The Kop Hill Climb, in Buckinghamshire, UK, had been happily hosting events on the 826 metre ascent since 1910 – a fun day out for the whole family, so to speak. Then on 28th March, 1925, a competing car left the road and struck a spectator, breaking his leg. It was not exactly a bloodbath, but it had a shattering effect on motorsport in England. The Royal Automobile Club, together with the Auto-Cycle Union, which sanctioned such events for cars and motorcycles respectively, announced they would no longer issue the permits required for motor sport on public roads.
Despite howls of outrage from competitors and patrons alike, the ban is still in force. It meant that motor sport could only take place on private property, on a circuit constructed for the purpose of racing. At the time, only one such circuit existed – Brooklands, which held its first motorcycle race meeting at Easter, 1908. Until everyone got used to the idea and more private circuits like Donington Park (which held its first motorcycle meeting in 1931) came on stream, the only other nearby place to race was the Isle of Man, which is not part of Britain, or in Ireland.
On Monday, June 13, 1938, the most serious accident to date in Australian motor racing history occurred at Penrith Speedway in Sydney’s west. In the final car race for the meeting, driver Wally James lost control of his car and hurtled over a ditch and into the crowd. A grandmother and her two grandchildren were killed, and ten others injured. The accident was captured on news cameras and broadcast widely, resulting in a police inquiry, although race meetings continued. The grounds were compulsorily acquired by the Commonwealth Defence Department in 1941 and Penrith speedway never reappeared.
The English ban was not an isolated event. In 1951, the South Australian government officially banned motor racing on public roads in the state, forcing an immediate closure of the main venue at Woodside in the Adelaide Hills. The pre-war public roads circuit at Lobethal, which had ceased to be used during the war years, was reopened in 1948 but was marred by an accident where a car lost a wheel and mowed down three policemen and a young boy who were standing on a corner at the entrance to Lobethal’s main street, causing a public outcry. It certainly put the final nail in Lobethal’s coffin, although racing continued just down the road at Woodside for three more years.
The ban had a catastrophic effect for both bikes and cars, as there was no other sealed circuit in South Australia at the time. One needed to be built, and as quickly as possible. The result was the small (2.1km) and somewhat remote circuit at Port Wakefield, 100km north of Adelaide, which was the first purpose-built sealed track in Australia post-war. It was far from ideal, but it was better than nothing, and lasted until 1961 when the Mallala circuit opened. The law was not repealed until the Australian Formula One Grand Prix took place in Adelaide in 1985.
New South Wales had only narrowly escaped a similar ban after a double fatality in the final race at the 1946 Easter motorcycle meeting at Mount Panorama. According to the report in The National Advocate, 65-year-old Henry O’Halloran, a patrolman, was crossing the road near the end of the long Conrod Straight just as rider Roy Fletcher crested the second hump. O’Halloran was killed instantly and his body was thrown through the air into the crowd where it struck and seriously injured a spectator. Fletcher died on his way to hospital by ambulance. The result was immediate intervention by the Police Commissioner Mackay, and the subsequent cancellation of the Easter 1947 Bathurst races.
Worse was to come. At the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hour race (also on public roads), eighty three people, including the driver Pierre Levegh, were killed when a car shot off the track and disintegrated as it ploughed through the main grandstand. France, Switzerland and parts of Spain immediately banned racing on public roads, West Germany introduced harsh restrictions, and even the USA discussed the possibility of bans, which subsequently were not enforced.
The Swiss ban stood until 2022 for almost all forms of motor sport. The effects of the Le Mans disaster were felt throughout Europe for many years and led to the loss of many of the traditional public roads circuits. Just when the memory was starting to fade, an almost identical accident during the 1961 Italian Formula 1 Grand Prix at Monza sent the works Ferrari of Wolfgang von Trips into the crowd, killing the driver and fifteen spectators.
Here come the rules
Back home, the South Australian ban made everyone jittery as the ‘fifties rolled on, but the other states made no moves to follow the lead. Until 1957.
There had been injuries to spectators at two Sydney speedways – Westmead and the Sydney Showground (also known as the Speedway Royale), mainly as a result of errant “stock cars” – jalopies rescued from scrap metal dealers and reinforced to allow them to smash into each other and still keep going. However the timber fences surrounding most speedway tracks were no match for such runaway vehicles, and this was just the ammunition the anti-motor racing lobby needed. This time however, the focus was on circuits on privately owned property (grouped together by politicians under the general terms of Speedways) and did not strictly apply to public road circuits – such as Mount Panorama at Bathurst, Gnoo Blas at Orange or Parramatta Park.
Nevertheless, when the New South Wales Speedway Racing (Public Safety) Act 1957 was drafted – to take effect “as and from the second day of January, one thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine”, it was a hammer blow to the sport. In effect, it shifted the responsibility for public safety to the individual promoter or promoters, which in the case of motorcycle racing were generally small clubs of enthusiasts. Tracks had to be inspected and licensed, and promoters were required to notify Police of intention to hold any such “Speedway” event. If the Police were “satisfied that competitors or spectators are in real or undue danger”, racing was to “cease forthwith until the danger has been removed”.
Virtually overnight, scores of tracks, especially the form known at the time as Miniature TT (Short Circuit) usually on oil-sealed dirt racks, scrambles and road racing (mainly at Mount Druitt) simply closed down prior to the implementation of The Act. At Junee, the Talbingo circuit, which had successfully hosted the first two Australian Short Circuit Championships in 1957 and 1958, failed to reappear. The Mount Druitt promoter, Belf Jones, made doubly sure to remove himself from any possible litigation by driving a tractor equipped with a “rabbit ripper” at the rear, around the entire length of the circuit following the last meeting there in November 1958, completely destroying the surface. As 1958 drew to a close, the motor sport fraternity faced the very real prospect that they had attended their final meeting, at least in New South Wales.
1958 proved to be a year of frantic activity in NSW, as tracks scrabbled to fit in one more meeting before the Act came into force at the beginning of 1959. As it turned out, the Bill was delayed until 4th April, 1959, but it made little difference. Most promoters simply surrendered in the face of insurmountable costs of compliance. Others began to plan the daunting process of converting their circuits to conform to the Act, which was difficult since there was no universal specification. This meant that the interpretation of what was acceptable and what wasn’t fell to the inspecting officer of whatever the nearest Police station happened to be. Events like gymkhanas where speed was not a deciding factor were not required to be licensed.
One club that bucked the trend was The Wagga Wagga Motorcycle Sports Club, which was formed in 1958 and affiliated with the Riverina Centre of the Auto Cycle Union of NSW, with the express purpose of conducting a road race meeting in the Kapooka Army Camp. Ron Angel, Ian Craft and local motorcycle dealer Jack Skeers were the driving forces, and perhaps surprisingly, received staunch support for their idea from the Commanding Officer of the camp. “He thought it was a great idea,” says Ron. “I suppose the base wasn’t too busy in those days. He organised the army to bitumenise the pit area and put up straw bales to mark the course, and the army basically provided the manpower for spectator control to run the meeting.”
The “immunity” provided by the Army connection apparently over-rode the Speedway Act, because the date for the Kapooka meeting was set for Sunday January 25th, 1959 – 23 days after the Act was supposed to become law in NSW. Even the use of straw bales was permitted, despite the fact that these were banned for motor sport in NSW as they constituted a fire hazard.
The Kapooka two-mile circuit proved to be quite adequate for its purpose and the weekend was successfully conducted and largely incident-free, with a very healthy crowd in attendance. However not long after the meeting, the motorcycle-friendly CO moved on, and his replacement was unconvinced of the merits of repeating the exercise, so the Kapooka meeting was destined to be a one-off.
Manpower and money
Elsewhere in the state, activity continued to bring circuits up to scratch. Ironically, the first track to receive a licence was the Showground Royale, which was partially responsible for the problems in the first place, followed by Salty Creek Speedway near Newcastle. One aberration concerned the traditional Grass Tracks, which were probably the earliest form of motorcycle racing. Because the layout of these tracks needed to be slightly altered for each meeting (to move to fresh grass after the destruction of the surface from the previous meeting), no actual permanent circuit plan existed, so no licence could be applied for by the promoter. Exit Grass Tracks in NSW.
The first half of the year’s calendar looked fairly sparse, but gradually work was completed and licences issued on more circuits. Tamworth (Nemingah), Mayfield, Aberdeen, and Young (Wambanumba) held meetings in the first six months of 1959, with Moorebank receiving licence number 7 and finally holding an Open meeting on 26/7/59 after several false starts, then Gunnedah in September and Goulburn (Boxers Creek) in October. The Vineyards circuit near Windsor had to deal with a particularly truculent member of the Police force but after several knock-backs was finally granted a licence in early 1960. By that stage the brand new Nepean Raceway, just down the road at Castlereagh, was in the advanced stages of construction, thanks to a small but devoted crew of weekend volunteers. Almost uniquely among the circuits of this era, Nepean is still in operation.
One by one, mainly due to the diligence of club members and local enthusiasts, the dirt Short Circuits which were once so numerous throughout regional NSW either reopened or were built from scratch, and although sales of new motorcycles were in the doldrums, racing was more popular than ever.
Fortunately, and almost simultaneously, one factor was having a pronounced effect on the public’s interest in motor racing. Former Sydneysider Jack Brabham was by now twice World Champion in Formula One, and was a national hero. Suddenly motor sport was the flavour of the month, and tracks began to spring up all over the place – even in New South Wales.
Catalina Park at Katoomba (which had first been proposed in 1951) opened in February 1962, although it was three years before motorcycles raced there. Warwick Farm, the circuit inside the huge horse racing complex near Liverpool in Western Sydney that was modelled on Aintree in England opened in 1961, and although the promoter Geoff Sykes was very keen to have motorcycles at his events, it never happened apart from a single demonstration day in 1972. Oran Park held its first motorcycle race meeting in February 1963, and Amaroo Park conducted its first Short Circuit (dirt track) meeting in December 1963, followed by road racing in February 1967.
Motor racing in New South Wales had been plucked from the brink of extinction, largely through the effort of hard-working club members. As the ‘seventies dawned it ushered in an avalanche of support for motor sport, and an even greater emphasis on what standards were considered acceptable for venues. Many failed the test of time, and the new generation, such as the Eastern Creek complex that was later renamed Sydney Motor Sport Park, brought with it a massive increase in the costs of promotion.
The Speedway Control Bill (Public Safety) 1957 remained in force in New South Wales until 1985 when it was replaced by the Motor Vehicle Sports (Public Safety) Act. It had been a torrid time, which today is but a dim memory to those who were there.
By Jim Scaysbrook. Photos by Dick Darby, Stan Shephard, JMS archives.
