primotipo…

I got terribly excited when I found this letterhead among the Vintage Sports Car Club of Victoria’s photo archive. What a discovery, a speedway in inner Melbourne, on the current AGP site way back in 1903!

Yes and no. The speedway was built but for the use of our equine friends, just as the first automobiles were trickling into Australia.

The speedway was one mile long “on the seaward side of Albert Park. 145 feet wide, the course was divided into two tracks with a space in the middle for pedestrians. “It is well laid out, planted with ornamental trees with rockeries interspersed,” Table Talk recorded.

The track was open to the public when not in use “and beautified a portion of the park that has hitherto been an eyesore.” As one who walks/runs around Albert Park daily I’m intrigued to know about this aspect of the park and fascinated to know exactly where the horse-course was 120 years ago.

At the opening ceremony on August 29, 1903, the club president outlined that the purpose of the speedway “would stimulate the desire to possess first-class horses, and so improve the breed of our carriage and trotting horses.” The club “wanted to provide a track where a gentlemen with a horse that had a turn of speed could exercise it without the risk of prosecution for furious driving.”

The Governor, who had been given a golden-key to open the gates of the speedway, replied that he hoped it (the key) “would open the eyes of the local councillors to the fact that it was a good thing to have a Speedway in their midst, and in a portion of Albert Park that had been up to the present but an indifferent cow paddock.”

The Gov concluded by observing that American Speedways had improved the quality of their horses, and that “the Albert Park Speedway was in the hands of good sportsmen, and good men, and in declaring it open, wished the club all prosperity.” Tally-ho, jolly good show and happy hockey-sticks…

I do find interesting the history of a part of the world, dear to my heart, but by March 1907, with little interest in the venues activities, the Melbourne Speedway Club had to relinquish its use of that part of Albert Park.

This snippet is a reminder of just how important horses were until Karl Benz and his mates happened along. Click here for a piece on Albert Park’s history; https://primotipo.com/2020/05/12/albert-park-lake-boats-and-politics/ and one here on the earliest days of Australian motor racing history; https://primotipo.com/2015/11/17/australias-first-car-motor-race-sandown-racecourse-victoria-australia-1904/

While the horse-men were keen on building best-of-breed, devotees of new-fangled-horsepower were ‘racing’ already. Harley Tarrant, Argyll 10HP at left won a 3-mile race ‘for heavy automobiles’ at Sandown Park on March 12, 1904. That’s Tom Rand’s second placed Decauville 16HP alongside.

When I billed this as Australia’s First ‘Motor Car Race’ in the second of the two articles above, ‘Prof’ John Medley – Australia’s foremost motor racing historian – told me how brave I was, which was his polite way of saying “I wouldn’t be so sure about that Sonny-Jim!” Whatever the case, the ‘competition’ was one of the first between cars in Oz. And lookout horses, we are coming through…

Credits…

Vintage Sport Car Club of Victoria, State Library of Victoria, Table Talk September 3, 1903, Algernon Darge – State Library of Victoria

Finito…