A speeding carbohydrate and faux-chariot shine in Queensberry Cup
The normally busy intersection of Queensberry and Errol streets in North Melbourne was closed on Saturday, replaced by a different kind of traffic: billycarts.
Dozens of them, some just a few boards and cords, others expertly designed, careened along a hay-bale-lined racetrack during the fourth annual Queensberry Cup.
Kids compete in the fifth annual Queensberry Cup. Credit: Joe Armao
This year the field was filled with a generally eclectic mix of vehicles, including a creep lowrider and a Mattel pink Barbie car. But the most notable was the aerodynamic carb car called the “Flying Potato”.
Ariel Valent, event organizer and director of North Melbourne neighborhood house The Centre, said billycart was “a bit of an equaliser”.
“You can just put a few pieces of wood together and take off the wheels of the pram and have a billycart. Or you can actually go all out and make a welded steel or quite complex design that actually looks like a car,” he said.
“We had the full spectrum today.”
A large group gathered around the race track for the children’s races. Credit: Joe Armao
For the past three years the silverware has been transported by members of the Furlong family in cars designed by architect and patriarch Pete and driven by his children Orly and Lenni. However, following the family’s retirement from racing, Furlong’s period of dominance came to an end.
Instead, Mac Rowley, a racer from the University of Melbourne’s Janet Clarke college, emerged victorious, driving a car-inspired car designed and built by students and, in his words, “held together by hopes and dreams”.
