Under the Hood: Through Fire and Mateship with Greg Larsen

Published on 09 March 2026

Rare Spares and Repco Rockynats is an event that means a lot to Greg Larsen. 

So much that ever since attending Rockynats 01 he’s made it his mission to bring back more mates every time. 

So much that he refused to let a fire take his beloved 1965 Ford XP Falcon, a car he’s owned and painstakingly modified for more than 30 years. 

So much that he still made Rockynats 04, despite being a burns patient in intensive care only a month earlier. 

When he finally rolled back into Rockhampton with that same Falcon for Rockynats 05 last year, it wasn’t just another event. It was a milestone.

Greg bought the XP back in 1994, after telling anyone who would listen that he wanted one. He didn’t mind what year or model it was, as long as it was an XP Falcon.

“My cousin was working in Mount Isa and rang me one day and said, ‘Greg, we’ve found a Falcon for you,’” he says. “They’d seen it in the car park at work and waited around until they found the owner. I bought it sight unseen.”

The car had lived a full life before Greg ever laid eyes on it, bought new by a Melbourne family who had passed it down through five kids as a learner car. Greg bought it from the youngest, who drove it from Melbourne to Mount Isa in the middle of summer and had absolutely no interest in driving it all the way back.

“He wanted to get out of it, and I wanted to get in it” Greg laughs. “It worked perfectly.”

When the Falcon finally arrived in his hometown of Dalby on the back of a truck, it was dark and filled with inches of red bulldust.

“I blew up Mum’s vacuum cleaner trying to clean it,” he reflects. “There was that much dust inside.”

Although the car began its life as a stock standard XP Falcon, Greg never intended to leave it that way for long. A lifelong reader of Street Machine, Greg began modifying the Falcon, inspired by the XP builds he’d idolised in the magazine growing up. Decades later, the car is still evolving.

“They’re never finished,” he admits with a laugh.

On 8 March 2024, everything nearly ended. Greg was working at home when a neighbour alerted him to the horrifying reality that his back shed was on fire. By the time he reached the shed, it was already well engulfed in flames. Neighbours came running to help, explosions were going off inside and amid the chaos, someone yelled something that cut through everything else. “Greg, Get the Bird.”

“They said it a couple of times, because everyone knew what that car means to me”, he recalls.

“I could never do it now,” he says quietly. “But in the moment, I ran back into the shed and pushed the car out.”

In hindsight, he admits that his split-second decision to save ‘The Bird’ also prevented the fire from taking the house as well. Though the Falcon was saved, Greg was far from it, having suffered severe burns in the fire and having to be airlifted by LifeFlight to the Royal Brisbane Hospital where he spent time in the burns unit recovering.

Being March, Rockynats 04 was fast approaching, and while his car was fine, the reality of what he’d just endured was starkly different.

“A mate rang to talk about Rockynats and ask if I was still going,” Greg says. “He said, ‘Greg, don’t worry about your entry. Just come as a spectator.’”

Although disheartened not to be reprising his beloved entrant #58, that’s exactly what Greg did. One month after being in intensive care, he made the trip to Rockhampton, determined not to miss a year at the event that had already become such a constant in his life. He’s attended every year since Rockynats 01, with the same mates, keeping the same entrant number, hiring the same cabin at the local caravan park, sleeping in the same bed.

“I’m a bit of a stickler for keeping things the same,” he says. “And I’m going to keep coming back and doing the same.”

The event hooked Greg from the beginning, not just because it was half the driving distance compared to Summernats, but because of what he and his mates decided it should be.

“The first year, there was three of us who made the trip,” he says. “We absolutely loved it so we made a pact. When we got home, our job was to tell all our mates about Rockynats and we agreed to bring one extra person each the following year to make sure the event grew and continued.”

The following year, they returned with nine or ten mates in tow.

“Imagine if everybody did that,” Greg says. “Go home, tell a mate, bring them back. The event just doubles.”

He enters ‘The Bird’ in the Show N Shine and drag races it down Rockhampton’s heritage listed Quay Street, which has become a novelty he looks forward to each year.

“I’ve heard some people whinge about traction in the drags,” he says. “You’ve got to remind them — mate, pull your head in. It was a street yesterday. Where else in Australia can you do that? That’s just part of what makes this event so special.”

But if Greg had to sum up Rockynats in a single moment, it wouldn’t be about the glory of winning a drag run. It would be about an old lady he met at the end of the drag strip who he says is the epitome of the event’s community spirit.

“That very first year, there was this old love standing at the back fence with her blue cattle dog, giving us all the thumbs up as we finished our run,” he recalls fondly. “I joking called out to her, ‘Some scones would be nice, Nana.’”

Believe it or not, half an hour later she returns, tea towel in hand, with hot scones, jam and cream for Greg and his mates.“If the event itself hadn’t already sold us, the fresh hot scones at the end of the drag strip sure would’ve done the trick,” Greg admits with a laugh.

2025 marked Greg’s first time back at the event with the Falcon since the fire, a quiet personal victory that means a lot to the Rockynats veteran. Now, as Rare Spares and Repco Rockynats 06 approaches, Greg isn’t chasing anything new.

“I’m just keen to come back and catch up with all the mates I’ve made over the years,” he says. “And my whole Dalby tribe is coming again. We can’t wait.”

Stories like Greg’s are what Rare Spares and Repco Rockynats is really built on; the cars, the people who love them, the mates they bring along, and the community it unites year after year. Whether you’re considering going from the first time or have been cheering from the fence for years, Rockynats is an event that truly has something for everyone with an action-packed three day program of on and off-the-track entertainment. 

Tickets are on sale now, with kids aged 12 and under entering free with any valid adult ticket: https://www.rockynats.com.au/Tickets