CLASSIC MORRIS

BATHURST BASICS
WORDS LESTER MORRIS

After a day of official practice and several which were not quite so ‘official’, the air was rent by the sounds of megaphone-enhanced, open motorcycle exhausts as the 250cc ‘Lightweight’ field shot away from the makeshift starting line and howled up the side of a small mountain called Mount Panorama just outside the town of Bathurst in New South Wales. It was Easter Saturday, 1938, and one of the world’s newest – and also one of the greatest – racing circuits was about to enjoy its baptism of fire.