On our way to the rally and Dad (Bill Hunter Jr) and I were chatting about when my brother, Patrick started navigating and what he thought of the whole thing. “He was just as nervous as you are now.” “You’ll be right”. As we approached the car park I noticed that there were many older cars in the field. This is because the George Woods Memorial Trial was combined with a historic rally this year. Apart from the Peugeots, BMW’s and even the odd Mercedes, the usual bunch were there as well; Datsun’s, Escort’s and old tired Mitsubishi Lancer’s. After all the paper work and filling out forms it was time for us, I mean, dad to do the plotting which is basically marking out on the maps where we needed to go, cautions and major points.

After that and many swearwords later, we were all suited up and ready to hit the tough, rocky roads that lay ahead of us. The first stage was just a transport to get us to the start of the first competitive section. I was extremely nervous, in fact on the transport stage, after a short few kilometers we took a wrong turn. We found our way back, but it wasn’t the best thing for my confidence. At the start line I gave a very grumpy man some sheets that I didn’t understand and soon after we were on our way. The first thing I noticed is that driving on dirt roads at night feels terrifyingly fast. Even though the car isn’t that powerful it sure does feel like it in a big, dark forest, especially when I have no control over the car whatsoever, because I am navigating.

Author Lucas Hunter takes seriously to rally competition

A couple of stages in and I was enjoying being in ‘the hot seat’ hugely. The Terratrip was completely out of whack, but I was able to find the main corners and intersections which was all that really mattered in this rally. At the service point, dad had to re-adjust the lights as they were pointing in the wrong direction, and we had to fix one of the wires but apart from that everything was fine. So no more stopping, no more service points, just a long bumpy ride to the finish, towards the end, parts of the roads became ridiculously tough. In one section I thought our rally was over. We slid out on a large patch of gravel into, what felt like a very big ditch. And it was. I was surprised we even made it out and got the car started again. If we had slid into a ditch on the bottom of the hill, our rally would have been over.

The final stage was a nightmare. It started with an extremely steep hill that a couple of big, heavy commodores struggled to climb, and therefore held us up by about ten minutes, followed by the rest of the stage which was pretty much the equivalent of a 4x4 track, there were even water crossings! At one, neither of us realized just how deep the puddle was and came flying through it, causing the car electrics to fail and the engine to run on three cylinders for about a minute. But that didn’t matter. In fact it was fun, and the little Suzuki battled on for another rally bringing us safely to the finish of the rally. It was an experience I will never forget and rallying is something I will always do, for as long as I possibly can. We finished above halfway in the field and I won the rookies ramble, which is about half the rally for my age group. “So, dad, when is our next one?”