AMAROO SIX HOURS
One of the most spectacular production road races of the 1970s was Australia’s gladiatorial Castrol Six Hour. Hamish Cooper takes us back to those glory days
Looking back at Australia’s sensational ’70s production race on a crazy circuit
Amaroo Park and the Castrol Six Hour race epitomised the freewheeling Australia of the 1970s. In a setting almost like a Roman amphitheatre, the nation’s best racers flogged the latest production motorcycles for six hours every October. Watching this gladiatorial spectacle were thousands of sun-baked fans, drinking cans of KB lager and eating Dagwood dogs (deep-fried cornmeal batter-coated sausages, mounted on sticks – trackside delicacies).
As the booze and the spring sun took hold, the men went topless and the women stripped down to skimpy outfits. Meanwhile the bikes roared around and around just metres below them. What a place. What an event.
Carved out of a rocky valley in suburban Sydney, Amaroo Park snaked around a series of cliffs with blind corners and long lengths of Armco. It wouldn’t be licensed if it was built today but all through the 1970s it hosted Australia’s most popular motorcycle race. The event helped launch the international careers of a generation of riders. If you could win this race, you could win anywhere in the world.
At its height the Castrol Six Hour attracted as many as 10,000 fans, many of them riding their motorcycles out and filling the circuit to overflowing. In 1977 Mike Hailwood took the event to a new level of interest as he started what would become a fairytale return to the Isle of Man TT. The next year Yamaha’s shaft-drive XS1100 and Honda’s outrageous six-cylinder CBX 1000 brought multi-cylinder madness to the event. In 1979 Suzuki’s new GS1000 lapped the entire field within three hours, taking race professionalism to a new level.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Amaroo Park was built by Sydney businessman Oscar Glaser, whose company North Sydney Traders owned the land. His original plan was to create a Us-style leisure campus with a motorsport complex as its centrepiece. The Amaroo Country Sporting Club and motorcycle scrambles course opened in 1962.
Amaroo is an Aboriginal world meaning ‘beautiful place’ and the bush setting was certainly that. However, Glaser’s grand plans never came to fruition and the site always had only basic facilities. Rather than a Gp-spec circuit, a narrow 1.9km bitumen course was built. Its first event was a 30-lap production motorcycle race in 1967 won by Larry Simons on a BSA Spitfire.
The Australian Racing Drivers Club took over running Amaroo Park in 1969. The following year Australia’s largest motorcycle club, the Willoughby District Motorcycle Club, held the first six-hour production race, called the Castrol 1000. There were 75 starters split across Unlimited, 500cc and 250cc classes.
A Le Mans running start ended in a pile-up triggered by several 250s. Another crash on lap two brought the ambulance out into a traffic jam of racers, causing another accident. At the end of six hours second-placed Craig Brown sat on his Honda looking like he’d been duped in a card game. Beside him victor Len Atlee was basking in the euphoria of winning on his Triumph Bonneville 650 and Au$1400 ride.
Kiwi Brown, a chef by trade, had been on target for that victory but he was a youngster who’d never raced in a major event before. Brown had been beaten by two of Australia’s most experienced road racers, Atlee and Bryan Hindle, on a bike entered by Sydney dealer Ryans of Parramatta. But Brown’s solo privateer effort proved the potential of Honda’s four-cylinder machines, which next year swept the leaderboard.
There were several other important aspects of the 1970 event that weren’t largely recognised at the time.
‘THE SIX HOUR BALLOONED INTO AUSTRALIA’S MOST IMPORTANT MOTORCYCLING EVENT’
Third outright was the tiny T20 250cc Suzuki twostroke of Dave Burgess and fourth were Bill Horsman and Ian Ardill on an R5 350 Yamaha, a precursor to the giantkilling RD350. Two-strokes were here to stay, despite being noisy, smelly and prone to piston seizures. Also, an all-female team of Sandra Davis, Janet Middleton and Linda Mcfarlane put in a great effort on another R5 350. Surviving a crash, they stuck it to the boys and finished ahead of many of them in an event of attrition. The women had bought and prepared the machine themselves. Another woman, Peggy Hyde, teamed with Rod Tingate to finish fourth in the 500 class on a Mach III Kawasaki. Earlier that year at Phillip Island the 26-year-old had become Australia’s first female winner of a road race. Kawasaki’s demon two-stroke triple set the fastest lap of the race in the hands of Ken Blake.
What had started as a glorified club meeting soon ballooned into the nation’s most important motorcycle event and captured the public’s imagination. The 1970s was a rollicking decade for Australians. The population’s average age was late 20s, and the economy was roaring along. It was a great time to be a cashed-up Aussie. Motorcycling and surfing soon became the two most glamorous pursuits of this booming generation of 20-somethings. Retailers of motorcycles and all its related accessories and clothing soon learnt that competing in the Castrol Six Hour brought kudos and increased sales. With a bit of clever PR the Castrol Six Hour got television coverage, first on Channel Seven and then on ABC. Amaroo Park entered a golden age.
HAIL ‘MIKE THE BIKE’
By 1977 the Castrol Six Hour had managed to deliver a different slice of spectacle each year. From eligibility controversy to heroic solo rides, the event was always in the headlines. Publicity stepped up a notch when ninetimes world champion Mike Hailwood competed that year. His arrival at Sydney airport was a news event and his choice of motorcycle, a Ducati twin, a talking point as Kawasaki’s Z900 had dominated production racing for the past couple of years. In recent years various Ducati and BMW twins had upstaged bigger Japanese rivals. Even two-strokes from the smaller classes had challenged for wins.
‘THE CASTROL SIX HOUR ALWAYS HAD AN EXTRA MAGIC TRICK UP ITS SLEEVE’
What Hailwood described as “a bit of fun” ended up with second placing in the 750cc class and sixth outright. With team-mate Jim Scaysbrook, Hailwood was part of a privateer crew with the Ducati provided by Newcastle motorcycle wreckers Moreparts. Money was so tight that Hailwood and Scaysbrook practised, qualified and raced on the same set of tyres. Scaysbrook took the running start as Hailwood’s old car GP ankle injury still hampered his mobility. Everything went to plan and Mike the Bike did two stints in the saddle – just what the bumper crowd had come to see. Apart from Hailwood, the race was a ripper and was screened live on ABC TV. Everything went like clockwork for Hailwood and Co and the strong finish laid the groundwork for another season of Production racing around Australia. When the pair returned for the 1978 event, the Ducati and its riders were wearing the colours of major sponsor Golden Breed youthwear.
SHAFTED BY YAMAHA
Anticipation was just as high as in 1977 but Hailwood’s team was blighted by practice crashes that required two all-night rebuilds. A blown big end kept them out of qualifying so they had to start from the back of the grid. Nevertheless, Hailwood fought his way into 15th place overall and was leading the 750 class when he handed over to Scaysbrook. A seized gearbox ended that valiant charge. Yamaha’s new shaft-drive XS1100 had made its appearance in 1977 as the marshals’ bikes. This year it took on Honda’s outrageous six-cylinder CBX 1000 and Suzuki’s new GS1000 in a battle of the DOHC multi-cylinders. Graeme Crosby put his CBX 1000 on pole but a fuel issue resulted in a seized engine.
The Yamaha victory meant a shaft-drive motorcycle had won Australia’s biggest road race. Also of significance was the fact that Budd and Heyes had benefitted from Team Avon’s slick tyre changes. The race was won as much in the pits as on the track.
SUZUKI’S FINEST HOUR
Another year, another bumper crowd. Look closely at the 1979 photos and you’ll notice the tribal nature of fans. Three-cylinder Yamaha XS850S parked together, clusters of Ducati V-twins, rows of Japanese fourcylinders from Kawasaki, Suzuki and Honda. Also BMW twins, one of the most expensive bikes of the day. Honda’s new thoroughbred, the CB900, was the talk of the meeting and it didn’t disappoint, with American hotshot Wes Cooley brought out to race one. Dennis Neil put his CB900 on pole, ahead of the Z1 Kawasaki of Graeme Crosby and Japanese team-mate Akihiro Kiyohara. Alan Hales and Neil Chivas turned their third place in qualifying into a convincing first win for Suzuki’s GS1000, the factory’s first Six Hour triumph. As well as a new Six Hour record of 360 laps they had lapped the entire field by the halfway mark. Second were Greg Pretty and Jim Budd on a Yamaha XS1100 with Len Atlee, winner of the 1970 event, third with Gary Coleman on another XS1100. But the Castrol Six Hour and Amaroo always had an extra magic trick up its sleeve. This time is was the spectacular crash of Dennis Neill, who totalled his CB900 on the pit-straight Armco just before the race ended. The 750 class was won by a young Wayne Gardner and John Pace on a Kawasaki Z650, Gardner showing the ability that would eventually bring him the 500cc World GP title. The next year the Honda factory would send over three of its new CB1100R models and Production racing in Australia was changed forever.
POSTSCRIPT
In 1984 the launch of the first Australian Superbike championship took racing in a whole new direction. The Six Hour was moved across Sydney to Oran Park Raceway that year and the event was never the same. It was run for the last time in 1987.
Amaroo Park continued as a racing venue until 1998. Today it is part of a housing estate with the old circuit’s only reference point the lake that used to lie in the centre of what was one of the world’s craziest race tracks.