CLASSIC MORRIS

CHASED BY THE TOFFEE-NOSES THIS IS WHAT BATHURST WAS LIKE IN THE REALLY EARLY DAYS!
WORDS LESTER MORRIS

It was a Saturday night at Sydney’s Showground Speedway way back in 1948 which changed it all, and it was very much for the better. It was, as usual, almost a packed house, but one of the unexpected items on the program was the addition of several promotional laps by a large number of motorcycles which differed radically from the skinny, ultra-lightweight Speedway bikes. They were in fact highly-specialised, un-streamlined road-racing machines, which looked extremely impressive, although they were naturally ridden on the slick dirt surface at much slower speeds than the nigh-frantic pace of the races we had already witnessed.