We had a fantastic day with Catbus at the fabulous, inaugural Canberra Kinetic Sculpture Race (CKSR)! It was soooooooo much fun. Our awesome team braved the rain to dance, laugh and sing all day, driving Catbus through the city, competing in speed (slowest), sand (nailed it!) and water challenges (Catbus refused to go in the water…)

Catbus was very popular with the kids and we very quickly had a fanclub. It became hard work pushing him around as I think he weighed about 300kgs by the end of the day, due to the amount of water in his fur.

And all of our hard work paid off as Catbus took out 3 – yes 3!! – awards. Best Item of Comfort, best Bribes and best in show for Art. We even made the ABC news!

There was some stiff competition from our fabulous competitors and we loved the creativity, crazy contraptions, ingenuity and fun energy of the other teams entered, including Slugterror, Tea-yonce, the pancake wizard, the glory hogs, the literal art bike and Ronin the Dragon – the very well deserved grand champion winner!

We were very surprised our humble showbags did the trick for best bribes, given that Ronin the dragon had a keg of ‘dragons blood’ onboard, the wizard was cooking pancakes on the back of his Truly Magnificent Broom bike and the glory hogs were giving away $100 bills.

We can’t wait for next year – we’ll be back! Bigger, better and possibly aquatic… What should we build for the next CKSR?

Catbus crew for CKSR 2022: Bea, Adam, Sal, Alex, Lumi, Goldie