QUEY TO THE CAPE

TOM CARRIERA'S MASSIVE FUNDRAISING ODYSSEY ENDED WITH A BANG!

- JACK HOULIHAN

AN UNLIKELY 70s classic recently notched over 11,000km in a pilgrimage to Australia's northernmost tip and back, raising money and awareness for a great cause along the way. 

Twenty-seven-year-old Tom Carriera of Wangaratta, Victoria drove his HQ Holden ute all the way to Cape York - and back through the centre of Australia - to accompany mate Cam Gray and his dad Andrew on a fundraising mission for Young Veterans, dubbed 'Tassie to the Tip,' in their 1978 HJ45 Land Cruiser.

Tom didn't expect to tag along at first. "Cam said I should come, and I said, 'No way I'd get time off work, and I don't have a 4x4 to do it in,"" he says. "But then my boss said I could take as much time as I want over winter, so I said, 'What about a month to go up to the Cape?"" Tom's an HQ fanatic, with a GTS sedan and Kingswood that make regular Street Machine Summernats appearances, so he decided to have a go with the farm-fresh ute he picked up earlier this year. "It's just a 202 and four-speed; nothing flash," he says. "It's still got the banjo single-wheeler diff, and I had all the Sandman gear in the shed. Because I was tagging along, I thought I'd put a few Young Veterans stickers on the ute, just to help them out a bit." The trip kicked off on 9 June with a 600km leg from Wangaratta. "The day we left was the day I finished the ute," Tom laughs. "I got it registered and did 25 kays around town getting fuel and stuff, then hit the road!"

It was all fairly smooth sailing until the bitumen gave way to north Queensland's corrugated dirt. "It actually rattled the carby in half!" Tom says. "I pulled over and one of the screws was completely out."