Off the Mark at Last!!!!!

DAY 1: DARWIN - KATHERINE (317 km / 197 mi)
The big day arrived. We got up at 5am…after checking the time every hour, just in case the cell phone alarm didn’t go off! Took a quick cold shower to wake up, did the last of the packing, loaded up the cars and headed off into the dusky glow of the tropical dawn. The humidity was still high, but the temperature was less than 90 F.

We arrived at the allotted time to be greeted by chaos, with solar cars still arriving, some trying to leave and some still in bits on the ground. The disorganisation was still working well. Nobody knew where we were supposed to go and finally the Greenfleet cars were bundled into a vacant lot two car parks away from the action. Any sort of display was pointless because the spectators didn’t know where we were.

Finally the chaotic melee evolved into a complex, near miss mechanical ballet, whose intricate moves were accompanied by shouted commands, rude gestures and muttered curses. The way finally clear, the Greenfleet cars were moved to within striking distance of the assembled multitudes, so we unrolled the Team Ethanol banner and started spruiking our message to anybody who would listen. Met up with two Mackay couples who were in Darwin on holidays and had heard about their local team on one of the Darwin radio stations. We even got to meet…drum roll, blare of trumpets…Hans Tholstrup, the man who single handedly started the World Solar Challenge two decades ago. He must be close to his 70’s by now, but still has fire in his belly and looks as fit as a mallee bull.

The tension builds as the solar cars start to leave the start line at one minute intervals, but tragedy strikes one of the favourites, which has some sort of electrical haemorrhage and refuses to start. We don’t know the outcome, but if they can get it started they’ll have to start at the back of the grid and if they can’t then they’ve spent all that time, effort, money and travel for nothing.

Finally it’s the Greenfleet turn and our hearts rev up, as does the engine in front of us and the adrenalin kicks in like a blast of pure ethanol. We make our way to the start line, starter announces us, the flag drops and we’re on our way through cheering crowds which line the streets all the way out of town and in enthusiastic patches for miles down the track.

It was quite slow going in a lot of places, having to negotiate our way around some of the slower solar cars and their support vehicles, which travel in front and behind them. We noticed some on the side of the road in trouble early and heard on ABC Radio that one had had a major embarrassing “oops”…he crashed into the back of his own support vehicle!

We got a call from radio’s Australia All Over, which goes out every Sunday morning Australia wide and Syd spoke on air with “Macca”, telling him all about the event and our part in it.

Changed drivers at Adelaide River and continued on to the first checkpoint at Katherine, where we had lunch and the Greenfleet cars set up a display for the community. That was the end of the formal journey for the day and the car performed brilliantly. Syd has set it up so that we can monitor fuel consumption on the fly, distance travelled and amount left in the tank. The fuel consumption is actually better than we expected and doesn’t seem to vary whether we have the aircon on or not…now that’s a real bonus because the temperature is really starting to soar. We’ve decided to run the car as it would happen in real life, rather than some airy fairy academic exercise of no aircon, all windows up and travelling at unrealistic slow speeds.

We finished the day with a trip up Katherine Gorge, which is a huge channel carved out of sandstone with rock faces sometime hundreds of feet high. It’s actually a series of 13 gorges, each one more spectacular than the last. It’s populated with huge numbers of freshwater crocodiles, diving birds, kangaroos and fish.

Today was only about 200 miles but tomorrow is a biggie, about 450 miles down to Tennant Creek. This will give us a much better look at the fuel consumption.