Off with a toot and a roar

It was all for the best, perhaps, that directly across Pukepoto Road, Kaitaia, from Friday morning's start of the 2013 Pork Pie Run was a funeral home, where no one was likely to be woken.

So one of the participants in the fundraiser for Leukaemia and Blood Cancer NZ said as the cars took of in the pre-dawn gloom, each sent on its way with a blast from a klaxon accompanied by raucous tooting of horns, and in many cases a surprisingly deep roar from under their bonnets.

Forty-seven cars set off on the first leg to Taupo, having converged in Kaitaia on Thursday from all points between Whangarei and Invercargill. Only one didn't make it, suffering fatal mechanical problems in Hamilton, a generous Aucklander lending the crew a replacement.

And although the rally was restricted to Minis, they came in all varieties, from the traditional, somewhat spartan boxes to the latest, more luxurious models. One had even been converted into a roofless ute, its occupants rugged up for what promised to be an increasingly cool journey on the road south.

By the time the cars lined up the kitty held $157,365, almost double the $80,000 raised at the same time in 2011, and that was confidently expected to grow significantly over the next six days.

"It's becoming a monster," Annie Hemsley (Whangarei) said as her husband Murray blasted the cars on their way.

This was the third Pork Pie Run, first staged in 2009 (with Annie and Murray to the organising fore) to celebrate the Mini's 50th anniversary. The run follows the tyremarks of the iconic movie Goodbye Pork Pie, filmed in 1979 and released two years later (and billed as Easy Rider meets the Keystone Cops,) which followed the fortunes of ne'er do wells as they strived to keep ahead of the police on a hairum scarum journey from Kaitaia to Invercargill.

This year's event raised money for Leukaemia and Blood Cancer NZ, a cause with real meaning for the Hemsley family.

Annie and Murray's daughter Naomi, who now has a bonny baby son, is now 12 months into remission following diagnosis with Hodgkin's lymphoma, and she and her sisters Sarah, Miriam and Hannah packed into one of the last cars to leave Kaitaia.

They had already raised $12,545 by that stage, while every car had paid $1845 for the privilege of taking part, covering costs including a black tie dinner in Invercargill last night.