Thursday, August 26, 2010
Hume Weir, a road racing circuit on NSW/Victoria border..come back with me to January 1964....
Posted by car 2011 at 4:26 PMEarly in the 1960's I joined the Sydney motorcycle Club, the Eastern Suburbs MCC...I lived nearby to where it met in Waverley School of Arts, had become old enough to obtain a NSW riders licence, bought a Lambretta 125cc LD scooter, soon replaced by a 1958 Velocette MSS with Murphy sidecar and become chummy with Ted Greenfield who was in the club and raced a Manx Norton.
Ted had entered to ride at the Australia Day race meeting at the Hume Weir circuit on the NSW- Victorian border.
Fellow club-member Kel Carruthers was riding his 1961 250/4 Honda sent out from Honda for a local Australian rider to "wave the flag" and presumably win races ( which Kel did...in fact he won over 150 races from as many starts on the Honda before he left for Europe and the "Continental Circus" several years later) and international Honda works rider Jim Redman would be there with 125cc and 250cc works Hondas as it was the European racing off season...would I like to ride a sort of lashed up G80 Matchless that Ted had.....?
I'd never been further south of Sydney than once to a farm at Braidwood, some 18o miles south and it all seemed pretty exciting...things like an ACU licence were needed, I guess I likely forged my mothers signature, I had a helmet, gloves and boots...Ted would loan me his leathers as we wouldn't likely be in the same race.....
Roll on 26 January 1964....
Left click on images to enlarge....
We camped nearby to the circuit with fellow Easts members Terry and Keith Smith, with who I became good friends.
I had a Kodak Box Brownie camera, so the following photos are not a patch on today's efforts, but they form a record, although regrettably I should have taken more and there appears not any record of the Matchless G80 I was to ride....
John was to travel to Europe to race and never to return to Australia...he married a German lass and settled into a small German town where he ran a florist.
I believe it was in Kel's lounge room for many years and was eventually sold to the Barbour Museum in Georgia, USA.
After all that, what happened to DQ and his G80 ride?
I recall little of it other than we suffered machine problems with the Matchless and I retired...
A not really auspicious start to my foray into motorcycle road racing......
However the Victorian based motorcycle newspaper, Australian Motorcycle News...started in the early 1950's by the late George Lynn and still publishing today as one of the longest running motorcycle newspapers worldwide....did a report in their 7th February 1964 edition and the four relevant pages follow.
Read on to get a feel of the motorcycling journalism of the era and to find out who of the two works Hondas were the victors....
