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Far North Focus

October

2025

Matt & Bev Sharpe’s 1952 Sunbeam Talbot Tourer

Chairman

Committee: Tom Deverall, Keith Lyndsell, Naomi Mason, Christine Squire, Margaret Deverall, Murray Squire, Winston Matthews, Steve Edwards, Claude Ilton

The full list of the elected officers is circulated with the minutes of the 2025 Annual General Meeting

If at any time you see things at the Clubrooms requiring maintenance, please let Steve know. Ph 09 401 6239

Calendar of Club Events 2025/26

11th Monthly Meeting 1.00pm with Parts Shed open at 2pm.

18th Dunny Run Northland Club

15th Wheels of Mayhem in Kaitaia 22nd Working Bee

May 2026

9th Monthly Meeting 1.00pm with Parts Shed open at 2pm 10th Mother’s Day Rally

June 2026

13th Monthly Meeting 1.00pm with Parts Shed open at 2pm. 27th Molloy Trophy

Club Notices

Dunny Run

Saturday 18 October

Saturday 18th Dunny Run Bay of Islands area.

FNVCCC members pse note it is a 10 am start.

Meet at the Hundertwasser toilet carpark, Kawakawa prior to 10 am.

Bakery opposite the carpark. Toilets available.

Please bring your own chairs and lunch.

Picnic lunch at finish of run.

The back ground of the Dunny Run…

This is an event where the Far North Branch and the Northland Branch compete for the Dunny Seat Trophy. This event was initiated upon the opening of the famous Hundertwasser toilets in Kawakawa.

The Vintage Car Clubs were invited to participate in the opening celebrations. We now have an interclub rally to commemorate this event and a toilet seat was donated for the competition trophy.

The setting of the rally alternates yearly between the Far North Branch and the Northland Branch

Daffodil Day Contribution

As some sharp readers have noted and queried, an email from Kaaren Smylie letting us know of the wonderful totals received, had an anomaly for FNVCCC readers.

I suspect as all totals reach Kaaren, an update will be received and most likely the anomaly corrected.

I was delighted to discover how many members read their emails so carefully. Well done, FNVCCC members. I’m proud of you.

Yearly VCC Subscriptions

All Members have been emailed or posted their annual subscription invoices They were emailed over Friday 5th Sept and Monday 8th September. Invoices that were posted were mailed by 10th September.

Subs invoices are due to be paid by 31st October 2025. Reminder statements will be posted in November.

If members have not received their subs invoice by the end of September, please advise them to contact National Office.

Please pay these directly to VCC NZ. Not our local branch

The Far North Branch of the VVC does have a policy that pets are not brought to any Club events. We do ask that this policy is respected please.

A head’s up… March for 2026

As mentioned in the minutes from our last meeting, the 2026 March activities as outlined in our calendar for the Club, will be placed on hold.

Many members will have left for Nelson before our planned monthly meeting and the Nelson event doesn’t conclude until the day of our planned Northern Captain’s run- 21st March.

There is nothing to stop the ‘team’ who are keeping the ‘Far North stabilised’ while others galivant, from thinking about a run or gathering, you would like to organise to get you out and about and your machines revving.

Who is up for the challenge?

Next Club Meeting

11th October 1 pm

Parts shed open.

2nd Saturday every month

Caffeine & Classics

Sunday 19th October 9.30 am

Ka Uri Awanui

3rd Sunday every month

From the chair…

It has been a busy month or two for the club - ending August with a highly successful Daffodil Day in Kaikohe. We all need to be very proud of our effort there. Well done.

Father’s Day Rally, which was organised by Kelly and Jos Archer was also a great run, attended by 24 members.

We also had Tony’s 96 yr old Dad join us - special for Father’s Day.

"Find

group

people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life."

‘Our ancestors navigated the oceans using the stars and here we are missing our exits with a GPS!’

The number of members attending monthly meetings, runs/rallies, has also increased - good show! There’s been a lot of new interest in our club this year with several new members which is very pleasing.

September 17th saw 20 club members travel to Dargaville with an invitation to join with them to celebrate their 21st anniversary of their midweek runs, as their weekend ventures include the Whangarei (Northland) club rallies. We travelled to Ruawai and visited a plastics factory and onto some

interesting back roads and some stunning scenery.

Their celebratory lunch was held at their club rooms.

An afternoon option of a trip to Glinks Gully was available which most of our crew took advantage of.

Again, the weather was in our favour. We’d like to have more of these excursions ‘out of town’ as the interaction of club members is quite something to experience.

I’d like to thank the Dargaville folks for their hospitality, they certainly know how to entertain.

Tom

Southern Captain’s Report

I think the greatest event this month was nothing to do with all the great club activities.

It was the introduction of 1-year WOFs for cars over 40 years old! So far, I have gained a new 1 yr COF on 34 yr old Bus/ motorhome and hope for a WOF on my Mini in the next few weeks.

Now for the important stuff.

The club finished last month with the extremely successful Daffodil Day in Kaikohe where we had a great number of club cars. Participation of other local car clubs was the icing on the cake enabling us to make a healthy donation of $1542.50 to the cancer society.

I don't know how many members read the email from the VCC National Daffodil day coordinator giving details of the various club efforts. Our club was praised for its efforts but unfortunately, they called us the Northland VCC.

This month was another very busy time with a great Father's Day run out to Rawene, thanks to Jos and Kelly.

A week later the club meeting, where it was great to see the socializing after the meeting with no one in a rush to leave.

This was followed by a mid-week club trip to the Dargaville club's Birthday Celebration run.

About 20 members participated, with most members staying 2 nights in the old Northern Wairoa hotel.

Old acquaintances were renewed and new friendships were made.

It was fantastic to see so many long serving members taking part.

I won’t go into it here as I’m sure it will be well covered elsewhere in other reports.

Another extremelysuccessful event. On that note I conclude and look forward to next months meeting and the Dunny Run.

Murray S.

Father’s Day Run

Marg D.

A big thanks to Joss & Kelly for an excellent Father’s Day Run.

About 30 of us gathered in the Mitre 10 carpark at Waipapa, in amongst showers and set off for a trek which took us through the beautiful country side of Waimate North, Ohaeawai, Kaikohe ending the tour at a delightful spot on the Hokianga Harbour –Rawene. The weather improved as the day got longer and we all arrived without any mishaps.

Along the way we had many challenging things to watch for, find and record.

Our ordered lunch meals were served very smartly and there was lots of chat and laughter shared.

Another special day out.

Several of us took the Rawene ferry home so by then we had done a round trip and thoroughly enjoyed the day.

Our winners were Dereck and Adrienne Mackay.

2nd place getters were Murray & Gloria Cormack.

And Murray & Chris Squire were placed 3rd .

The down side of the day was Tony finding someone had removed the treasured brass screw lid from his recently refurbished petrol can, he has on his Chrysler.

So disappointing.

Here’s hoping the replacement one looks somewhere near ok, once Tony has had time to spruce it up.

FAR NORTH DARGAVILLE JAUNT 2025

Dave DUIRS

The Northland VCC Branch has a group of members in Dargaville who for 40 years have been arranging some independent events in their area and our Branch started having a “camping” weekend with them, alternating the hosting yearly. The Dargaville folk initiated a mid-week run and our team discovered that they were to celebrate 21 years of this so reckoned we should join them to reminisce about the camp outs which had discontinued a few years ago. The Dargaville folk, led by Claudia and Bruce Jeffery approved of the idea and smartly organised a spot-on 21st Birthday event.

Most of the 20 Far North participants cranked up their buggies and headed south on the 16th having booked in to the historic Northern Wairoa Hotel. Some of us had been there before, but it’s still quite an experience to stay. It’s a huge old 1800s place with a busy public bar, comfortable fire placed lounge and very big dining room sporting a massive boardroom table at one end.

Accommodation involves tackling a huge, steep bannistered staircase to several long passages from which small rooms eventuate with VERY basic facilities, some with simple ensuites (one member queried not having a booked ensuite, but hadn’t realised that what looked like just another cupboard door was the toiletries department),old wooden sash windows looking out over rusty roofs and creaking floorboards that sounded like coins falling out of pockets. The bed was good, the TV worked this time (we didn’t use it, but last time the guy came around well after we had gone to sleep to fix it!)

and the kitchenette around the corner proved a source of strong fried onions the first night and burned toast the next morning… apparently the establishment caters for permanent residents to help keep the show afloat. SO once settled in with our old cars conveniently and safely parked offroad behind the pub, we gathered to wet the whistles and flex the tongues followed by a good meal served up by a small but delightful team.

Claudia had us on an early start next day so some breakfasted from the onion/toast smoke while others had the comfort of a café just nearby. The weather was good and we assembled by the boat club on the mighty muddy Wairoa River to inspect the vehicles which had grown in number with some local cars.

With detailed rally sheets in hand, we headed south through great dairy and kumara country to Ruawai where we were hosted by a delightful young man who showed us around the Portstar Plastics factory. This was indeed an eyeopener of a relatively small outfit in a small rural town pumping out plastic mouldings with big orders.

Basically, they build steel moulds for things like rubbish bins, electric fuse boxes, anchor collars for power poles. These are attached to a thingy like a big rotating clothes line, the measured plastic powder is tipped in the appropriate mould,

the top clamped on and the thing set rotating horizontally slowly so that the powder gets spread on the walls.

The whole thing then goes rotating in to an oven where the plastic “liquid” then spreads on the walls as the moulds rotate and after a controlled time the moulds cool and the products come out to be further processed to the finished article. Initially I was confused as I could not see the method for applying the material as I knew only of injection moulding, but this is a relatively simple process which sort of ‘spreads” the material over the surface evenly.

The small team of about 15 is currently very busy with some big power company orders but being reliant on oil based raw materials and high energy needs are very cost conscious so I trust they can be around for a good while yet. Also here, we were joined by many more local VCC vehicles so the street looked fairly impressive.

Back on board we had a navigated route through large super flat dairy farms on the Ruawai flats, past a big new solar farm which has panels which follow the sun for optimum efficiency, on to gravel in to rolling farmland featuring an extinct volcanic cone or two. The Aero Club was our RSA catered lunch stop where we mingled and chatted at our leisure, highlighted by the cutting of 21st cake by our Winston Matthews and Dargaville’s George Tier.

The afternoon run was out west, Glinks Gully way where a 3.3million cubic metre water reservoir has been completed for horticultural irrigation and water for Dargaville 20+ kms

away. Unusually, this is not a natural catchment but has been created, lined with plastic and filled by pumping from several streams. Amongst those with whom we met over our visit it seemed that most were not very enthusiastic about the project as they deemed the connection costs and water costs may be prohibitive. Hopefully somebody has done the right sums and it will be the perceived game changer for drought and water security.

In the evening, we all gathered with a good number of our hosts at the old pub around the big boardroom table with overflow on to another so were a big mob with plenty to chat about after a busy day.

The meals were good with some of us trying dishes we hadn’t tried before and desserts were had by several of us who probably shouldn’t have but they too were good even though my ice-cream sundae was just a bowl of ice-creams boosted by a greedy extra scoop for luck! The single waitress worked very hard and was very pleasant.

Some of us chatted in the lounge for a while before climbing the steep stairs, negotiating the creaky passage, sorting out the noisy sash windows and snoozing off after a great day.

Early next morning Claudia had us down at the wharf where we were

hosted on HDML Kupara a WW11 defence launch ex RNZN patrol boat now one of the last original ones left. It served until 1994, was probably used by Fullers for a while, lay derelict for ages and is now being fully restored after a relaunch in 2017.

We were able to go below decks to experience the very cramped crew conditions and for those of us who could fit through and down the hatches we had the chance to be between two huge Mark 6 two stroke, super charged Foden engines which sounded very sweet when started up.

This is one huge project and being one of only two in original sea going condition out of the original 463 worldwide she is certainly worth saving.

It was then time for a weary bunch to head home and Claudia farewelled us with a box full of tomato plants surplus to her needs……she thought of everything and we thank her and her team for giving us such a good Dargaville time.

I think most vehicles behaved. One was coughing, another missing a few beats, ours developed a leaking master cylinder and an unnamed one thought the Mangamukas too steep and sulked but after a tow over the top by ‘NZTA’ it thought better of being disgraced and purred all the way home.

We look forward to perhaps meeting up with the Dargaville crew but perhaps not camping the old way as some of the bones might complain.

Thanks to our team for working with our southern neighbours for a pleasant visit to kumara country.