Every season has its advantages and disadvantages, that’s why they give us four of them. Autumn is cool with a riot of colours, Winter is cold and snuggly, Spring sees the new growth and Summer is riding and speedway season. Yep, that’s right, speedway.
Decried by Romsey Quints in his famous tirade as “the cult of the flying topsoil”, speedway has been another of my motoring passions since the 1960’s. And, as most of you know, since moving here to Wollongong to live, I’ve been working at Nowra Speedway as their on-course commentator.
The epitome of the small, club-run, provincial speedways, Nowra combines the best of the racing that you get in the big city tracks (its proximity to Sydney means easy access for Sydney club drivers to regularly attend) and country, laid-back atmosphere. The track surface is predominantly clay now having had top-ups of clay over the last few off-seasons but it retains enough dirt to be able to drain quickly and still be useable even if there is heavy rain (a full clay surface becomes unusable completely after even the smallest of showers).
The Wollongong Speedway Club runs nearly all divisions available and, in the last two seasons has even run open sprintcars which are always spectacular.
The atmosphere is friendly and the venue extremely family-friendly. Trade support is good with Lindsay and Joy bringing the Speedway Gear stand to every meeting and an excellent canteen providing reasonably-priced food. The canteen is augmented with a mobile coffee van and an ice cream van at every meeting. Fans can visit the pits after the racing is over and talk to the drivers and inspect the cars, and watch the trophy presentations.
The first meeting of the season is this Saturday (13th October), a Club Day with registration, licence checking and scrutineering of cars before the season proper gets underway the following Saturday with Meeting #1 of the season.
If you’re in the area (or even if you’re not) a trip to the speedway is definitely a great thing to do on a Saturday evening. I look forward to your company any night you can make it and don’t forget to climb up the stairs to the commentary box and say hello.
