Well, the big challenge is all over for another year.
This time the mighty Country F Class team won both F Open and F Standard. I will have to chase QRA up for the scores, as I was too busy ribbing the City shooters of Craig McGowan, Kelvin Bell, Lindsay Schneider, Kate Lapin, John Tracey and Coach Jenni Hausler to record the margins or scores.
We were meant to shoot 2 x 300 yds on Saturday afternoon, but we were smashed by a storm about 90% of the way through the 1st 300. The rest of the afternoon was cancelled, and those who couldn't finish their first 300 had to do so at 8am on Sunday morning.
Sunday duly arrived, looking quite threatening again. While some gathered at 300 to shoot their first stage, the rest moved back to 800 yards, as the 1000 yard area, and 900 yard carpark looked completely unserviceable due to earthworks.
Unfortunately, someone amongst the "powers that be" wouldnt let that happen, ...........it made far too much sense........and all shooters were ordered to go to the 1000 yard mound , post haste.
Visiting shooters from interstate wont quite recognise "the old girl" at the 1000 yard mark.
The Govt apparently simply ordered the QRA to accept the "sound barrier" that they were about to build using dirt, and gave them a date that the trucks would start dumping it. The management team had to close the back gate entrance and sit back aqnd watch the earthworks.
Add a couple of inches of rain, and we had a bloody mess.
So on Sunday it was very much "in the raw"......bare dirt,......ie mud, no car access, and parking 200-300 yards away around the Toilet amongst the trees. Carry your gear the 200-300 yards...depending on the luck of your park.....and the ONLY thing left of what we remembered was the grass mound itself
There will be no car parking behind the mound, just a waiting area, with a through road at the base of the new man made mountain.
The near neighbours who lived over Old Cleveland Road used to enjoy a view of 1000 yards of mown rifle range, and another klm or so of trees and fresh air. The Government replaced that with a white dirt mountain that is hideous to look at. I guess it gives us an idea of what it would be like living next to the security wall around Jerusalem
So while it rained heavily again, and forced us to a 30 minute cease-fire, this was a selection event for the Qld F Class Teams, and the shooting had to go on.
That is Lowell Tillack from Goondiwindi laying down on the far side of "ace" Country Coach Andrew Pearce in the photo above, about to shoot his way into the record books. Lowell used a 6 Dasher and a 6.5 x 284 to take out the Champion of Champions on Saturday morning, and then record the highest score in F Open, to lead our Country Team to victory with his 177/180.
Other Country Team members were Julie and Cam McEwan, Col Sutton from Goondiwindi (Lowell's B.I.L.) and myself.
Hopefully Graham Sells might be able to chime in with some details of the winning F Standard team.
FTR was included, and in a novel but very workable idea, the two small teams.....which happened to include Australian reps Nikki Slee and Mark Fairbairn for City, and Daryl Barlow and Jason Mayers representing Country, were coached by the highly skilled international Match Rifle shooter Kerrod Lindley from Pheasants Creek. City just got up, helped along by Wild Dogs 178/180
Mark shot 185 Juggernaughts at 300 and the first 1000, and then went to 200gr . He also took out the FTR Champion of Champions on Saturday morning shooting against his arch rival Mr Barlow, so is maintaining great form.
Unfortunately our Country TR Team went down to their latte sipping City cousins this year.
The event had a very good buzz about it this year, with strong Country nominations, which kept our "Chief", TR shooter Jim Breeze busy, and probably took his concentration of the V bull . Next year we will hopefully win all 4, and add FTR and TR to the pile !!
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