Bathurst memories

[racer69]

Remember in 1987 when the internationals turned up for the World Touring Car Championship round and after one look at the track ran to FISA officials saying how dangerous it was,especially across the top and then shutting up when told the race used to take place with NO guardrails

[Crash Test]

Bathurst has a way of turning underpants brown... especially those of international racers coming to the place for the first time. But I will never forget a certain Mr Wakefield's reaction to the place after his first run around there at speed in 1998. I'd say many runs around the place at 60km/h didn't prepare him for what the place is like at race pace....especially coming down Conrod, which is very blind, and narrow at those sorts of speeds....

[Ray Bell]

I guess you folk weren't there the day that Kevin Bartlett lapped Kevin Fahey after three laps, or set the first 100mph lap?

The day a field of ANF1 cars rumbled over the top of the mountain, or a pair of V8 Sports Racers headed the field, or when Bill Brown drove down Conrod at 180.7mph chasing Bartlett's Brabham Alfa and lapping the Ferrari Sports Car in 2:19.6.

Those were the days of a patchy surface, broken edges and trees standing proudly at each side, the days when men were men and brown wasn't in the underpants at all; it was all in a day's work.

Those days slowly died as the ARDC grabbed defeat out of the jaws of victory and killed the racing off. Their tenure on the big annual tintop race was enough for them, why bother running meetings at Easter Bathurst and at Catalina when Amaroo was on a closer horizon?

It was a Mecca for those with scarred crash helmets and cars to drive. The place to be at Easter, no matter where you came from. Camping in the pits or on the top of the Mountain, you knew the chill of an oncoming winter each morning as you shaved under a cold tap and struggled to find breath between the ice crystals forming in the foggy dawn.

Bathurst meant far more than that it does today. A gentle mingling with the motorcycle folk, a lap or two each evening and a good view from the fences. Long walks up and down the hills, a pause for breath behind the old timber Shell Tower that marked the Skyline.

Police motorcycles and Mini Coopers patrolled all the while, but they didn't get everyone. The Acropole dished out hamburgers and milkshakes, fish and chips and sit down meals for those who could find a seat. Gurdons Motors buzzed with activity into the wee hours, as did other places, even in far-off Orange, where the mysterious Scuderia Veloce camped each year.

Girls walked around all day in Duffle coats, long hair tangled and unkempt as they walked up the access roads with boyfriends or blokes they'd just met. Cars bogged in the paddocks were older models than those today.

And at the gate you paid by the day. If you went in at night, you awoke to the call of the ticket sellers doing their rounds, or you got up earlier than that and took a hike deep into the bush to sit and wait till the coast was clear.

Baked bean tins exploded in the odd campfire, but I guess that still happens today. The ground is still the same, the trees generally a little older, but the memories glow like the fires when two or three who were there start to talk about when Bathurst was real.