mount Panorama for the Bathurst 1000 V8’s; I’m finally home… As usual we worked hard long hours, but also found some time to let our hair down…

I’ve just been going through the 800 odd photos I took of the cars roaring around the mountain, which I managed to take while walking around the bottom of the mountain in some downtime yesterday… My media accreditation allowed me to get up close to the track (and the cars) which I haven’t done since I did production camera up there back in the 90’s… I’m in the process of going through them and posting them on Facebook; but above is a photo of the eventual winner of this years Race– Car 2 Garth Tander and Will Davidson from HRT. While I’m a Holden supporter through and through, I did feel a bit of disappointment for Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup who despite looking like they could rewrite history at towards the end of the Race, ended up finishing 5th in their last drive for the Blue oval at the Mountain… Next year they’ll be driving for the General…

At the end of the day we did the news from the HRT garage and managed to meet the boys and get our photo taken with them (left)… One of the perks of working in news which is always great…


Last night was a quiet one, with dinner again at the Church… I ended up having a couple of pieces of Garlic pizza and about half of a 9” pizza with prawns … All was good for that meal; but lunch was another story… I was eating a brown egg and lettuce sandwich… I’d had one half before I went out to take some pictures and then had the other when I got back… About 2/3’s of the way through it I started hiccupping (like I did with the raisin toast the week before); but this time I could feel a bit of pain… A sip of water only made it worse; I tried burping and coughing to no avail so I went up to the fridges in the compound and got some coke… To my amazement after only a sip of it; it was cleared… I sat down for a few minutes before heading back and having a bit of pasta salad for the rest of my lunch… that was fine… - how strange the band can be sometimes…


Today was spent packing up the shed and satellite kit; before heading home to Sydney; along with the rest of those that had been up the mountain… This year we didn’t leave until 11 so I though we may have got a good run; but the usual bottle necks at Kelso and Blackheath, as well as a lunch stop in Lithgow, turned it into a LOOONNNNGGGG 4 ½ hour drive… By the time we got back to Epping all we wanted to do was dump everything out of the vehicles and head home for a well deserved rest…

Before I go tonight, to the left is a photo for Arnie (a colleague of mine who is the News Ops Manager at 7 Melbourne) of me in Bathurst after over 4 weeks banded and 20kg's lighter... It doesnt show a lot as it was sooooooo cold up there and I had many layers of clothes on, but it does show how I am starting to change - especially around the face... The other photo above with the HRT boys probably shows its better...

Ok the media accreditation vest is a little tight, but it was only a large, and its been the first time since I started covering the V8's that I have actually been able to zip the vest up, so I was pretty chuffed about that.


I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again tonight before and early start in the morning prior to my late morning band fill and physiotherapists appointment at the clinic…


I’ll post again tomorrow night after my first band fill… Back to fluids for a day then mushies for another day before seeing how I go with the first fill


Until then