Easily the biggest and best Gresford Billy Cart Derby in 19 years.
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That was the glowing summation from organiser Graham Murphy as nearly 140 drivers in carts of all shapes and sizes – and speeds – took to the road on Saturday.
Flashback: The best billy carts of years gone by
“Last year we had 80 carts entered, so we nearly doubled that this year which was an amazing effort,” Mr Murphy said. “It has been getting bigger every year but that surprised us.
Last year we had 80 carts entered, so we nearly doubled that this year which was an amazing effort
- Graham Murphy
“We had a driver coming down from Queensland to race, and quite a few from Sydney.
“The crowd was really big too. It’s hard to estimate because people come and go, but we would have had 5000 people, maybe more, throughout the day.
“The good thing obviously is that most of them are tourists which brings money into the town.”
But the carts weren’t the only attraction this year.
For the first time this year a new event was added to the program – dummy spitting.
“It was $2 a spit, and I haven’t seen the final figures as yet, but I would think there would have been somewhere between 300 ands 400 people entered,” Mr Murphy said.
“The thing about dummy spitting is that we can all do it - we all have done it. But it was great fun and will definitely be back next year for our 20th anniversary.”
If there is a down side to the runaway success of the billy cart derby weekend – it runs in conjunction with the Dungog rodeo – it’s the sheer logistics of it all.
“It’s getting so big, and has been going so long that a lot of our volunteers are starting to step down,” Mr Murphy said.
“That means we have to subcontract a lot of the jobs we used to do ourselves through volunteers. Obviously that comes at a cost – and as our profits go back to community groups, that takes money out of their pockets.”
My Murphy admitted that it might be getting to a time where they have to cap the number of entries in the derby.
The more entrants means a longer time for the road to be closed to traffic which is proving problematic.
“We’ll have to talk about that for next year,” he admitted. “Obviously the more entrants you have the more time it takes.
“But don’t worry. Our 20th anniversary event will be something special.”