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Mackay businessmen are taking the wheel and rallying to raise funds to support people with a disability.
Rally drivers will tackle some of the most uncharted terrain in Queensland, driving between 400km to 600km a day starting from St George and crossing the Simpson Desert.
The 7000km trek will end in Charleville after taking in Birdsville, Innamincka, Cameron Corner and Tobooburra.
But, the rally itself is just the reward.
The Old Bulls team organiser Blair Hall has been involved in the Great Endeavour Rally for the past four years and was passionate about support for people with disabilities.
SA Tourism travel blog
Meet Doug Sprigg, an outback pilot who spends his days flying over the wild frontiers of his backyard, the vast South Australian outback. His flight path covers 800,000 square kilometres, an area bigger than Belgium, Netherlands and France combined. The 66-year-old runs and lives at Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in the farthest reaches of the Flinders Ranges and says it’s craggy peeks, towering ridgelines and sweeping gorges are best explored from the air.
A diesel mechanic and pilot by trade, and historian, geologist, and biologist in knowledge alone, for 30 years, he’s taken to the sky to share his love for Arkaroola. Out here, there’s no traffic control, flight attendants or flight service. It’s Doug, his Cessna 207, a 650-metre airstrip, and some of the most pristine and untouched country left in Australia. It’s a place for those who want a little more.
The Problem
In the U.S., the regulation governing the strength of automotive seats is Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 207. It requires that the seats in your car be capable of withstanding a force applied forwards or backwards that’s equivalent to 20 times the weight of the seat itself, but allows for 40 degrees of seat deflection under that strain. That’s a problem because that force is static, not dynamic (equivalent to slowly pushing or pulling on the seat really hard), which fails to account for the incredibly rapid acceleration objects inside a vehicle experience in a crash. It s also just not strong enough.
Craig Tansley10:00, May 10 2021
SUPPLIED
The Classic Safari Company runs five-day “Aussie Outback Pub Crawls” that take you 4000km across the outback encompassing three states and visiting eight pubs.
The outback comprises 70 per cent of Australia – that s 5.6 million square kilometres; half the size of Western and Eastern Europe combined. This back of beyond defines Australia, and Australians, and yet for most of us, it s as foreign as any country. Who among us has ever really seen it, let alone know where it quite begins and where it quite ends? Getting there from a capital can takes days of driving; and once you re there it takes days to get anywhere else. That s why it s largely the domain of adventurous, time-rich grey nomads in four-wheel drives with enough grunt to pull their caravan through the heart of Australia.