Pork Pie Headlines

Printed on the Northland Age newspaper front page, all the advertising banner boards out side the shops read "Rusty Nuts follow the Mini".

The Rusty Nuts Motorcycle Club - a select band of 21, named for the slowest moving thing known to man, which doesn't move at all until it is lubricated- did not live up to its name in Kaitaia early on Thursday morning.

Theres was nothing remotely rusty about the handful  of club members, and some 45 other keen  long distance riders, who lined up outside Northland Motors at the Northern end of Commerce St for the first leg of a marathon journey, first taken in 1979, by the yellow Mini which starred in the hit movie Goodbye Pork Pie.

Star Kelly Johnson, now a lawyer practising in Whangarei, was there to wave the riders off, almost two decades after his exploits, which began with the theft of the Mini in Kaitaia, were captured on film.

Rusty Nut Lee Hurley, who sold his Harley Davidson and brought a BMW for the epic ride, said he planned to be in Wellington at 8.30 Thursday evening, barely 12 hours after leaving Kaitaia and heading south the long way, Aucklands Fort St, Pokeno, National Park and Wanganui.

Every rider would faithfully trace the Mini's original route, he said, collecting flags along the way. Those who had seven flags when they pulled up outside the cemetary gates in Invercargill on Sunday would recieve a small brass badge.

An expensive badge for some -Hurley reckoned he would have spent $9000 by the time he got home to Auckland- but one no amount of money could buy for someone who didn't go the distance.

"There will only be 51 of these in the world" Hurley said last week as he prepared for departure.

The bikes,$300,000 worth of them according to Hurley, and that was perhaps a little conservative, left Picton on Friday morning bound for Christchurch, where the Wizard reprised his original performance. Graymouth was Friday night's stopover, Saturday's ride taking the tourists to Queenstown then Dunedin for Saturday night, the run ending on Sunday at the Invercargill cemetary gates- then lunch at a Bluff pub owned by a mate of Hurley's.