IIt’s no secret that people come from all over the country to participate in our various Drag Challenge marathons, but the approximately 8,000 kilometers covered by Bruce Howie in less than three weeks for our recent Drag Challenge weekend were daunting. a higher level.

The adventure began when Bruce had to pick up his ute XL from a warehouse in Kyabram, Victoria, before DCW started. Bruce now lives in Alice Springs and decided to use DCW as the perfect excuse to bring the car to his new home after the event.

“When I moved here [Alice Springs], I had nowhere to store the car, so originally I left it behind,” Bruce said. But now I have friends [up here] who changed that, and I also became close to the club that runs the drag strip here, so after Drag Challenge I decided to go home.

To get to the XL, Bruce jumped into his van at Alice and headed to Kyabram, via a stopover in South Australia to pick up a new hood for the ute. “I gave the hood to Shane and Carly Dale to do the hood conversion and have it painted, and Shane called me just before the event and said he was ready,” he said. he declares.

“So I thought, ‘you beauty,’ and grabbed it on the way down!”

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Bruce then successfully completed the three days of DCW 2022, which included a further 1000km of road driving between Heathcote and Mildura. “It was another great event; it’s a real honor for all the guys and girls who put it on and came out to make it what it is,” he said.

Bruce took home the Quickest Stick-Shift award, rowing the gears through the XL’s four Jerico gears to run a pair of 10s, thanks to a low-end 302 sucking in 150 gasps of laughter.

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While most would have loaded their race cars onto trailers after a hard-fought weekend of drag-and-drive action to get home, for Bruce the longest leg of his mammoth road trip was yet to come. .

“I obviously left the van at Kyabram so I could drive the ute to Alice, and decided to go up via NSW and Queensland to catch up with some people and really make the most of the trip,” he said. declared.

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The nearly 6,000km road trip from Heathcote to Alice saw him stop at countless local towns and reunite with new and old friends. “A big part of the road trip was meeting everyone I had connected with online via The Thongslappers podcast, and I also wanted to take the ute back to my old high school in Queensland.”

That’s because Bruce originally bought the ute in the high school groundskeeper’s shed and wanted to recreate a photography get-together he’d dreamed of all those years. “The shed he was sitting in was still there at school, so I managed to sneak him in there for a photo, which is exactly what I wanted,” he said.

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It also stopped at one of the hugely popular classic car rallies at Joe’s Diner at Eagle Farm in Brisbane, before driving through NSW and then crossing back country roads to bring it back to the line. arrived at Alice.

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“The scenery was epic, and meeting all the people along the way is what really makes it special,” he said. “The other part was showing people that you don’t need a big fancy diesel engine and a huge caravan to see this part of Australia. I just swag it for most of the trip, which goes to show that you can just walk away with whatever you’ve got without having all the fancy kit. Go ahead and do it!