With the difficulties of access to forests in the north-east, due to the Hancock lockout of the pine forests, Stuart Lister made the decision to move the event to East Gippsland. The area was well known from Akademos Rallies. A bit over 100 km of daylight special stages were planned for Saturday afternoon but two were cancelled. The long night division was planned to be almost 200 km competitive but the first 70 km stage was cancelled. The 68 km Nunnett Road stage and the final 125 km stage up Angora Range Road and down Engineers Road both ran. There were fond memories of the 1979 Akademos which used similar stages. These stages would test the endurance of drivers, cars and especially tyres.

 

 So after over 300 km of stages, Brian Semmens and Dan Parry emerged as winners in their Nissan 200SX, a mere 8 seconds ahead of Graeme Wise and Rob Beekman in their Datsun 200B. The NSW crew of Kari Dirickx and Glenn Murray completed the podium in a Datsun 1600. The event had attracted 87 starters, 62 of which competed all stages. It was the beginning of the Alpine’s love affair with East Gippsland.