You’d have to have been hiding under a rock to have missed the fact that yesterday was Kiwi ace, Graeme Crosby’s 67th birthday. Arguably one of the most photographed racers of his era, mainly because of his lurid antics on a bike, Croz endeared himself to whole generation of fans at the time and has probably extended that fan base since he retired from active competition. For a generation of fans used to the wheelstanding performances of TKA’s two stars, Gregg Hansford and Murray Sayle, it would seem strange that Croz’s performances could outdo them. But, outdo them he did, mainly because he did the same sort of thing on what was basically a road bike, not a “pukka” racing machine like the TKA bikes were.
Of all the photos taken of Croz during his racing days, two stand out. The first is the iconic photo of him wheelstanding the Hannan superbike DOWN The Dipper at Bathurst in 1978. If you’ve ever driven or ridden the Mount Panorama track you will know how daunting the drop off Skyline is and your appreciation of just how daring and outrageous this feat was.
I believe that this is a Lou Martin shot but I’m not sure.
The other famous Croz shot is John Small’s cracker of Graeme wheelstanding up the hill at the first road closure meeting in Canberra in 1978.
I guess most people know the story behind this photo of Graeme but I thought I’d take the opportunity to get the story about it “from the horse’s mouth” so to speak and take the opportunity to wish him a happy birthday at the same time so I called him up and, when he had some spare time he called me back and we chatted for a while.
Graeme pointed out at the beginning that he didn’t really remember much about the meeting (I guess when you’ve led such a colourful life, remembering one weekend is going to be difficult.) but he pressed on and he filled in the details.
In mid-1978, Graeme and Tony Hatton had taken Ross Hannan’s superbike to France to compete in the prestigious Bol d’Or 24 hour endurance race. Right off the bat the combination was fast, amazingly so given that they were on what was basically a warmed-over road bike competing against the cream of European endurance racing teams, like Godier and Genoud and dozens of others who took their endurance racing VERY seriously.
Prior to setting out, Tony and Graeme had done a 20 lap shake-down session at Sydney’s Oran Park circuit at NIGHT. Satisfied that the bike was fast, they shipped it off to France.
Once out of the crate and on the track, they found that the incompatibility between the fuel that they were required to run and the fuel that the bike was tuned for caused all sorts of problems. The very high-compression engine kept seizing all the time and had to be pulled down several times while the team tried to solve the problem. Finally, Ross secured some Ferrari fuel and the bike seemed to like it and ran beautifully.
Of course, with all this flaffing around, the team missed a lot of valuable practice time and were late for qualifying as well. Nevertheless, showing what a great combination the bike and riders were, they qualified 7th (or 8th, Graeme is not so sure) and stunned everyone with their pace. Unfortunately, there was to be no fairytale ending with the bike crashing out of the event. The bike was crated up and sent home and the guys headed home as well.
Sometime after arriving home, Graeme heard about this meeting that was going to be held on an undeveloped housing estate in the southern suburbs of Canberra. “I thought I’d go down, watch the races and have a few beers,” he says. Graeme was a member of Bankstown Wiley Park MCC at the time and that club was one of the 5 clubs invited to the original meeting.
Graeme liked what he saw and pretty much as soon as he arrived, was fielding suggestions that he should actually RIDE in the event. Entries had long since closed, of course, but everyone was sure that the club would allow him a late entry.
As it turns out there were MANY riders who rode at the inaugural meeting who basically entered on the day, a fact that has made identifying who the riders in the photos actually are since they weren’t listed in the programme.
Graeme and a few friends visited Canberra Motorcycle Centre in Fyshwick (Kawasaki loyalty here, I am guessing) to have a few beers and, while they were there, the Workshop Manager, John Fitzgerald told Croz that, if he wanted to ride at the meeting, he could supply him with a bike. Graeme believes that John simply picked a Z1R off the showroom floor, banged some plates on it and Croz went racing.
I’m not so sure about this as we were told at the time that Fitzy was preparing the bike for the Six Hour in a couple of week’s time and that Gary Thomas was supposed to be going to race the thing. Thus is explained the #68 number boards, by the way. It is also a more plausible explanation since we know that the bike was already road registered so had probably been out on the road doing some “testing”
Whatever the explanation, Graeme turned up for practice on the Saturday morning on a stock standard Z1R which he knew would never be competitive as a race bike.
As for the track, he instantly loved the place. It was tight, had some elevation changes and reminded him of some of the street circuits that he had grown up racing back home in New Zealand. He also appreciated the fact that the roads had brand new bitumen and spoon-drain style gutters rather than the usual suburban kerb and guttering.
Racing in the same races as Roy Dennison and Jim Scaysbrook, both on seriously good Improved Production machines, Graeme contented himself with entertaining. Fellow Kiwi rider, Terry Turner, was also riding on an outdated SOHC Honda 750 bike and the pair quickly fell into a pattern of running around at the back of the races and seeing who could perform the biggest wheelstand.
Croz knew Stu Avant well from NZ and he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to take him on especially as Stu was riding a well-sorted RG500 Suzuki. Of course Graeme was right, Stu wiped the floor with everyone!
Apart from that, Graeme’s memories of the weekend were rather more social than racing. He remembers the Green Bottle-O bottle shop that apparently sold wine bottles in green paper bags. While there they observed a Canberra bikie who was unimpressed with the green bags and told the proprietor that, if he was going to have to get his wine bottle in a bag it had to be a BROWN PAPER bag. He commented that he couldn’t be seen laying down in the gutter with green bag, it had to be a brown one. He had standards….
Whenever John’s iconic photo turns up on the internet, and it does so often, people always question why the road registration and it always leads to this great story. Thanks to Graeme for his input and Happy Birthday, champ.
