The Undead Car Club

CHOPPED ROD & CUSTOM SHOW, OCTOBER 5-6-7 2012 NEWSTEAD, VICTORIA

The Chopped festival proved itself once again to be one of this country’s most original and well organised events without being overbearing with rules and regulations. The laid back, common sense attitude of the organisers and visitors makes for an extremely fun and carefree weekend.

Myself and Nachos arrived on the Friday around lunch time, thinking we were going to be decidedly early – we were wrong. By this time, all of the camp sites on the top level camping area were full and we were directed to the oval campsite or “Siberia” as it is affectionately named. We picked a nice spot near the gate and set up the caravan. It must be said that we went in style this year, having borrowed the folks’ caravan which is very nice and quite large, so we kind of stood out amongst the camper trailers, tents and swags that slowly filled the campsite throughout the day. But screw it, we were comfortable, and when the rain came on the Saturday we were very grateful for the warm and dry shelter.

For the entire three days it was near impossible to escape the sound of rumbling V8s and tricked up sixes from the massive collection of pre ’65 customs and period correct hot rods which were really the only rules for vehicle entry.

On the Friday dust blew and on the Saturday mud flew as entrants put their awesome cars through their paces down the dirt dragstrip and around the old school flat track speedway. It was fantastic to see on the Sunday that these amazing cars had been used as they should be, many covered in two inches of mud, rather than being treated as dust free garage queens. These cars are built to be driven and driven they were, many to an inch of their lives. It is this mentality that makes Chopped the great festival that it is. Couple this with the great music acts that provided a soundtrack for the entire weekend with the Casino Rumblers and Lanie Lane  the stand out performers.

The fantastically decorated Tiki bar provided loads of interesting cocktails for the punters as well as loads of food stalls providing a plenty of grub to keep everyone well fed. Even the vegans were catered for this year much to Ms Nachos’ delight, with a vegetarian burger and noodle stand along side other burger and pizza stands, as well as the mess hall run by the Newstead footy club. Hobo joes provided much needed and delicious coffee to cure the cold and ease the hangovers of the previous night’s festivities. The only negatives for us were the lack of dunnys near the Siberia campsite and the dicks camped behind us playing shit techno all night – at a hot rod show for fuck sake, hot rod show = rock n roll/rockabilly music ….simple.

All in all a great weekend with three of our members attending, and hopefully we can get a few more members and create a club campsite next year, as many others do, and fly The Undead Car Club colours… yep black!

Check out some of the pics from the weekend.