MBCNSW January 2025 night drive – Heathcote to Campbelltown via Picton Road
Thursday was the first MBCNSW night drive for 2025. For scheduling reasons, we held it a week earlier than normal. Our meeting place was Heathcote McDonalds. McDonalds is always a good meeting place, as it is well lit, easy to find and has clean toilets.
It had been very rainy earlier in the week, so I wasn’t sure what attendance would be like. January night drives can be a bit unpredictable due to people being away, but as long as the weather is good, summer is a great time to drive at night.
Even though it was an official MBCNSW event, I decided to take my Jaguar E-Type. It was the perfect evening to drive the car, and I didn’t get to drive it as much as I had hoped last year due to the weather. In the Australian summer, it is best to drive convertibles at night.
We had seven cars start the drive, which I thought was pretty good. There were a pair of 380SECs, a 450SL, a 300E, a 320CE Cab, a W203 and of course my Jaguar.
The route took us down the old Princes Highway to Picton Road, where we drove over to Menangle road and then up to Chubby Buns Campbelltown. These roads are great at night, for most of the route, traffic is minimal and they are great rods to cruise along. This drive was a variation of one we did back in 2023. That drive was on a cold evening in the middle of winter, so it only had a few attendees. Based on that, it seemed to make sense to do the route again.
About half way along the drive, I noticed I could only see two sets of headlights behind me, so I stopped to regroup. It seemed like we lost half the group along the old Princes highway somewhere. We send out the google maps directions to avoid these things, but that night it didn’t work out so well. After waiting a while, it wasn’t clear that the others were going to be able to catch up. We decided to continue to our destination.
When we got to Chubby Buns burgers, it was just the Jaguar, the 450SL and the W203. About half an hour later the 320CE Cab rolled in. We later heard from the others that unfortunately they got lost and headed home in the end.
Despite losing almost half the group, it was a good drive. I enjoyed getting the Jaguar out for the first time of the year, and I think a few of the others felt the same way about their cars. I enjoy Picton road and Chubby Buns is always a good finishing point.
