My memoirs would not be complete without a mention of Australia. I had the privilege of traveling to this great country three times with wonderful high school solar car teams. These trips showed me how Australians live their lives, and how much better people can treat each other!
In each visit, my teams tried to race the famous World Solar Challenge, a 3000 km race from Darwin, Northern Territory to Adelaide, South Australia. In each visit, it was the challenge of the wild outback and the fallibility of the high school built solar car that would test our hearts and minds. We learned this was truly a test of the human spirit.
We had the good fortune to coordinate our racing visits with local high schools in both Darwin and Adelaide. These wonderful schools went out of their way to help us feel welcome and appreciated. The quality of their friendship was incredible.
The Darwin High School let all of my racing teams (1996, 1999, and 2003) use their shop area to assemble and fine-tune our solar cars. Of course, we experienced some of the fun of the natural wildlife. The Darwin High School was located on the edge of a rain forest which in itself brought wildlife to us. We particularly liked the frilled-neck lizard that would hide in the trees and jump down and chase the kids from the shop area to the main school building. A larger version of the frilled-neck lizard was featured in the movie “Jurassic Park”.
The Mitcham Girls High School hosted our visits to Adelaide. Winston students and staff were housed in homes of Mitcham teaching staff. We occupied Mitcham high school classrooms to complete our academic studies. Yes, my deal with the Winston School was that students would do all of the school work missed while on the trip! This was a big undertaking, but I am proud to say that every student returned home being further ahead in their classes than the students who matriculated in Dallas.
1996
Our first race in 1996 took ten great kids on the adventure of their life time. The students labeled the car “the insect” because of its unusual, awkward appearance, but we were very proud of her. We did get some “bad looks” from the German team.
A Dallas-based Utility hosted our first trip to Australia. This fine company had just purchased a Melbourne Utility, so it made sense to partner with the Dallas Solar Car Team! They helped us have a wonderful time in Melbourne, and provided three crazy drivers who took us both up to Darwin, and back down to Adelaide. Regretfully, these drivers proved to be more of a problem than a benefit.
Two of the drivers were a very young couple that had great difficulty keep their hands off each other. We would sit in the back seats of the van and watch the contortions going on in the front seat . . . . as we drove through the Outback!
It did distress me that they wouldn’t allow me to drive the van. Since our first solar car race, I found it imperative for me to drive the vehicle immediately following the solar car. This allowed me to maintain better contact with the driver, and keep a close eye on the solar car. The Aussies just wouldn’t let me drive. Yes, I had an International Driver’s License qualifying me to drive in Australia, but I think that denying this privilege gave the drivers “power” over the group.
The Winston Team fought for 18 months to raise the $100,000 needed to get the team to Australia, race the event, and survive three weeks away from Dallas. Much of this money would be spent flying the solar car to Australia. Unfortunately, we should have put more money into the professional packing of the car. After arriving in Australia, we learned a large crate fell on top of our solar cells during shipping which resulted in severe damage to 60% of our solar array.
The Winston Kids stayed in the competition for 1.2 days before we were asked to leave the race due to our slow progress along the race course. Race Officials could not afford to put a race judge with us since we were so far behind the main pack of racers. This was disappointing but not unexpected. We just couldn’t get enough energy with the damaged solar arrays.
With every downside, there is an upside: since we were no longer racing, we would now have the opportunity to see Australia! We first stopped in Mataranka, just south of Katherine. The motel left much to be desired, but the hot springs were enticing to everyone.
Students jumped into the spring before I arrived. I immediately pulled them out when I saw a crocodile swimming underneath them! It was a small crocodile, but if you have one, others may be nearby. Students emerging from the cool waters discovered they smelled horrible. They didn’t realize that large Fruit Bats, nesting in the trees above the springs, were unloading their wastes into the waters below.
We went back to the motel to shower and have dinner at the motel’s thriving food court. Food never tasted that good after ending this stressful second race day. We retired to our rooms, but I immediately rounded up the students. I explained we would have to sleep in our room chairs rather than the bed. Unfortunately, the beds were full of lice. You could pull back the top sheet and see the underlying sheet “in motion.” Not much sleep that night!
We resumed our drive south on the Stewart Highway meeting the horrible heat, flies, and mosquitos at night. We thought we would be better prepared for the World Solar Challenge if we entered Australia in Melbourne, drove to Adelaide, and then drove north on the Stewart Highway. This would give us a firsthand look at the highway and the conditions we would encounter as we actually drove south on the race.
This driving the race course “backwards” was somewhat helpful, but it was grueling on the students and adults. The heat was almost unbearable. Yes, it was a very dry heat . . . . but let me tell you that 115 degrees still feels very hot even if there is little humidity.
We practiced our camp set-up procedures, but were almost taken away by the small flies that occupied every exposed skin area. Flies seeking any kind of moisture were trying to get up our noses and into our eyes. We learned to love our “mozzie nets” which gave us some protection from the flies.
The bigger issue was the Australian mosquitos. Their venom (as with everything in Australia) was stronger and paralyzing. One student was stung by a mosquito on the left side of her face. That portion of her face collapsed as if the student was having a stroke. Yes, we had mosquito netting to help cover us at night, but we couldn’t completely protect ourselves. A camper never forgets the sound made by a mosquito “dive bombing” their mosquito netting.
You awoke the next morning swaddled in mosquito netting and having sweated through everything you were wearing. Having said this, the memory is priceless . . . . . . . and I would repeat it again with these wonderful students who proved to be real “troopers.”
We had a wonderful rest at the beautiful resort located next to Uluru. This was a modern hotel with all the amenities including an outstanding restaurant. Everyone enjoyed the opportunity for a shower before we approached our climb at Ayers Rocks. Of course, the ubiquitous flies were there to greet us, but the stunning rock helped us to understand why it is sacred to the aborigines.
Then it was back to the hotel to enjoy some great cultural experiences. We attended an aborigine cultural presentation including story-telling and dancing. Yes, they even taught us to dance aborigine-style. I was particularly good at the emu or ostrich dance. A very old man shared the aborigine creation story celebrating 40,000 years of habitation in Australia. According to him, man emerged from Australia, spread out, and populated the world.
Our next stop at Alice Springs was less eventful. We stopped at the famous Desert Palms Hotel and had our first taste of kangaroo in their excellent restaurant. We also were made aware that some of the ways Americans say things had a hugely different meaning in Australia. For instance, several Australian observers thought our vans were a bit messy. I explained that high school kids were often a bit messy, but if necessary, I would “root-around” until I found the desired gear. There was a look of shock on the Australians’ faces. I would learn later that “rooting-around” has sexual implications. We were learning!
Next stop: Coober Pedy, the opal mining capitol of the world. Over 80% of the town is carved out below ground to help make the heat more tolerable. We visited an underground home and an underground church. This was so amazingly practical. Temperatures above ground were 110-120 degrees; temperatures below ground were 74-78 degrees. We actually overnighted in a hostel buried under 20 feet of soil!
Dinner in Coober Pedy introduced us to a new experience: we had pizza topped with pineapple and fried egg! By the way, a hamburger “all-the-way” always included a fried egg! We also learned that you could get a driver’s license at 18 years of age, but you could get an explosive blasting license at 16! This became amazingly clear when we drove by a demolished city hall. We were told that a 16 year old boy was taken to court for a traffic violation. He was unhappy with the judge’s verdict and blew up the court house!
Entering Adelaide and traveling to the Race Finish was somewhat disappointing. There was no one there! All the other racers had finished at least twenty-four hours before we arrived. We weren’t racing, just sightseeing, but I thought there would be more fanfare since the Race Closing Ceremony was scheduled for that evening.
We pulled out the solar car and took triumphant photos at the Finish Line sign. After picture-taking, an older gentleman walked over to us wearing a World Solar Challenge shirt. He presented us with a bottle of champagne and several cigars! No, we didn’t drink the champagne. We took it back to Dallas and presented it to our wonderful Head of School Dr. Rita Sherbenou. She let us open the bottle and every student had a thimble-full of flat champagne. It was great fellowship!
We drove to the Mitcham Girls High School to spend several days doing school work, and getting the car ready for shipping back to the U.S. Our wonderful Mitcham Girls School hosts recommended we visit the Adelaide Zoo and Kangaroo Island just south of Adelaide. We reached the island by high-speed luxury pleasure yacht. It was amazing to see the boat lift out of the water on hydrofoils.
Kangaroo Island was a unique place filled with a little bit of everything that makes Australia wonderful. Our visit to a sheep farm gave us the opportunity to see an Australian Shepard corral 100 sheep, and get them into a fenced area in preparation for sheering. Once in the fence, the dog would romp on-top of the sheep to keep them focused and headed in the right direction.
The students were amazed by the sheep shearing technique and wanted to give it a try, but the farm owners had the good sense to disallow this! We then went to a eucalyptus forest to see a family of koala bears. This was followed by other amazing animal finds: huge hedge hogs the size of basket balls, and overly friendly pelicans! This was indeed a great day of exploration.
Post Note: I am sad to say that much of Kangaroo Island was laid waste due to fires that burned almost 60% of the island plants and animals. All of the wonderful places we previously explored were destroyed, and most of the animals injured or gone.
We attended the World Solar Challenge Dinner and received a small crystal plaque recognizing our participation. I think we all had to admit the closing ceremony was anticlimactic after all of the other sightseeing experiences.
The long flights from Adelaide to Sydney to Los Angeles to Denver to Dallas were physically stressful, but we were ready to get home. The whole trip home took 26 hours. I contracted botulism poisoning from yogurt at the Denver Airport. Not fun, but at least I was home.
One of our fond memories of the trip was having dinner at Tim’s Surf & Turf in Darwin, Australia. We learned to love the chicken-fried crocodile! I think we ate there every night during our week’s stay in Darwin. The kids got to know the staff and became “house favorites.” The restaurant staff even came out to see us off at the beginning of the race!
We also loved the friendship extended by the Mitcham Girls School. I was amazed the high school girls had the tenacity to stay glued to the classroom windows as my team spent hours studying inside. This was like studying in a “fish bowl,” but my team loved the attention. This eventually would lead to the Mitcham girls challenging the Winston Solar Car Team to a baseball game! I forget who won, but a good time was had by all! Our stay ended with the school hosting a “cookout on the barbie.”
1999
Our 1999 Australian World Solar Challenge experience was much like the 1996 race. Great new students, but we just didn’t have the necessary speed to remain in the race. We had a much improved racing vehicle, but it just lacked the sophistication to compete with the college and corporate entries. We calculated that a solar car had to AVERAGE at least 34 mph to stay in the race. Our average speed was 21 mph based on scribblings left over from old notes.
WSC Race Officials exited us from the race after the second day. We lost our judge after the City of Katherine, and camped next to the entrance of the Tindal RAAF Base. We were a hot, stinky crew and must have looked like poor waifs. The Base Commander, exiting the base, saw our simple camp site and invited us to use the shower facilities on the base. This was great news! The world is always better when you don’t stink!
We made some of the same stops at Ayers Rock, Alice Springs, Coober Pedy, and Adelaide, but everything just seemed to go more smoothly. We drove our own support vehicles and truck. We tried to camp out along the road to save money and to use up the mountain of food we purchased in Darwin for the trip, but a rampant snake season limited this. I remember requiring the team to sleep in the vans or the truck. You could look off the road from the road tarmac and see the surrounding areas infested with the famous Australian brown snakes.
During the same stop, one of the students left a tool box open. Overnight, a very large spider decided to claim it as his home. When the students went to pack up that tool box the next morning, the giant spider jumped out scaring everyone within ten feet. I was amazed to see the boys cowering in the truck! It was our female team member who approached and removed the spider! Good for her!
The next night, that same wonderful young lady would be bitten by another smaller spider. We were lucky to have a satellite phone to contact the “flying doctors.” Within two hours, a small airplane appeared on the horizon and landed on the roadway just a few feet from the trailer. A doctor emerged and took care of the injury! You have to just love Australia’s Flying Doctor Medical Program.
This would be confirmed when we reached Adelaide only to discover one of my students had a severe ear ache. This was particularly difficult since we were facing a 26-hour flight in just a few days! We went to the hospital and were immediately treated by a wonderful medical team. It took us less than 90 minutes at no charge to us!
Arriving in Adelaide was again anticlimactic. There was no one to greet us at the Finish Line. No champagne; no cigars! I made up my mind that this would never happen to us again! Financial limitations and limited technical skills made it more difficult for high school students to compete in the World Solar Challenge . . . . . but I would find a way!
2003
The drive to get us to the 2003 World Solar Car Challenge was remarkable! The team had decided to develop a new, super light-weight vehicle with better solar cells. The whole car with batteries was limited to 400 pounds. The car was designed for a thin, lighter-weight driver. For the first time, not every team member would be able to drive the car, but this upcoming event was all about overall solar car weight!
The kids were very proud they earned the $150,000 needed to get the solar car to Australia! They had given so many speeches . . . . shook so many hands . . . . . made so many promises! Now, we were ready to take the new solar car to a professional packing company and get the car on an airplane in ten days!
WFAA-TV planned to visit the team and share the team’s race excitement with the community. Then, the bottom fell out! We received a phone call for a corporate lawyer representing one of our largest sponsors saying the company had declared bankruptcy and would not be able to honor their financial pledge. Without this money, there would be insufficient funds to make the trip! The kids were gobsmacked!
The TV truck arrived on schedule. The team tried to put on a “good face,” but I could tell they were all dying a little bit inside. They had worked for two years designing, engineering, fundraising, building, and testing this new car. Now, there was no way to make the trip.
The WFAA Reporter wanted to interview a student. Eric LeBlanc volunteered to talk. The reporter asked how the team was feeling. Eric let loose a flow of words that would have melted the heart of any listener. He explained how the team had worked so very hard to make this race possible, and how we had just learned our largest sponsor had backed out. He explained the car needed to be shipped out in several days if we were going to get the car there on time, but the team no longer had the necessary financial backing.
As miracles would happen, the wonderful Dallas viewers flooded the school’s switchboard with calls and donations of support. In less than 20 hours, we raised the money lost by the bankrupting company. This experience taught us all that great students doing extraordinary things could make things happen! Amazing!
We arrived in Darwin, Australia to discover our solar car had not arrived. Transportation from Dallas to Darwin was a bit sketchy. The solar car would be trucked from Dallas to Los Angeles, flown over the Pacific to Sydney, and trucked from Sydney to Darwin. This ideally would take two to three weeks. Yes, it arrived in the nick-of-time, but not without causing the whole team unnecessary anguish.
We stayed at our traditional Darwin motel along the beachfront, and again returned to the Darwin High School to assemble and test our top-of-the-line high school solar car. The frilled lizards didn’t terrorize us as much this trip, but everything was slightly different. The kids seemed incredibly focused on completing the race . . . . . and not being eliminated in the first few days of the race!
Our allotted time for solar car scruitineering came at the Hidden Valley Raceway. The electrical judges commended us on our outstanding solar array which had been designed and engineered by Winston students who graduated long before this race. Now was the time for us to test their efforts, but we did have one lingering problem: our wiring always looked like a “rat’s nest.” This was always a characteristic of our team.
I remember when we were trying to get the New York Times to do a story about our team. This publicity was crucial for our fundraising efforts. They wanted us to bring the solar car to Austin so they could coordinate with a New York Times Photographer assigned there. We spent our precious dollars to get the car to Austin only to find that we couldn’t drive. There was a “short” in the electrical wiring that made driving the car perilous to the driver.
We delayed our photo shoot for hours, but there just wasn’t any success finding the short. The car had to be hauled back to Dallas where we would spend a week trying to find the problem. At great risk, our lead electrical team captain wet his finger and started poking around in the car. He kept yelling: “Not there . . . not there . . . not there . . . OUCH!” Michael Foree found the short. Henceforth, he had the nickname “sparky.”
The photo shoot was rescheduled; the article was written. The kids had the needed publicity for the 2003 World Solar challenge.
Now, scrutineering judges would be inspecting our wiring, but how do we cover up the mess? Matt Tunnell got the idea to just take pieces of fiber board and seal off the wiring sections with super glue. To make it look more official, we placed an antenna on top giving the image that these shut-off sections had to do with communication. They, of course, had no such purpose other than to hide our wiring spaghetti.
The judges checked our solar car and bragged on the neatness of the interior of the vehicle and the overall design. We passed Scrutineering with commendations.
Now, we were in the race! We would be placed closer to the rear of the race because our qualifying speed from the Hidden Valley Raceway was inferior to the college and corporate cars, but we were not last! Race day came and we were off on our third attempt at racing the World Solar Challenge.
Our judge was an obliging man, but had very little to say. I kept asking questions about rule interpretations, and how certain actions would be received by race judges. I got no answer. It seems there was a policy that race judges wouldn’t tell you what you could do, but they would tell you if you did something wrong. This made it challenging to plan race strategy.
In previous races, the team was eliminated because we couldn’t keep up with the other teams. It dawned on me we could artificially keep up with the teams if we were able to physically move the car to the “End-of-Day” location. We calculated how far on that day’s race course we could actually drive the solar car, and after that point, we would quickly load the solar car onto the truck and drive like madmen to the End-of-Day location.
This procedure would theoretically keep us caught up with the other solar cars. No, we wouldn’t get credit for the miles trailered in the truck; no, we would not have an official race “finish.” That was okay though because we would be traveling with the other race cars and enjoying the ambience of being a part of the Race Stops and hopefully the official Race Finish Line. We would not be eliminated!
Just south of Katherine our true mettle was tested when a bolt sheered throwing the solar car dangerously off the road. This bolt held up the left front suspension and wheel structure. We looked for a replacement bolt but the student responsible had left those bolts on the lab bench back in Dallas. This was not a common bolt, therefore finding a replacement would be difficult since there was no human life for 150 miles in either direction.
We sent a small group of students ahead to the nearest town approximately 150 miles south of our location. It was a glorified petrol station with a population of 300. The remainder of the team stayed at the wreck site and tried to come up with a solution. Nothing worked until Stewart Mayer, our extraordinarily talented videographer, discovered one his large tripod bolts had the same thread size as our sheered bolt. We stripped off this bolt and made a make-shift apparatus that would hold up the left front suspension and wheel. This would have to work until we could find a real bolt! It worked and we were on our way!
The small team that had gone ahead hit a “gold mine.” They arrived at the petrol station, made inquiries, and actually found a person with a small machine shop. This outstanding Aussie made us the necessary bolt we needed to replace the sheared bolt at no charge! By the time the solar car arrived at the petrol station, we had a new bolt ready to install.
We continued our “drive-and-trailer” policy for the remainder of the race. The judge never eliminated us from the race. I think he admired our spunk and initiative to find a solution to stay with the other teams.
The Winston kids made a glorious finish in Adelaide driving through the Official Race Finish Line structure with the rest of the teams! Tens of thousands of onlookers cheered these great high school students as we completed the adventure. Our “drive-and-trailer” procedure would keep us from an “official finish” to the race, but that didn’t matter to the kids! We finished the race with triumphant applause!
Future Winston Solar Car Teams would not return to Australia because we realized our 2003 solar car was absolutely the best we could achieve within our budget and limited resources. Remember, we were building our car in a 13’ x 26’ solar “shed” that the 1990 team built years ago. But I would use this experience to expand my Solar Car Education program to help future solar car teams.
Footnote: I have to commend the team for putting up with my Aussie-style driving. I always had difficulty driving on the left side of the road. I remember driving a van of students to the ship yard where we were off-loading the solar car onto a boat for transport back to the United States. My old friend Fred Varian was driving our huge truck and packing box.
On the way back from our visit to the port, we were chattering up a storm in the van. Then, there was this loud bang! The whole van went deathly quiet. We hit something but it wasn’t quickly apparent what happened. Then, everyone in the van realized I had drifted too close to parked cars on the left and broke off our left rearview mirror. It was just dangling by its wiring, and banging against the driver’s door.
To their credit, no one on the team said anything. They instantaneously knew I would be mortified by my driving slip, and that student comments would only heap coals on the fire! There was little conversation on the drive back to the hotel, although a few broad smiles did break-out on team faces. By the time we dropped off the vans at the Hertz Rental dealership two days later, we all had made jokes about Doc’s dangling mirror! Thank goodness we had totally insured the vehicles!
Footnote: In all three trips to Australia, the team always returned home to culture shock. We were treated so kindly by wonderful people in Australia. This would all immediately change as soon as we set foot back on U.S. soil. Kindness and “happy words” were not to be found in the food service court at LAX.