Paul from Ireland (a forum member) posed the following question:

Out of curiosity RET - how many people/cars do you think will go to the nationals?
Booking out a 42 room hotel is pretty good going with 2 years to go.....

You're not wrong. We've been operating on the basis of expecting 150 cars and about 350-400 people coming to Orange for the Nationals. And that's a massive logistical exercise, about double the size of the last Nationals we ran in 2001 in Sydney.

In fact, these estimates were used as the major criteria in selecting Orange as the final location of this event. In the year and a half or so preceding the Mt Gambier Nationals, the NSW Club Committee had compiled a check-list of requirements that any host city would have to be able to accommodate. We started with a dozen or so suggestions of towns and cities around NSW, and armed with this list we were able to contact the Tourist Information Office in each location and quickly determine whether it would be a viable option.

As it turned out, the capacity to seat 350-400 people for a meal proved to be the single factor that eliminated most of the names on that list. We were left with two cities we wanted to consider, having excluded Sydney and Wagga Wagga from the reckoning, because we'd held Nats there before.

Of the two that remained, Orange was preferred by the Committee . It was only when we went up there just prior to Mt Gambier that we discovered the Touring Car 50th Anniversary was going to coincide with our Nationals. With Victoria having the FE Anniversary and SA the FC 50th Birthday, this was a theme for our event that was just too good to pass up!

Couple that with the helpfulness of the Council and Tourist Office and their desire for us to come to the town, and it was

Orange, here we come!