Dad’s Army takes on Variety Bash

Mr Griffiths said this year’s bash was the third the team had completed, and this theme was three years in the making.

“You have to have a theme to be in it, and we’re older people, so we decided on Dad’s Army,” Mr Griffiths said.

“We had (the car painted) for 2019, but because of COVID there were no bashes.”

The 10-day Victorian bash drivers — including the Dad’s Army 1984 Statesman — left from Melbourne and travelled via Beechworth, Broken Hill, Birdsville, and many others iconic locations all the way to the finish line at Cairns, Queensland.

While scenic, Mr Griffiths said the long drive wasn’t always smooth sailing.

“It’s good fun, but it’s hard yards,” he said.

“It’s 5000km to get there taking all the back roads, and 3000km to get home again.

“All the cars have to have UHF two-way radios in them, in case there’s a problem up the road.

“This year we had one car roll over, and they repaired the car that night and they were able to finish the event.

“Another car hit a Brahman bull, and it wrote the car off.

“In the event, there’s 10 mechanics that go, because driving 30-year-old vehicles, you know that something is going to go wrong.”

Mr Griffiths said the team did the bash “for the sake of raising money for under privileged children”.

“We were in the middle of nowhere and a guy came up to us and said ‘thanks, very much, my granddaughter has spinabifida, and we’ve tried the NDIS to get a grant to buy her a wheelchair’ and they got knocked back a few times, and Variety bought it for them,” he said.

“No matter where the kids are, they will help them out.”

The Variety Bash is Australia's longest running charity motoring event, now in it’s 30th year.

Since the Victorian Bash began, drivers have travelled more than 118,000km and raised more than $28 million.