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READING ROOM LIST
This page contains links to written contributions on the web site.
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MEDIA RELEASE
Long
Lease Locks in Lakeside
For Immediate Release: 18
December, 2007
Brisbane, Queensland - Supporters
of Queensland's Lakeside Raceway received an early Christmas present
this year with the Pine
Rivers Shire Council and
Wrexmere Pty Ltd (Queensland Raceway) signing
off on a long term lease to
operate the historic circuit on
Brisbane's north side.
The
agreement for 30 years, with an option for 10 years, obtained
State Government Ministerial
approval and will insure the facility
celebrates its 50th anniversary on 19 March 2011.
Lakeside Motor Racing Enthusiasts president Ian Milton said,
"We're
delighted and relieved by the news, but if we want to get on the
track, everyone will have to pitch in and do their part - there's no
more excuses for sitting on the sidelines."
When asked what the major challenges
were to getting club-level motor racing back to Lakeside, John Tetley of
Queensland Raceway said,
"We have all the usual major
project hassles including red tape, availability of scarce resources,
etc."
Mr Tetley said
that an initial $1.2 million has already been secured to invest on
rebuilding infrastructure and,
"The rest will
depend on how wisely we invest the initial capital input and how
many people come and spend their money there."
"We're
targeting and hoping to
re-open the driver training
in February or March
next year. Racing, maybe June, depending on a lot of
variables including re-education of competitors and neighbour
management."
Pine Rivers Shire Councillor Mike
Charlton was very excited to declare the situation as "all systems go!"
He described the council's vision for Lakeside as,
"Preservation of an iconic motorsport site
embracing historic, commercial and club motorsport activities,
combined with life-saving driver and rider education and community
events."
Cr Charlton said that a legal action in
the Planning & Environment Court between the PRSC and Mr Ron Curtis is
"unlikely to delay" and is confident in their legal advice because it
is "tried and tested" law. Last month a local newspaper article revealed
that people had been listed as co-applicants without their permission.
The action has been adjourned until 23 January, 2008.
Mr Milton pointed out the significance
of events,
"An historic moment
is occuring for the people of Queensland, and particularly the
motorsport community, because I can think of no other example of a motor
racing circuit in Australia being brought back from the brink
like Lakeside."
"On behalf of
LMRE members, I would like to extend a sincere invitation to anyone
who has a passion for motorsport to help us get this deal over the
line by registering on-line to help reconstruct Lakeside. You don't
need to be an engineer, just bring the right attitude.
For more information visit
www.lakesideraceway.com.
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Here is an account of some of Tony
Stott's adventurous times with Terry Allan.
"Terry Allan originally took his
mum's auto EH and got Brian Sampson's Motor Improvements to give it the
works. I remember going round Albert Park in a chase car, while Brian
gave it a test run, without bonnet, and with hoses not yet cut to
length.
Before Terry took it off the road, we had about a month of
"American Graffiti" type antics, as a street Holden capable of
15.0 second quarter miles, and capable of almost 100mph in second gear
was something rather special in the mid 60s!. I also remember Terry
going to the drags at Fishermen's Bend airstrip. His first ever pass
netted (I think) 15.3 seconds, and the crowd went bananas! We were both
awestruck to find ourselves in the middle of a crowd of 200-300, and the
commentators quickly changed their tune to "And here comes Terry
Allan in his awesome Holden!" He was the second fastest
street-registered car there, behind a 289 Cobra powered Zephyr.
His car was painted standard dark
EH Holden red, and all he did was get the white roof painted red to
match the rest of the car. I cannot recall any other EHs racing at the
time other than Muir and Beechey, and Terry definitely raced (and
crashed) at Catalina Park.
He went on to race in the Holden class at
Hume Weir (his first race meeting), and also Oran Park, Calder and the
Easter Bathurst meeting. At the latter, he tried oversized Firestone
rubber, (Melinda's dad Dave Price got a turn driving) but one sidewall
wore through on the suspension, causing a spin at McPhillamy Park. No
harm to the EH except Midge Bosworth's immaculate FJ clipped the front
of the EH, and then flipped a couple of times, totally destroying what
was easily the best prepared racing Holden at the time.
I got my jollies knowing that in later
races, my trouser belt was used as a replacement bonnet strap :^) From
memory, I think the maximum speed down Conrod was 127mph.... not as
quick as Muir's car, but quick for the time nevertheless.
After Terry bought Brian Muir's S4 (and repainted
it Scuderia Veloce orange/red instead of the mid green Brian had it), he
then bought a Lotus Cortina from Allan Moffat, and I had the pleasure of
a hot lap at Calder in it. The plan was to join Moff in USA in the
Pro-Am series. Unfortunately, Moffat cabled soon after to say not to
come as there was not enough money to make it viable". -
TONY STOTT. 29/12/03
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IAN GEOGHEGAN R.I.P.
Ian "Pete" Geoghegan, multiply
Australian Touring Car Champion and Bathurst winner passed away in
Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital on Saturday 15/11/03.
He was 64 years of age.
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Australian
Tony Stott was a professional motor racing photographer. Some of
his work can be found on the
"International page"
photo page on this web site.
Tony
gives an interesting insight into his photography career, below:
"I started race
photography in early 1965, by doing soft pencil drawings for drivers
such as Peter Manton, Lou Molina etc, and soon discovered that the
drivers were more interested in the photos I took to base the drawings
on (and it was frankly less work :^).
I built up the market in Victoria to a reasonable level, and at the same
time, convinced a mate of mine to go car racing... I had a lot of my
work published in Motor Manual, working with a young Peter Robinson, and
had a few photos make the back page in the Melbourne dailies.
Terry Allan was a friend of mine. Terry bought Brian Muir's EH,
and then bought Allan Moffat's Lotus Cortina, and planned to run in the
Pro-am series in the States. A last minute call from Moffat caused Terry
to change plans, and sell the Cortina, so we both went to England. I
resumed race photography over there, while contributing to UK Motoring
News, Wheels, Motor Manual and Racing Car News and others.
I attended some 150 race meetings in Europe, including all F1 races in
UK, Spa, Monaco, plus Nurburgring 1000, LeMans and others. After a
while, I worked with Nigel Snowden and Diana Burnett, but in Monaco
1968, a chat with Eion S Young convinced me that getting married and
starting out trying to become a full-time F1 race photographer were not
compatible. So I reluctantly hung up my camera.
The real tragedy if it all is that being so young at the time, I did not
appreciate the historical value of my work, which was 4 years of
intensive race photos in Europe and 2 in Australia, from out on the
track, and over the years, most of my negatives have been lost."
I queried Tony when I noticed that in some of his
photos he appeared to be standing on the footpath with no protection
between him and the cars! Here is Tony's response:
"Yes, I was indeed standing on the footpath, and I remember
squatting on the apex of the hairpin heading downhill towards the tunnel
at Monaco, during practice (I would never interfere with a race!), and
having to tuck my elbow in! True story! The same thing crouching behind
the Armco outside the TipTop bar after Casino square. Sometimes the
drivers would get a little too close while trying to line up the
following right hander, and the tyres were no more than a foot away from
my left elbow!
At LeMans, I usually walked along the top of the earth banks lining the
track, so the cars might be less than 4 feet away laterally, but about 6
feet lower. At Nurburgring, I was jealous of Nigel Snowden, because
while we both had photographers' armbands, his was signed by the Chief
of Police, and he could literally stand where he wanted to, able to wave
off any approaching policemen by pointing to the signature! Actually, my
bigger fear at Nurburgring was due to the student riots happening at the
time... it is not easy to sleep in a tent beside the track, when a BMW
is torched four cars away :^( Due to the riots, there was no petrol
available in France, so we had to return from Monaco via that awesome
pass (you know the one, with about 15 consecutive hairpins) up through
northern Italy, through the big tunnel, up through Germany and Belgium.
A 24 hour drive...
Also, at Silverstone, I used to stand inside a single row of concrete
blocks marking the inside line of the track (first corner after the
start, forget the name). In one race, John Rhodes in his works Cooper S
momentarily backed off mid-corner, and the Mini punched the blocks about
20 feet in front of me. The impact sent him back on line, while the
blocks showered around me! Next lap, when he saw I had not been
clobbered, he gave me a grin and a huge thumbs up, while his front tyres
poured the usual cloud of smoke (they later worked out better ways to
drive with LSDs in Minis :^)
The closest I ever came to being clobbered was during a warm-up lap at
Brands Hatch. I was talking to another photographer outside the right
hander downhill from Druids hairpin. The other guy (stupidly) had his
back to the track, when someone lost it. I saw it coming, so I grabbed
him aside, but the car ran over his bag, which had been at his
feet!" 24/11/03
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The Kathy Burban Story.
"I met Allan Moffat thru my father - we not only had an English
Ford/MG/Lotus dealership (in Michigan) but we warehoused new sports cars
that came over from England and then shipped them on to the rest of the
'States' . My father knew I would love to see a car with the steering
wheel on the right side....as luck would have it Allan was at the warehouse
making sure his 'baby' was all ok....geeez it all seems so very long
ago....and that's how a friendship was born I guess.
Sometimes he and Peter Quenet would work on their cars at the dealership on
Sunday afternoons and I had to 'baby-sit' the place while they were
there....sometimes I worked on my car - like take a part of the heater out -
I vaguely remember being on the 'creeper' under the Cortina and rolling over
one of my pigtails with the damn 'creeper'....they thought it was very funny
that I couldn't move...actually they thought everything I did was funny
because I was a 'girl' and didn't ever take me very seriously... until I won
1st place overall trophies race after race that is...
Allan sometimes would help us out by picking up cars up at the docks
from where they were 1st dropped off the ships. We would be one long
caravan of filthy dirty nasty English cars driving down the streets of
Detroit back to warehouse. I never knew new cars could be that
disgusting - it always took 3 baths to get all of the filthy, sooty ship
dirt off me....he taught me Australian-like 'bun' really meant 'doughnut ( I
brought him back a hamburger bun-couldn't figure out why he would want that
first thing in the morning, serviette was napkin, its roof not ruf like a
dog sound - we had lots of laughs..... I one race I was successfully holding
Allan at bay (and leading the race) and did so thru the whole race until the
very end....he passed me on the straight and we came in 1,2 ..he won first
overall and I was second overall....didn't matter because we were in sedan 3
and 4....Allan never would admit to me that I had some skill.. :)
I stopped racing for 2 reasons basically. both thru 2 horrific accidents to
others that drove home to me (like my mother couldn't) that you can really
get hurt doing this. the first was my racing instructor - he was in an out
of Michigan race somewhere so I didn't see the accident.. he was driving, I
believe, a McLaren formula car where the fuel line ran along the
inside of the chassis next to him and then up and around the back of his
head. You guessed it - the car flipped end over end a few times at a
really high speed and sprayed fuel all over his face and parts of his
body..his face was pretty well melted.
The second incident was an extremely thrilling race..2 sedans were fighting
neck and neck the entire race...lap after lap the lead would switch back and
forth between them....the final lap at, a very high speed, one of the
drivers' hood latch failed and the hood blew and bent right straight up over
his windshield as they came within 2-3 yards of the checkered flag drop...of
course everyone was watching them including one of the flagmen to see what
would happen.......the #3 car came around the hairpin turn and into the
straight seconds behind them and totally lost control....I had the 'great
luck' to see him veer off the track and hit the flagman looking in the other
direction, knocking him straight up into the air right across from where I
was standing....he lucked out and only got a broken leg...(the windshield
guy was fine-he had great skill)...but that did it for me....I quit after
that season...I finally realized that a person can get hurt doing this kind
of thing..." Kathy Burban.
Note: To see
photos of Kathy and Allan on the "1960's Page 2" page
Click HERE.
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