At least 72 trucks drove past a once dangerous and deadly section of the Hume Highway, Sylvia’s Gap at Tumblong, New South Wales, to help raise funds for a local museum.
The Sylvia’s Gap Run is an annual event that started in 2015 in order to raise money for a truck museum and shed in Gundagai.
This year’s event, which was held on the weekend of June 10 and 11, included a gala dinner the night before the event, a breakfast catch-up, and a truck road run along the 10km notorious road section just south of Tumblong.
The Sylvia’s Gap, which is now closed to the public, was once a part of the main highway connecting Sydney and Melbourne. It includes a number of deep cuttings and winding road that saw many fatal accidents and near-misses around the 1980s.
The 2023 Sylvia’s Gap Run was attended by nearly 150 people and had nearly 70 registered trucks, with a couple joining in after the start.
“We are extremely happy with the response from the locals and the trucking community,” Daryl Westin told Big Rigs.
Westin is the secretary of the organising committee that comprises six other locals who overlook the planning and management of the Sylvia’s Gap Run.
The dinner also included an auction and all together the event helped raise in excess of $8,000 for the local museum. “Now that we have purchased the shed, as opposed to renting it as we did earlier, we have to deal with a lot more expenses. We’re also trying to update the shed and the facility to make it more user friendly, and the money raised will help us in that effort,” Westin added.
“It was also a tremendous thing for the local community because at least 80 per cent of the participants came from far away and therefore the local community gets a boost with such events and support,” he said.
“We’d like to thank the two local farming families, the Horsleys and the McDonalds, who own the rural sections of the land that we used for the truck run, for their continued support.
“We’re also grateful to the 20 odd volunteers who helped us in every way to make this a great event. There’s a lot of setting up, tidying up, and getting ready for the next thing, so we’re really appreciative of their support.”