Here's the real story on how the Aussie Vintage Motocross movement all got started.
I'd known GE since the old days and we both shared a love of bikes from "back then", he with his precious CZs and me with my beloved Maicos. In early 1985 a brilliant idea came to me one balmy night at the pub and I decided to restore my old square barrell Maico which had been sitting idle in Mums garden shed for over ten years. At the same time my mate Chris Ellis decided to restore his basket case '71 400 Husky. A year or so later the bikes were finished so I approached Geoff as to whether he'd like to do an ADB feature on them. He jumped at the idea and the resulting four page, colour feature came out in the May 1986 issue of ADB. To set up an interesting background for the shoot I approached Amaroo Park management and asked if we could use the then badly derelict Amaroo motocross track. The Amaroo track manager at the time was a lovely old bloke named Ray Price who gladly did some superficial weeding and grading to get the main straight looking something like it did during the tracks golden years. After the shoot GE, Chris, his brother Bernie and I sat around reminiscing over a few beers about the great times we had all experienced at the track back in the seventies. We all wondered aloud just how many old pre '75 bikes were out there still in running condition and whether they would be interested in a one off race at an upcoming meeting at (I think) Dargle.
Eventually the idea faded away until I read in Revs about an upcoming event in California called the Dick Mann Vintage Dirt Rally to be held at a track called Sandhill Ranch, near Livermore, California. I managed to contact Dick Mann (after a lot of dead ends) and he sent me all of the information. Thinking it was a great idea, I hopped a plane to California. After a few days of catching up with friends I ended up in San Francisco where I visited Dick Mann at his workshop in Richmond, near Oakland. That great old bloke spent the whole afternoon explaining philosophy behind his dream,the rules and the reasons for them and all of the inns and outs of running a vintage meeting. I was blown away when he invited me to stay the weekend at his house with he and his wife Kay. For the whole weekend he smothered me in enthusiasm for the vintage motocross thing. The following weekend I attended the event, rode a borrowed CZ400 that Dick had set up for me, assisted in tech inspection (scrutineering) and basically became engulfed in the whole vintage experience. I had the most fun I'd ever had at a race in years and left that evening with a bunch of new friends and a head full of ideas.
Upon arriving home I told anybody who'd listen about this vintage motocross thing and most punters seemed to think it was a good idea. Back at the same pub that had inspired the Maico resto I sat with my mate Chris Ellis and basing our ideas on the California Vintage Racing Group (precurser to AHRMA) rules, in one evening worked out a simplified set of rules and age groups that are still the basis of the very same rules we use today. With a set of rules now on paper I went to GE with the idea of putting on a meeting at Amaroo Park. He thought it was a great idea and right from that moment he worked with me in trying to get the ball rolling. While he was smothering the mag in vintage articles, I started working with the ACCA (MANSW now) on the logistics involved in getting older, retired racers back into the fold without the expense of having to get a full licence. Remember that this proposed Amaroo Park meeting was initially going to be a one off so it wasn't fair to expect retired racers to layout the big money for a full licence for a one off day. Many meetings with Wendy Corrigan from ACCA over a number of weeks eventually resulted in the creation of the original one day licence. That form of licencing had never been used before so I was pretty pleased with that win for the little guy over big bureaucracy. Another hurdle that was overcome was allowing interstate riders to ride at a club day, as long as they joined the promoting club for the day. Previously that had been a no no.
The next step was to approach Amaroo Park management and see if they were willing to prepare the old track again. It hadn't been used in quite a few years and it was overgrown with trees and bushes and most of the topsoil had been washed into the creek. The back section of the track was totally rutted out and unridable. Luckily, Ray Price liked the concept and told us he'd prep the track back to it's 1971 shape and bring in some dirt. Thankfully, they were just starting to redevelop adjacent suburb of Kellyville and the earthmovers were stoked to have the track to dump the excavated dirt. It was a win win situation for everybody. The only let down was that due to changes in enviromental law they couldn't oil the track any more.
The meeting was set down for April 1988 and GE pulled out all of the stops. He was putting as much vintage coverage in the mag as he could to drum up support. My phone number was given as the contact to get on the mailing list and boy did that phone ring off the hook! Even though I was the president of Penrith club, the club was almost broke so I paid all of the permits out of my own pocket and GE/ADB paid the track hire and program printing/layout. We ran the event as a Penrith club day but in effect it was a private Firkin & Eldridge promotion. The meeting was an outstanding success with over 150 entries, many of them late entries (nothing changes) with Victorias Ron Dinsdale being the hot shot on Bultacos ahead of my mate Chris Ellis, Ossa mounted Gary Hodge, Edgar Phipps on a Maico and Kevin Flood on a Maico. The free post race sausage sizzle and pissup was a great end to a magic day and it didn't take a genius to realise that we were on to a good thing. Amaroo Park were happy, ADB was happy, MA were happy and I was tired and happy. I had put so much effort into the event that the stress caused a simple cold to turn into pneumonia knocking me out for a month after the event.
It didn't matter though. Vintage motocross was up and running and we were pretty proud of what we'd built. These days, GE has sadly gone, Chris Ellis is out of the vintage scene although he's building an HL and may come back into the fold and I'm still here as an enthusiastic but long retired punter. We couldn't have done it without the contributions from Dick Mann (who came within a smidge of coming out for the first meeting but other committments got in the way), Wendy Corrigan at MANSW, Ray Price and Terry at Amaroo Park and most of all GE. His enthusiasm and ability to wind me up when I needed it as well as the much needed publicity and sponsorship will always be appreciated. He helped turn my dream into a reality more than any other person on the planet. He was a full on supporter of everything we did right up until the day he died. The night before his big crash he'd started negotiations on another bike, a Metisse of some sort. It was his original idea to call the Aussie Champs the Nats, thereby bypassing the big MA fees and making the whole structure simple. I miss him and his friendship still to this day.
