Magic Monaro

At the end of 2019 the finishing touches were being applied to a restored HK Monaro GTS 327. It had taken some five years of slow, meticulous work to get this ground-up, nut-and-bolt restoration to the point where it was painted and almost ready to be started up and driven.

But then came the fires.

The bushfires in the summer of 2019/20 were unprecedented in their scale and the devastation they caused. Among the many parts of the country to be affected was the East Gippsland area in eastern Victoria. The fires there were among the first to start, late in 2019, and one of the last to be extinguished.

In the three-plus months between November and February, more than 300,000 hectares of the East Gippsland region were charred by bushfire.

And this Monaro was right in the middle of it. Brian, the car’s owner, takes up the story:

“We’d finished the car, we’d painted it, and then it went out to my panel beater mate Andrew to put the final bits of trim and things back on. So the car’s there with him, but then he’s rung me up to tell me it’s getting bad and I’d better get the car out of there.

“So we dropped everything and made a mad dash over there to pick the car up and take