Amongst the maelstrom of Drag Challenge 2024, Telfo gave me a leave pass to head down the road to Chewton and catch up with Rod Hadfield and a few hundred of his closest friends at his house/museum. While it was a tribute to Rod, and his amazing wife Carol, don’t worry, Rod’s doing pretty well considering his recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease. While his body might be a bit shakier these days, his wit most definitely isn’t, as he showed during his speech to the gathered crowd.

The little get together was put on by a few Melbourne hot rodders, with a fair bit of help from Carol and Sharon Soldatos, and was a surprise, a surprise which Carol knew she wouldn’t be able to keep from Rod: “When I saw three toilets show up on Friday, I knew that foul play was at hand.” It was at that point that Carol had to let the cat out of the bag.

If you haven’t been up to Hadfield’s Hot Rods up in Chewton, you really have to check it out at some stage. It’s only an hour and a half out of Melbourne and well worth the visit to check out an amazing array of hot rods, race cars and even a couple of street machines, that Rod has screwed together over the many, many years he’s been involved in the car scene.

Most of you would be familiar with Castlemaine Rod Shop, but the younger crew may not know that it was Rod that started it. Not surprisingly, he mentioned it during his speech: “When we had the Rod Shop in full action, I think we had 16 employees and a lot of them are here today and I owe a lot to them as well as Carol.”

I think the first time I dropped into Rod’s little museum of coolness was in the late-90s and it’s been an honour and a privilege to get to know the Hadfields over the preceding years, and in the process, get to write feature stories on a many of his cars. One thing is certain, Rod’s not short of a story or two and it was great to see him thoroughly enjoying the day today. While Rod reckons he’s built his last hot rods, I’m pretty sure he’ll still be making a few more stories to tell.