The Alpine Rally, organised by the Historic Rally Association and directed by Stuart Lister, was held on November 13-15.

Portman again!

This year the Alpine moved its headquarters to the East Gippsland TAFE Forestec venue and expanded to three days with two “prologue” stages on Friday afternoon. These counted to the results but also determined starting order for Saturday. Saturday comprised 12 daylight stags across to Orbost and east of Orbost. The night again started with the tarmac stage, 33.6 km up to Buchan, the last time this road would be used in an Alpine. Four more short stages took crews back to Lake Entrance. Sunday offered up seven daylight stages around Nowa Nowa for an event total of 355 competitive kms. Weather was kind and all stages ran.

Portman and Runnalls again fronted in a borrowed Commodore and won by a comfortable margin of 1 minute 42 seconds. Their win was aided by a stage win on the infamous tarmac stage when they audaciously changed the car’s suspension for tarmac at the Orbost service and then changed back to grave during the short 15 minute Buchan service. They won the stage despite a hair-raising spin. The Stanza of T Hooper and Tara Mowett was not so luckym leaving the road and landing so far down a ravine that a crane was needed the next day to retrieve the wrecked car (crew OK). With the stage win an average of almost 110 km/h, Stuart Lister decided that the stage be retired to Alpine folklore!

The podium was completed by Brad Goldsborough ad Arron Topliff in a Datsun 1600 and Jeff David and Grant Geelan in the Porsche.