As a complement to the Olympics Games, Melbourne put on a motorsport extravaganza of a kind this country had never seen before. The format had been established eighteen months earlier, when Melbourne had dreamed up the inaugural Moomba Festival. The format they'd come up with was a pair of race meetings on consecutive weekends, both held on the roads around Albert Park – one headlined by open-wheel Grand Prix cars, the other by Le Mans-style sports cars. With the Olympics in town and the whole world watching, the organisers had to pull out something special if they wanted to impress, and so they did – they landed the biggest race in the country, the 1956 Australian Grand Prix.
Prince Albert Ring
In the modern age, Albert Park is effectively a permanent circuit, albeit one with the slight quirk of not being permanent. In 1956 it was somewhat different. First and most obviously, racing was done in an anti-clockwise direction, the opposite of how it is today. Secondly – as was the style at the time – it was also much more dangerous. The road was narrow, and many of its sweeping, high-speed sections were lined with trees and bordered by concrete gutters, fences and the ever-present hay-bales, with nary a safety barrier to be found. Wiping yourself out against a tree was one option, but another was drowning, as the circuit followed the outline of the lake a bit more closely than today, and once again there were no barriers to keep you from landing in the drink. Conceivably, someone could've rolled into the lake and been pinned under their car, trapped beneath the surface, which really doesn't bear thinking about. But this was the 1950s: birthrates were high, life was cheap, and no-one was forcing you to go racing.
That said, although the actual tarmac has been dug up and relaid any number of times since then, a small part of the original layout is still there. It's wedged between the modern pit building and the lake, and it's the location of the original start/finish line. If you're ever in Melbourne and have some time to kill, consider walking or driving around the lake, and having a think about how things used to be.
The Argus Cup
The Grand Prix wouldn't take place until the second weekend, however, so the first batch of formula cars to hit the track were really only there to warm the crowd up. The date was Sunday, 25 November (the same day Betty Cuthbert won gold in the 100m sprint), and the time was 1:30pm. The event was the Argus Cup, a 16-lap handicap for Formula Libre cars.
Handicap races were pretty common in those days. It meant, basically, that the race was run like the "Ultimate Speed Challenge" crowd-pleasers they've staged in more modern days. You know the ones, where they first release a really fast road car to do a single lap, then a little bit later a V8 Supercar, then (a long time later) a Formula 1 car, and they all cross the finish line together? It was basically that, but as an actual race, and it was a good way to get an exciting finish out of a group of wildly disparate cars with drivers of varying ability. It was the sort of thing you could get away with when it was all just a bit of fun anyway, which is what it seems to've been – certainly there weren't any "name" drivers in this one.
The race was won by Neil Charge in an MG Special, with 2nd place going to Otto Stone (an engineer later known for his work maintaining Stan Jones' Maserati 250F) in an MG K3. 3rd place went to a Mr C. Martyr in a Sunbeam, which was probably quite a feat of driving given he'd started with the biggest handicap – the "7.44" next to his name can only mean a handicap of 7 minutes and 44 seconds, hinting how much slower the Sunbeam must've been than the winning MGs. Sadly, the race was also marred by a nasty shunt for Phil "Puss" Catlin, who crashed near the army barracks at Melford Corner and suffered what ultimately proved to be fatal injuries.
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| Via Facebook. |
K.L.G. Touring Car Trophy
The 2:30pm slot was allocated to Event 2, a brief 8-lap sedan race listed as the K.L.G. Touring Car Trophy. "K.L.G." appears to've been a spark plug manufacturer, so it's appropriate that here they sparked an explosive new career in Aussie racing.
Like all touring car races in those days, the K.L.G. Trophy was a class race: The 1,500cc tier included such names as Bob Holden in a Peugeot 203 (he was in touch with the factory in France, who'd sent him a workshop manual in late 1955 – then asked him to keep it under his hat, lest they be inundated with requests for more such booklets...) and Sydney journalist David McKay, destined to become the inaugural Australian Touring Car Champion. McKay was racing on behalf of the York Motors dealership, and his mount today (he tended to change them frequently) was a Simca Aronde. Dr John Wright summed it up on Shannons Club:
Simca's first unique car was the 1951 Aronde, codenamed Simca 9. It was also the first Simca to feature monocoque construction. Aronde was the French word for swallow and the early cars wore a highly stylised bird emblem. The new model was intended to be a direct rival for the Peugeot 203. … The 9 got a facelift in 1955 [known] as the 90A and this version was produced for three years. The 90A had a 1,290cc "Flash" engine. The sporty Montlhéry version [was] named for the banked oval outside Paris, where in 1952 and 1953 Arondes had set numerous endurance records, including 100,000km (39,242 laps) at an average speed of 104km/h.
The 3,000cc class featured Bib Stillwell and Bill Patterson (both to become superstar dealers in the decades ahead), as well as Frank Coad, who in a few years' time was due to win the first-ever Armstrong 500. Then as now he was mounted in a Vauxhall, which made sense given he and his brother George ran a Vauxhall dealership in the northern Victorian town of Kerang. It was named G.W. Coad & Sons in honour of their father, George Sr: Frank's entrant, "G.I. Coad", was doubtless George Jr.
All eyes however were on the top, or "Open" class, where the frontrunners almost all driving Fords. There was a Mr H. Smith entered on behalf of Smith Radio Pty Ltd – presumably his own business – and the triple Australian Grand Prix winner, Doug Whiteford. Although his main concern would be contesting the Grand Prix in his Lago-Talbot (or "Large Tablet", as the locals liked to call it), his dealership was just a stone's throw away in Carlisle Street, St Kilda, so it's not like pulling double duty was going to be a huge logistical strain. The only one not in a Ford was a Mr F.J. Hann, who'd brought a Jag – whether an XK120 or a Mk.I, I can't say, though it seems he also raced at an early Warwick Farm meeting in 1960.
The two to watch, however, were right up at the front. Muffler magnate Len Lukey was at the wheel of his Ford Customline, a V8-powered machine which had received a careful going-over from Harry Firth. To keep his hand off the trophy today was going to take a very special car, or an even more special driver... which was the cue for one Norman Edward Beechey.
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| Starting lineup: Beechey on the left, Lukey in the centre, and on the right the Holden of Doug Leonard. Only two things seem to be known about Leonard: That he won his class at the Hepburn Springs Hill Climb in April, probably in this very car; and that he didn't have the best weekend at Albert Park. During practice he apparently turned some laps in his furniture removal van, and his best lap in the race was a dismal 5:33.6 against Lukey's 2:25.2 –both facts hinting at car trouble. |
Stormin' Norman
Who was Norm Beechey, you might be asking? Simply, he was the boyhood hero of both Dick Johnson and Peter Brock – take a moment to let that sink in. He was hero to quite a number of impressionable young boys, I imagine, and no wonder. His hot-blooded driving style – armfuls of opposite lock, throttle wide open at all times, with a lick of black smoke curling off the tortured rear tyres, all one one-handed as the other was busy bracing against the roof to hold himself upright on the slippery bench seat – all that couldn't help but win hearts. Some drivers leave the crowds unmoved and let the stopwatches do the cheering; by his own admission, Norm Beechey was firmly in the opposite camp.
At this time, however, he was just a 24-year-old kid from Brunswick, Melbourne. Norm had been forced to grow up ahead of schedule when his father, Dick, developed a gambling addiction and lost too much of his meagre payslip on the horses. The family separated, and Norm – youngest of three siblings – became the main breadwinner for his mother Ethel. During the war years, the not-yet-teenaged Norm had learned to scrounge timber and scrap iron to construct dog trailers to sell along Sydney Road. He became so good at this that, at the tender age of 13, he saved enough to buy his first car, a 1912 twin-cylinder Swift for which he paid £12 10s. After a bit of work, he was able to sell it again for £35 – turning $1,145, in 2024 money, into $3,125 – enough to set himself up as a backyard dealer. Whether they were cars or trucks, Beechey would drive his wares to school at Brunswick Technical via the back streets (and the fact that he didn't yet have a licence worried nobody).
It wasn't difficult. It was a lot of fun. I always had a lovely car myself. I'd drive it to a country dealer [of which he had a small but willing network], leave my car and drive back to Melbourne in the one I knew had the best chance of a quick resale. Then I'd head back up with another couple of drivers [including elder sister Minnie] pay up with the money I'd just earned, bring back the rest and retrieve my own car. – Norm Beechey, AMC #100
If these vehicles needed mechanical work before being flipped, there was another young bloke in Brunswick able to do the work. He'd get it done quickly, and not charge you an arm and leg either. He'd moved to Brunswick when his mother bought a local milk bar after her own marriage broke down. His name was Bob Jane.
The two were not only kindred spirits and good mates, they were a pair of utter lunatics who'd scare the living daylights out of any bright young things foolish enough to ride along with them. On Friday nights they would race each other down the tram tracks, the finish line being The Age newspaper offices where they needed to place their classified ads for the Saturday paper. "There were no speed limits in those days," recalled Norm. "The best they could charge you with was 'drive in a manner dangerous', if they caught you. Most of the police were on pushbikes or war surplus Harley Davidsons... not fast."
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| Certainly not as fast as a big American V8... (Source: Shannons Club) |
Beechey was lucky to even get a start in the K.L.G. Touring Car race, rocking up as he had after entries closed. That he got one was courtesy of Basil Rice, who'd been planning to run a Ford that Mark Oastler only described as a "twin-spinner" – probably a 1951 Ford Custom V8, which today are rare and prized as they were only built locally for 8 months. When Beechey took Rice for a demonstration lap in his Customline, however, Rice realised he was only going to embarrass himself, and generously offered his entry to Beechey. Although it created confusion – the race reports and official programmes still list "B. Rice" as the driver of the #4 Ford – it was Beechey at the wheel. He was about to make his debut on the big stage.
Beechey shouldn't have had a chance against Lukey's Customline. He was running standard 15-inch wheels and Olympic tubeless tyres, with no special brake linings or finned drums (though the man himself admits that in those days, "braking markers" were a detail he had yet to master). He even had an ordinary factory camshaft fitted, though he and a mate had had put together a custom inlet manifold with dual carburettors and a dual exhaust system, which worked surprisingly well.
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| Lukey having a tough time staying ahead of Beechey in Jaguar Corner (Source: Shannons Club) |
Although a provisional driver without a full licence, Beechey stunned everyone at the Park that day when he beat Lukey fair and square. The contest was ferocious, with Beechey coming within a whisker of getting black-flagged when he ran wide and collected a hay bale, rejoining with it still jammed underneath his car. As he thundered around the lake, strands of hay flew up into the air like rooster-tails behind him, but the officials kept the black flag furled – purely because, as he admitted later, the show was too good to spoil! Beechey hung onto the back of Lukey for 7 of the 8 laps, and then, in the very last corner, he forced the experienced elder statesman into a mistake. Lukey ingloriously spun his Customline at Jaguar Corner and, unable to believe his luck, Beechey stormed past to greet the chequered flag.
Eight laps were all it had taken to make Norm Beechey a household name. He remained with the Customline for a few more races, but in 1959 he would switch over to a black Holden FJ, which he would campaign for the next five years. It would become one of the fastest humpies in the country and cement Beechey's status as a Holden hero – somewhat ironically, when it had all started in a Ford...
Bryson Industries Cup
The rest of the weekend – both weekends, actually – is more Primotipo's wheelhouse than mine. You can check out his notes here, here and here, and I recommend you do so, if just for all the gorgeous photographs he's assembled. That said, let me give you a brief summary.
Event 3 on the schedule, starting at 3:00pm, was the Bryson Industries Cup, an 8-lap race for open-wheel Grand Prix cars. Bryson Industries was a local Jaguar distributor, initially formed when Jack Bryson took a partner, named Lawson, to form Brylaw Motors. Bryson soon bought Lawson out and renamed the concern Bryson Industries, making his pile importing Jags into Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia (Queensland and the Territory remained Westco Motors turf).
Unlike the earlier handicap race, this one was full of big-name drivers, giving their Grand Prix cars a quick run in support of the sports car race later in the day. According to the Autosport forums, it was won by Peter Whitehead in a Ferrari 555, beating Reg Hunt's Maserati 250F and Kevin Neal's older Maserati A6GCM. Behind trailed Reg Parnell and Lex Davison in Ferraris, then the Lago-Talbots of Doug Whiteford and Owen Bailey. The only other finisher was Reg Smith, driving a Cooper-Bristol that had once been helmed by Jack Brabham. You can find the full results here.
I Australian Tourist Trophy
Event 4, the headline act of the first weekend, a 32-lap race for Le Mans sports cars, kicking off at 3:30pm. The grid for this one was stacked with classic cars and classic drivers alike: Our old friend Bill Pitt was there, slated to drive Mrs Anderson's Jaguar D-Type (one of the most renowned cars in the country), with a similar machine in the hands of Bib Stillwell. Fresh off his victory in the support race, Peter Whitehead probably gave his face a quick wash and then pulled his helmet and gloves back on before climbing into another Ferrari, this one a 750A. David McKay rolled up in an Aston Martin DB3S, while Lex Davison fronted in his own H.W.M. Jaguar. Even at the distant end of the grid the names kept on coming, with Doug Whiteford entering an Austin Healey 100S, Frank Coad a "Vauxhall Special", and Doug Chivas a Lotus-Climax. There was even a "G.P. Manton" in a Porsche entered by Monaro Motors, with the "G.P." standing for "Gerald Peter" – yep, Skinny Manton was here too. Perhaps the most idiosyncratic machine on the grid was Paul England's Ausca, built by England in his spare time working at Repco, and powered by a Holden Grey engine featuring one of the first Repco Hi-Power cylinder heads – more on that item another day.
But by far the biggest news was the works Maserati team from Europe, who'd gone to the trouble (and expense!) of shipping five whole cars out to Australia. Three of them were 250Fs built for the 2.5-litre Formula 1, the quintessential 1950s Grand Prix car, and one of the sweetheart drives of all time. The other two were Le Mans-oriented 300S sports cars, fresh from contesting (but, alas, not winning) the World Sports Car Championship. Despite winning 1,000km races at Buenos Aires and the Nürburgring, the car had ultimately disappointed, losing the title to their arch-rivals at Scuderia Ferrari. Always cash-strapped, the Maserati brothers decided they could afford to make the trip to Australia only by making sure it was one-way – the cars would not be returning to Europe, but were to be sold off instead. An exciting prospect, if you had your bank manager's number handy...
Leading the expedition were two of Maserati's stable of drivers, the Frenchman Jean Behra, and Stirling Moss, British boy-racer. On the off chance you haven't heard of Stirling, here's the short version: In 1955, he'd got the call-up to join the all-conquering Mercedes team as number two to the Grand Old Master, Juan Manuel Fangio. "The best classroom of all time was the spot about two car-lengths behind Fangio," Stirling said of those days: "I learned more there than anywhere else." One observer commented: "So closely did he track Fangio that from some angles, the Stuttgart team appeared to have entered an eight-wheeler." This nose-to-tail running had caused team boss Alfred Neubauer conniptions – what if, he demanded, Fangio made a mistake and took them both off the track? Unconcerned, Moss had simply replied, "Juan Manuel simply did not make mistakes." Not even Fangio temporarily thieving Moss' girlfriend Sally Weston seemed to raise a complaint: "Rather him, I suppose, than anyone else..."
But after the Le Mans disaster of 1955 forced Mercedes to pull out of racing, both star drivers had become free agents for 1956, releasing Fangio to go to Ferrari and Moss, inevitably, to Maserati. And with Mercedes team orders out of the way, the duels between them became real. After a bruising back-and-forth arm wrestle, Fangio had emerged with the 1956 world title (his fourth), but Moss had made him work for it, taking brilliant wins in Monaco and Monza.
So when he arrived in Melbourne, Stirling was match-fit and approaching the peak of his considerable powers. He wasn't to know he was walking into the hometown of the man who would become his greatest rival, but Jack Brabham had barely two European seasons under his belt and was only now making the crucial move to the father-and-son team of Charlie and John Cooper. For most of 1956 he'd been just another Maserati customer, and indeed there'd been some talk of providing Brabham with their third 250F for the upcoming Grand Prix, but the deal had fallen through. It's not hard to guess why, because it's probably not a coincidence that when Brabham hit the track that November afternoon, it was in a Cooper-Climax T39 "Bobtail".
In practice, Moss set a new lap record of 1:55.8, which The Argus noted incredulously was, "set in a sportscar, the record previously held by a racing car [i.e. an open-wheeler]," calling it, "one of the finest exhibitions of race driving seen in Melbourne." Nevertheless, it was teammate Behra who put his Maserati on pole, and at the end of the 32-lap, 100-mile race he was the only one on the same lap as Stirling. Moss took the inaugural Australian Tourist Trophy by 20 seconds over his French teammate.
As promised, both Maseratis were then sold off, with one of them snapped up by Doug Whiteford (who after three Australian GPs needed a fresh challenge), and the other by Reg Smith. Reg would only hang onto it briefly before moving it on to a much more ambitious owner, Bob Jane.
The Argus Trophy
Seven days later, on Sunday, 2 December, Event 5 opened the second weekend of racing. This was another race sponsored by The Argus, an 8-lap sprint for sports cars. The weekend was basically a mirror image of the previous one, with a sports car appetiser before the Grand Prix cars hit the track for the main course. In the absence of the Maseratis (which their new owners sensibly wanted to keep uncreased), it was won by our own Jack Brabham, a herculean feat of driving given the long straights of the Park and the piddling 1.5-litre Climax FWB engine behind him. His job was admittedly made easier when Bill Pitt – first Aussie home in the TT the week before – clipped a kerb on the opening lap and rolled his D-Type, landing bruised (but otherwise unharmed) among the hay bales. Bib Stillwell brought the other D-Type home in 2nd, while Bill Patterson in another Cooper T39 Bobtail rounded out the podium.
XXI Australian Grand Prix
At last we came to the big one, the race everyone had been waiting for: the 80-lap, 250-mile Australian Grand Prix, starting at 2:00pm.
Again, an idiosyncratic entry was a certain J. Myers in a "W.M./Cooper". This was of course Jack Myers in his refurbished Cooper T20 (late of Bernie Ecclestone, among others), fitted with a special variant of the Holden Grey engine. Instead of the standard iron pushrod head, this one came fitted with a special DOHC aluminium head crafted by Merv Waggott, hence the "W.M." in the car's designation, referring to Waggott and Myers. This won't be the last mention of the Waggott Grey on this blog, but that said... Myers would be lapped fourteen times over before the chequered flag flew.
Because – there's no other way to say it – Moss was magnificent this day. In a singular display of speed and car control, he cruised to the victory a crushing 1 minute and 48 seconds ahead of the next-fastest driver – which was his own teammate, Jean Behra. No-one else was even on the same lap. The fact that Moss came within a few seconds of lapping even Behra must've been a humbling experience for the rest of the grid, with extra salt rubbed in when he beat his own lap record in 1:52.2 – an average speed just above 100mph. Peter Whitehead was the sole non-Maserati driver in the top five, taking the bronze, with Reg Hunt (the first Aussie home) and Stan Jones 4th and 5th respectively, in 250Fs. Doug Whiteford's Lago-Talbot was the first non-Italian car home, and that was 8 laps down in 8th place.
As you might imagine, the partisan London press were delighted with the result. No-one in their right mind would've then predicted that Stirling Moss would never win a World Championship, while his arch-rival from Australia would eventually win three...
Legacy
Some newspapers hailed the weekends as, "when Australian motor racing came of age." Although I wouldn't quite go that far, it was definitely a landmark meeting. It would be many decades yet before the best in the world would descend on Australia, throw all their considerable resources at winning and still be sent back to Europe with their tail between their legs. The international attention was nevertheless warmly received, as those who'd come across the seas were treated to an event that really wasn't behind what you'd find in Britain or the Continent. And in all the years to come, there would only be one more occasion when the Australian Grand Prix, the Australian Tourist Trophy and – yes, let's say it – the most significant touring car race of the year would all take place in the same meeting. And that wasn't too far in the future, either.
