The Salvos Surfboard Billycart

 

The Salvos Surfboard Billycart - link to Podcast

Every year the Salvos put on a men’s camp and on the Saturday afternoon there is a Billycart race.  One year the team at a coastal salvo welfare center build the world’s first ever Salvo Surfboard Billycart.  It was EPIC!

 

Every year the salvos put on a men’s weekend to try to encourage guys to build relationships and form community.  We get together at a Salvo Convention Centre in Collaroy in Sydney and listen to speakers talking about manly bonding and some of the issues we blokes struggle with, like not listening to our wives and watching too much footy.  We have time to hang out, share meals, play cards and have some fun with things like a trivia night or a red faces night.  But the highlight for many, is the billycart race.  Each group of guys from the various salvo expressions across NSW are encouraged to build a billycart that we race down a steep hill on the Saturday afternoon.   There are often spectacular crashes and close calls as we roar down the hill like excited little kids.

The guys take this very seriously and some groups have welders and mechanics in the team and they often come up with veritable works of art. 

Well a few years ago, I was based at a beachside salvo center at a place called Maroubra and we had a few guys interested in going to the men’s camp and so we decided to have a go at building a billycart.  We had a brainstorming session and some bright spark came up with the idea of building a billycart from an old surf board we had lying around.  We were at a surf beach so it made sense to run with the theme.  It was a bit busted up but still looked OK and so the journey began. 

We found an old trolley and managed to secure the wheels from this to the front with a solid steel pole rising up to form a kind of steering wheel.  I had one of Sue’s old wheelchairs kicking around at home, so I stole the big wheels off this to make the rear section.  For weeks the guys at Maroubra built and rebuilt this billycart, coming up with new designs and strategies to make the steering mechanism work and finding ways to incorporate the fins at the back and give it enough strength to hold a man without snapping in half.  Now initially, we thought we would stand up on the surfboard but we soon discovered that there were certain safety specifications for the billycart to be allowed to race.   Standing was not allowed and we were required to have working brakes.  This had not occurred to me as brakes on my childhood billycarts comprised of a shoe skidding along the concrete or the bushes at the bottom of the street.  

Undeterred, we constructed a cable braking system and a seat and made our way to the camp with the world’s first ever Salvo Surfboard Billycart.

Well the excitement was palpable at the starting blocks and I was designated the first driver as I was older and had had a good life.   Photographers lined the sidelines expecting a spectacular crash and I was soon shoved from the starting block and sent plummeted at high speed down the track.  All was going well until the first bend, but controlling this aquatic juggernaut became too much for me and I rolled and tumbled down the hill much to the cheers and delight of the crowd.  The cameras clicked furiously and a classic photo was taken. 

I managed to get the contraption back on its wheels and complete the race with only one more stack at the bottom and no serious injuries.  A second driver, seeing that I managed to survive the first run, volunteered to have a go next and he absolutely nailed it.  Controlling the board to perfection and managing to achieve the fastest time for the day.  This along with the unique design of our machine and his crash at the bottom which incorporated a fairly solid tree, secured us first place and we won a BBQ.  Unfortunately Sue’s wheel chair wheels did not survive the second crash and crumpled into a buckled mess at the base of the aforementioned tree.

The next year we rebuilt the billycart with proper bike wheels with brakes that worked better and incorporated a hammock, thongs as foot rests and gave it a lick of paint.  We won first prize again that year as well.

Building the billycart was a lot of fun and created great connections with the guys at the salvos who had heaps of challenges.  We solved the problems associated with its design and construction and it culminated in us all attending a camp and having the time of our lives riding it and crashing it.  It’s a memory we all share and it helped guys who are often excluded from such experiences feel the thrill and creativity of an adventure and the comradery of working on a unique and interesting project together.

Next year we thought we might try to make one out of a coffin and dress the driver up as a zombie.

But we are all a bit too mature for such silliness and the idea came to dead halt.

Bless ya,

Bryce