Deloraine Street Car Cruise, 2021

David Claridge
WHAT HAS been one of Deloraine’s biggest drawcard events every year since its creation five years ago?

The Deloraine Street Car Show. Only in cruise form this year, but still giving car enthusiasts a rare treat.

Holding the annual event for more than 10,000 people on the streets of Deloraine was a logistical problem, given the required Covid-19 restrictions.

To ensure the event still happened, the organisers decided to just ‘cruise’.

‘We would have had to fence off the whole area and contact trace everyone who came. Which, given our previous numbers, would have been hard to do’, explained committee member, Carl Mansfield.

‘There has always been a cruise as well, because we have so many people stay in the area before the show and bring their cars up. So we wanted to give them some entertainment.’

The 120 registered cars this year were taken on a mystery drive up to the Great Lake, hard to reach until a few years ago when the roads were sealed.

‘The cruise took the people up over the lakes, to Poatina and the little towns around there. It was somewhere different.’

The organising committee have high hopes of the full event returning in 2022.