Add Category
Posted
Few younger residents of Penguin know that a glamourous motor race used to be staged on a quiet street in their tiny north-west Tasmanian town.
Stephen Mott is distilling the nostalgia of it in a book to be published later this year.
He has unearthed great photos of forgotten 1950s and 60s life, a time of reckless men and sexy cars.
One black-and-white image from 1958 is an especially perfect capture of simpler yet more exciting times on a quiet Penguin street.
Open wheeler race cars, exotic sports cars, inter-mingle with Holden utes and farm trucks.
Tiny children watch from the roadside, appearing to shelter from the crackling engines.
Road signs pointing to Riana and Burnie are painted wooden pegs, sharpened to arrows at their ends.
But the richest detail of all, the most tone-resonant of the event, 62 years later, is that of neighbours chatting through a kitchen window, directly above the pits.
"It's a fantastic photo, really captures the atmosphere of 50s motor racing," Mr Mott said.
"You've got cars people built in their sheds, a car Jack Brabham raced a couple of years before, kids, lads, cops, all at the edge of suburbia.
"Many racing cars were unmuffled too so they'd bellow up Pine Rd, which later became Deviation Rd, then return via Mission Hill, right in town — unregistered and often faster than they were supposed to."
Racing in a daredevil era, before race tracks
The Penguin Hillclimb and Tasmanian Hillclimb Championship ran from 1955 to 1971, the earliest years pre-dating Tasmania's racing circuits, Baskerville and Symmons Plains.
It was a time before public liability was the first consideration — a time for daredevils who had often only raced on beaches and back-country straights.
It quickly attracted some major drivers and cars and in 1959 the event was featured, full spread, in Sportscar World magazine.
Tasmania's best drivers all raced there, alongside local guns including Ross Ambrose, father of V8 Supercar and NASCAR legend, Marcos.
"In the early days you had guys like Don Elliott, Mick Watt, Jock Walkem, Lin Archer," Mr Mott said.
"The one who had the most success was John McCormack, three times Australian Gold Star champion."
One of the more memorable characters of the era was Lex Sternberg, who had a car dealership in Burnie.
"Lex was a bigger than life character. He raced a Cooper Climax until he crashed it at Longford," Mr Mott said.
"Then it came out that he was blind in one eye so the governing body took his licence off him!
"His son David took over the car but at Penguin in '64, he lost control and went down a bank into the blackberries.
"Lex was at the finish line and when it came over the PA, he jumped in his car and tore down the hill as fast as he could, against the flow of officials, ambulances, everything."
To drive along Deviation Road today is to drive the unchanged racing circuit.
The start was just above Walton St. An old post and rail fence, now gone, was the only semblance of a safety barrier.
In places the barriers were only barbed wire, power poles and guide posts — and spectators near enough standing on the road.
"It was seven tenths of a mile — about 1,100 metres — and highly rated by the drivers," Mr Mott said.
"They'd do two practice runs and then get three cracks at a best time, one car at a time.
"You had some of the most exotic sports cars of the day and then locals who'd cobbled together something in their shed from Austin 7s and Ford 10s."
An expat Englishman named John Laverick led the formation of the North West Car Club in 1954.
They launched Penguin Hillclimb in March 1955.
The race was just after Tasmania's most legendary annual racing meet at Longford, scene of the Australian Grand Prix, in 1953.
The hope was to lure drivers competing there.
The older Penguin men still remember the sound
At the first event in 1955, the track record was set by one such driver, Tom Hawkes, from Victoria in an Allard sports racer.
"The look and the sound of that Allard is still talked about by the old men I have spoken to for the book," Mr Mott said.
"I walked the track with Dudley Corbett and Ken Jupp, two Penguin locals who grew up with the race.
"Dudley showed me where they used to run a long power cord out of his parent's house to run the event PA and timing gear."
Ken Jupp has an unfaded childhood memory of a Jaguar XK140 parked in the main street of Penguin like a gleaming apparition.
"He couldn't believe this car that was a bit like a spaceship — just so exotic and beautiful. The only way a boy could ever see that in Penguin was because of the Hillclimb," he said.
Topics: books-literature, automobile-enthusiasm, motor-sports, sport, penguin-7316, burnie-7320, riana-7316