MBCNSW October 2024 Night Drive
After our September night drive was rained out, it was good to be back for the October drive. The weather had been good he day of the drive but a storm rolled through Sydney in the early evening. It was mostly gone by the time of the drive, but we still had scattered showers throughout.
Our route was a new one, starting at Windsor McDonalds, then heading north to Sackville Ferry. After crossing the ferry, we turned onto River road, which skirts the southern bank of the Hawkesbury river. River road is very windy and narrow and much of it is only wide enough to fit one car, even though it is a two way road. In addition, there are sections where the edge of the road has crumbled away, and instead of fixing it, they have just made it single lane.
After River Road, we then turned onto the old Northern Road for a while, before taking a detour along Wisemans Ferry Road and Cattai Ridge road. Our final destination was Dural McDonalds.
This was originally to be our July route, but the road was damaged in a storm and closed for a few weeks.
Considering the weather, we had a pretty good turn out of six cars. A W108 280SE 3.5, W123 300D, my old W116 280SE, a W124 300E and 300TE and my 560SEL. Its great to see the older cars out on a drive like this. It was particularly impressive to see the W108 do a windy road like this in the rain. The main issue being keeping the windows defogged. Unlike the later cars, the A/C is not fully integrated on a W108. You can’t point it at the windscreen. Doing a rainy night drive in this part of Sydney is pretty normal for the 280SE, having done a few in my ownership.
I had originally planned to take my Citroen DS on this drive. However, given the weather, I took the 560SEL – defogging the windows the main concern on the Citroen. Having done the test drive in the DS a few months back, I realized how useful the lights that follow the corners are on such a windy road! The 560SEL did well, but its not as nimble as some of the other cars I own.
The finishing point was McDonalds in Dural. Like a lot of McDonalds, it advertises 24 hours but it really isn’t. They were closing at around 12:15 – 12:30. I think the drive through may have been open, but that is totally useless.
