WHEN you’re getting on in years like I am, you tend to think more about what’s been left behind than what lies ahead. A few weeks ago I stumbled across the first race program I ever bought, which I thought had disappeared forever.

The NSW Grand Prix at Oran Park on Sunday, 16 June, 1974 was the first road race meeting I ever attended, and it attracted Australia’s best and up-and-coming riders. My dad had raced cars until I was six-years-old, and as a very handy mechanic, he helped out a mate in the Tasman open-wheeler series until the early 1970s so I was no stranger to the noises and smells of race tracks. But this was my first experience as a spectator to a bike race, something I just had to see. Bikes had become my life.

When the two-wheel craze was sweeping the nation in 1974, I was fanging around the bush on my first-ever bike, a Honda CL100. On Any Sunday had earlier filled local cinemas in 1973 to further fuel the boom that had been sparked by the off-road phenomena. Then there was the awesome four-cylinder Honda CB750 and Kawasaki Z1 that filled the streets.

Yamaha’s ground-shaking TZ700 debuted in 1974 and got an almighty christening at Mount Panorama over Easter when Warren Willing edged out fellow 700-mounted Gregg Hansford in a thrilling Unlimited Grand Prix. Just two months later, the pair would face off at Oran Park. This was a must see.

I had never sat in the spectator area at Oran Park’s BP/Energol Corner, so a whole new world opened up for me when the lightweight C-grade bikes completed their warm-up lap for their six-lap, push start race. Looking at the rider list, the first name to appear was a ‘Frank Pons’ riding the # 18 Yamaha 250. I caught up with Frank at the final Formula Xtreme meeting at Eastern Creek in 2011, and asked if that was indeed him. A top enduro gun back in the day, the famed tuner turned suspension tech said he couldn’t remember when he gave road racing away. Oh well, one man’s stroll down memory lane is another’s senior moment!

Another rider I unwittingly witnessed in that first race was Fraser Stronach, who would later become chief road tester for REVS Motorcycle News, and someone I got to know after I became a moto-journo. Then there was Lee Roebuck, Rick Perry and Greg Drew. Fifteen years later, Greg became a wildcard entrant in the inaugural FIM Australian 500cc Grand Prix at Phillip Island on a creation of his own, which didn’t make race distance.

My first impressions of motorcycle racing were indelible, and had more to do with what was happening off the track. Given the smallish and largely silent crowd, I soon realised that motorcycle racing was a minority sport that millions were missing out on. It was difficult to reconcile the spectacular action on the track with the languid onlookers, some of them picnickers, who were happy enough to idly watch on as they soaked up the warm winter sun.

After attending top rugby league matches at the SCG which attracted raucous crowds of 60,000 screaming fans, it kind of hurt that my chosen sport, which I considered the most spectacular and death-defying in the world, was cradled by a much smaller turn out who nary raised an ooh or an ah all day. In some ways the small crowd atmosphere made it a more intimate affair, and bike racing was a kind of a secret that we all shared.

The gathering, however, made a beeline for the fence when Hansford’s Chesterfield Yamaha and Willing’s Grace Bros-sponsored Yamaha zipped around on the sighting lap for event eight, round one of the ‘Formula 750’ over 12 laps, clutch start. Despite the gaggle of TZ700s on the grid piloted by Ken Blake, Laurie Barnett, Rob Hinton, Rob Madden, Kiwi John Boote as well as Ron Toombs’ Kawasaki 750, it was the very senior Eric Debenham on his grunty Vincent 1000 that led that field into turn one and a time warp before Hansford and Willing slipped their sleek 700s through at Suttons/Yamaha Corner. The pair pulled away to a lively scrap that worked course commentator Ross Pentecost into a lather, but the crowd, while more attentive to the 750s, was content just to look on in silent awe as the 90-horsepower four-cylinder, two-strokes sizzled down the front straight.

The sidecars seemed to attract even more interest than the solos, led by the futuristic Kawasaki 900-powered Chesterfield wedge built and raced by the great Bob Levy. Mind you, it wasn’t difficult for the wedge to leap a decade forward to 1984 compared to other outfits that were conceived in 1964.

And so it went, with a go-kart demonstration during the lunch break followed by the second round of the Formula 750, Willing and Hansford seemingly barely in control of their unruly 700s. Oh what the rest of the world was missing.
My second meeting was the Pan Pacific Cup at Oran Park in November ’74 that featured American star Pat Hennen on a Team Kawasaki 750 versus the legendary Ron Toombs. After their first race which Toombs just won, Hennen told the crowd over the PA that he was fighting to find traction out of some of the corners, trying different lines.

It was the first time I had heard a road racer talk about traction like a dirt-tracker or motocrosser. In race two, the pair staged another tight dice which went to a wised-up Hennen. After the race, Toombsy told the crowd, “I showed him what to do in the first race, then the bastard shoved straight back at me!”

Fifteen years later, bike racing truly came of age in Australia when 1987 world champ Wayne Gardner won the 1989 FIM Aussie grand prix at Phillip Island in front of a big crowd and a 300 million worldwide TV audience. It was worth the wait.