TRACKS IN TIME:
Bathurst 1951... a wild weekend
Doug takes up the story:
“Brian, Bruce Mutton and I travelled from Adelaide in my beautiful 1932 Ford V8 Tourer. I fitted an extra light at the front, taken from my 1936 AJS. Easter Saturday 1951 was 24th March. Maurie Quincey loaned Brian his road registered Matchless to give Brian an introduction to the track. On the day before practice began (21st March), Brian, Bruce and I walked the full length of the circuit, and I stood in various locations and took photos. During practice Brian’s Manx Norton developed a split in the oil tank, and with some outside help this was repaired in (car racer) Lex Davison’s garage. Brian finished thirteenth in the Senior TT, won by Harry Hinton, which was a good effort given the calibre of the competition and the fact that he had never raced there before.”
A record-breaking meeting
Brian Fuss certainly picked a Bathurst baptism by fire. Every lap record on the books was shattered in a meeting that saw capacity fields in every class, magnificent weather and a course that had received much-needed attention since the previous year.
Motor Cycling in Australia (magazine) reported, “The NSW Jubilee TT meeting was witnessed by a crowd of spectators estimated to exceed 20,000 in number. 330 officials co-operated in the running of the meeting which was probably the best organised motor cycle road race ever held in the Commonwealth. All races started exactly to the second of the time programmed, save on one occasion where the road-clearing outfit was delayed on its circuit and the start of that particular race was 90 seconds late! The city of Bathurst had every inch of sleeping accommodation occupied days before the race and, on the Friday night, visitors to the meeting slept in camps that encircled the course, filled every camping area, and extended on the sides of roads in every direction up to a radius of 5 miles from Bathurst. Despite the tremendous speeds at which races were run, only one competitor suffered injury of a nature that could be considered worse than bruising. This was Jack Ahearn who fell during the Junior.”
In fact, official practice saw Isle of Man representative and former AJS works rider Eric McPherson drop his 7R AJS in exactly the same spot as Ahearn, the incident captured on film by Byron Gunther in one of the most iconic
photographs in local motor cycle racing history. McPherson, bruised and battered, managed to complete the Junior TT but finished well back and announced his retirement from racing soon after. That Junior TT featured a sensational battle as early leader Ernie Ring was gradually overhauled by Victorian Maurie Quincey, who took the flag with a 3 second margin. It was soon revealed that Ring had covered the final lap with a flat front tyre. The premier event, the Senior TT over 100 miles, also fell to the amazing Hinton. Harry was riding with his face bandaged and with a large foam rubber pad under his helmet’s chin strap after a bizarre incident in the Junior TT when Bill Morris’s AJS picked up a length of loudspeaker cable, which also snared George Campbell. Travelling close behind, Hinton was struck as the cable recoiled, lashing his upper body and severing the clutch cable of his Norton!
Harry’s performance in the last race of the day, the Open TT, was virtuoso. The old master had already contested 320km of racing that day, and faced the toughest opposition in the form of Lloyd Hirst, who had un-bolted the chair from his Vincent Black Lightning after winning the Sidecar TT. Hinton’s ace was that he carried an extra two gallons of fuel in a tank mounted on the rear mudguard, and when leader Hirst dashed into the pits to refuel at half distance, Harry surged into the lead and put his head down, pulverising the lap record down to 3.01 on his way to a sensational victory. The roads back to Sydney were chocka-block that evening, but every spectator went home in the knowledge that he, or she, had witnessed a meeting that would go down as a classic.