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Our Estonian visitors arrived in Brisbane on Wednesday morning, 14th January. John and Pat Walker were hosting Lembit,Maire and Emilia Vaher while Doug and May Harding looked after Tonu and Mart Sepp. It was arranged for everyone to meet after lunch for a visit to Walkabout Creek - a small wildlife park - for introduction to some Australian Native animals. We saw wallabies (small Kangaroos), native birds , snakes , fish and were even fortunate enough to watch a very energetic platypus swimming in and around the logs and rocks in his very real to life creek. However, around 3pm a thunderstorm interrupted any further outdoor activities and everyone adjourned to the Walkers for afternoon tea.
On Thursday, Mae Harding took the visitors on a tour of the Brisbane Centre including Parliament House, Botanic Gardens, on the City cat across the river to South Bank Parklands and the man made beach, then back to the Central City Mall and shops, finishing up at City Hall. That night at the Walkers residence, Lembit Vaher and Tonu Sepp gave a very interesting lecture to the members of the Queensland Miniature Race Car Club on the tuning and running of our cars. This included the handing around of various engine and car parts depicting the very latest in technology for this sport. during this lecture it was impossible not to worry about the monsoon type rain which was pelting down outside!
We awoke on Friday for Training and Round 1 of the competition to non-stop rain. The weather forecast was terrible and the satellite picture showed a monsoon trough extending from Darwin in Northern Australia down through Queensland and New South Wales to Sydney, with Brisbane on the edge of this huge black cloud. Drought breaking rain but not needed Today! However , unbelievably the rain did stop around 10am and with lots of help from people with brooms, mops and a mechanical blower, we were having our first training run by 11am.
After a short lunch break we completed the First Round even though it looked as if it would rain again at any time. Tonu Sepp recorded a run of 336.9525km/h - less than 2 km/h under World record time while Lembit Vaher's 1.5 class car recorded a speed of 262.3142 km/h. These performances indicated that the Brisbane Track is one of the best in the world.
The venue on Friday night was at the famous Breakfast Creek Hotel (noted for the biggest and best Aussie steaks in Brisbane).  Most people chose the grain fed fillet steak , but also popular was the Barramundi - one of the best eating fresh water fish caught in our North Queensland Rivers.
Saturday morning dawned fine and sunny - however by the 10 o'clock starting time, the heavy clouds had returned and the weather was again extremely hot and humid. According to Lembit Vaher it was the lowest air density reading that he had ever recorded. ie good for low air resistance but terrible for engine performance.Both rounds 2 and 3 were completed even though there was another rain interruption of approx 2 hours. Most cars were running very rich and , as can be seen from the results, most local competitors had problems. Note: we normally don't run cars in Brisbane during December and January due to these weather conditions. The outstanding run of the day belonged to Mart Sepp in only the second run ever with his 3.5cc Class III car. He set a new world record of 281.3379 km/h. this car came to Australia unfinished and was only completed in Doug Harding's workshop in the early hours of Saturday morning.
We had a wonderful post race party at Bob and Vivienne Buckley's home on Saturday evening. Everyone was treated to an excellent Barbecue meal with all the trimmings accompanied with lashings of champagne, wine , beer and punch to celebrate the excitement of a World record at our local track.
By Sunday morning, most of our locals were feeling fairly jaded and worn out after the fews days of hard work  and worrying over the weather but rallied around and drove our visitors to the mountains on the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. Here we helped Maire Vaher celebrate her first ever summer birthday before going on to a local winery for wine tasting and lunch. Following this we kept little Emilia happy by proceeding to the coast for a swim in the Pacific Ocean surf at Caloundra. This was most relaxing after the hectic few days.

We said our good-byes on Monday morning at Brisbane Airport with our guests heading off to Sydney for the next leg of their Australian visit.
Our thanks must go to Paul Otto Strobel who organized a Special European competition and his donation of Flight tickets to the class winners to visit Australia to help promote our sport Internationally. It is most appreciated. We are also sorry that he was unable to accompany the winners due to a car accident  and we wish him a speedy recovery.

John Walker