SNAPSHOTS
> SUNSHINE COAST, QLD Part2
WITH so many fantastic vintage shots to play with, we’ve decided to share a few more from my dad Russell Parker’s personal collection. I love that Dad was right there at the birth of drag racing in South Australia in the mid 60s, with him and his mates being pivotal in creating the Brooksfield track. His path was then set to become a dedicated and winning drag racer.
01. ACCORDING to Dad, drag racing in South Australia started with Trevor and Dennis Edmonds’ Payneham Road service station. “They probably had the first dedicated drag car, an early Ford Prefect gasser that ran the first sprints at Gawler Belt,” he says. “Sid Eckert Motors sat behind the servo, which is where my brother Warren and mates Danny Daros and Graham Flavel all worked. Sid let them build their race cars there and we’d all hang around.” Soon, the tame 100m sprints didn’t suffice and the young lads wanted more. The Brooksfield land was offered up, and a dedicated crew built it into a usable drag strip. And that’s where these five FEDS are pitted, waiting their turn to belt down the nine-chain dirt track.
02. I FONDLY remember this wheelstander shot hanging in our billiard room, where I’d ogle it daily. Dad’s rail was said to have launched the highest wheelstand of the time – just under seven feet. How that was gauged is anyone’s guess, but it was impressive nevertheless. This photo was widely used in publications to accompany the news of Dad winning the 1977 SADRA and AIR’S Driver Of The Year award, as well as Top Dragster, and he won the B/D class outright, gaining him a gold Christmas tree (read: fun kids toy). By now his FED was pumping out consistent mid-nines, with a chance 9.30@143mph. He also held the national B/D record, all thanks to a mild 302ci backed by a Clutchflite auto and an Austin A95 diff. “Brian Hutchesson and Phil Taylor built up a 904 Torqueflite into a Clutchflite manual, without reverse,” Dad says. “To push-start the car, there was a lever on top of the gearbox with a plunger that pushed on the clutch band to engage it. A hold-down pin held the clutch pedal down so that we could push the rail around, otherwise it was permanently in drive. The Clutchflite worked well.”
03. LOOK closely to see my 10-month-old DNA merging with that of ‘The Dragster’, as it was commonly referred to by me and my siblings. I’d often play in and around the heavily metal-flaked blue rail, both in the shed and of course at the drag strips. There’s one story that I vaguely remember, when my parents
pretended to tie me to a Stobie pole (that’s an electricity pole to non-south Aussies) at AIR, probably because I was a runner, and a pretty ‘adventurous’ (i.e. naughty) kid.
04. BECAUSE drag racing wasn’t enough, in the late 60s and early 70s Dad and a bunch of larrikin mates would also hoon about in homecrafted dune buggies. This flathead-powered example was Dad’s second buggy build. “We’d go in a clay pan and muck around,” he says. “The buggies could get into lots of places; they’d get up those sand hills. There would’ve been up to five buggies between us at times. We’d have a tray on the back to fit half-a-dozen people and go for a ride in the sand hills.”
05. FOR as long as I can remember, it was always an automotive toy shop at my grandparents’ Magill home, and it was even more so before my generation interrupted proceedings. Here’s my uncle Warren’s dune buggy, Dad’s Model A and Rebel FED. As for the 302ci-powered gold XW Fairmont, Dad had bought that fresh off the showroom floor and sold it on about six years later. Beside that is one of a handful of Drag Quip chassis that Dad, along with mates Geoff Walker and Dave Watson, created. “After Brooksfield closed and before AIR opened, the three of us made a tube bender so that we could build ourselves a rail each, using a set of published Don Debring’s chassis drawings as a guide,” Dad says. “Then everyone else also wanted one, so Drag Quip was started. We also built zoomies, extractors, front wheels, shortened diffs and so on. I dropped out before our Hemi-powered FED was finished, as on top of my full-time job we were working another 20-plus hours a week and it got too much! The rail pictured was going to have a six-cylinder Falcon motor, and was sold as it sat.”
06. AFTER a couple of decades of raising kids (including me) and fishing, Dad ended his automotive drought when he imported a roller ’65 Mustang fastback body with parts in the late 2000s. We stripped the paint before my hubby Shane laid on a new coat of mid-60s Ford Galaxie dark blue. Dad then rigged up all the original gear. “I legally couldn’t put a 302ci in there due to the left-hand drive laws, so it ran a 289ci with bigger valves, hardened seats, roller rockers, 10:1 pistons, Holley carb and manifold, and extractors,” Dad says. He even gave it a blat down the quarter at AIR’S re-opening in 2011. “I think it ran 13s or 14s; it was pretty average – it wasn’t built for that. I was just supporting the strip.” Recently he sold the Muzzy as part of a move to the Sunshine Coast – the car is now set to be part of the London to Sydney rally.