The Roaring Season

Heres a link to a site covering a speedway track that once existed in Lower Hutt near the Avalon TV studios..
http://www.historicspeedway.co.nz/TaitaSpeedway.htm
I believe it was only bikes and had sadly disappeared along with Lower Hutt's other motorcycle track the Gracefield street circuit in Seaview.

Heres one Bob Homewood sent me. Bobs having some problems uploading pics to the site at the moment. Heres the info he gave me:

Here is one for the lost race tracks thread, it was at Cambria Park a ex US WW2 Army Camp in Wiri, South Auckland ,I am not sure how many times it was used but I do have a couple of photos of cars racing there which I can't post as are copyrights and I did some time ago speak with some one who competed there around 1957 he told me ,this is a old photo I researched and found of the camp ,from the description he gave me it matches the shape of the track that was used which I have marked with a arrow.This area has now been swallowed up in the construction of the Motorway through Manakau ,but I did manage to get a photo of the area I was told where the track was before the earth moving machines obliterated it,if theres any interest I can send that as well. I am actually keen to find out more about this venue and I am still looking and asking.

Having remembered that there was a "Historic Aerial" function on the Auckland Council's map and GIS facility, I found and downloaded this aerial shot.


Cambria Park was a farm which was bordered by Puhinui & Roscommon Roads Puhinui Stream and the railway line.

Roscommon Road is at the left of picture, The road running off it was later Nesdale Av and is now a continuation of Cavendish Dr, and the track is the U-shaped piece that runs off it. This picture seems to date back to camp construction about 1941/42 as there are no camp buildings and a lot of the land still looks like farmland, which it didn't in aerials from a year or 2 later.

I have more info and photos re the camp, but almost no info about racing, which I gather was run by the Northern Sports Car Club, in 1957/8. Nestle build their Factory/headquarters the around 1959/60/61.

The outlin of the curve was still visible as a bare strip in the scrub behind the factory, and may still exist now south of the new S-W Motorway.

Hope this triggers a few memories.

Stu

Just north of Dunedin, Bill Waldron an earthworks contractor formed up a circuit in the early 1970's.
You could see it from the motorway and may possibly still show up on google earth.

MP54 wrote:Hi Guys,

Very late in the 60's (I think), my father bought 12 acres of land at the southern end of the Albany straight, from I believe, Mrs Cullen. When we got possession of the land there were quite a number of what I now know, from this thread, were chassis racers. They were rusted and immobile at that stage. They were quite big scary looking things.

Part of that land is where the Albany Junior High School now stands.

Around that time, just down the road was where car painter Lyall Martin worked from. I was there one day when he was painting the ex Silcock Jag for Steve Millen in that lovely blue.

Mark

It was changed from Blue (Silcock) to Maroon (Millen) and then back to blue. When Steve got it wet at Puke it was Maroon and Lyall and us touched it up that night (late). And when we went to Auckland Car club on a Thursday night from North Shore because ute would not start and on way home set new record from Harbour Bridge toll gates to Onewa road overbridge it was maroon, and the night the local traffic man in Rothsay Bay visited to enquire as to had it been around the block at about 1.30 in the morning, and we said we had only been working on the suspension all night, and it so nicely went hiss out the radiator, it was Maroon.

Hi i have some vidio of Allan Woolf Ford 8 plus the Lycoming?? and others on this track amongst my collection

Thanks for the photo Stu,back in 2006 Max Fisher gave me some instructions on how to find the remains of the curve at the Airport end ,he would have liked to have gone out there with me to show me ,but his health prevented him doing so ,following his instructions I went out and had a look ,work had proceeded by then on the Motorway and consequently most of that area had disappeared beneath the road works.

Bob, Where the footbridge is (over the railway) in Puhinui Road, on the airport side is a plaque about the track.

Kwaussie, The old Waitati track is now overgrown. The track was on the Waitati side of the Kilmog. Bill had to divert a creek to gain more room. He ran 3 or 4 meetings. There were not enough speedway cars, Ray Wilkie & Snow Morris were a couple. Waldroville killed it for Bill.

Nobody mentioned Seagrove yet.
Southern shore of the Manukau harbour. I went looking in the early to mid 1980s, there were still some of the hexagon concrete slabs evident even then.
Just had a look on the Auckland GIS viewer, I was surpised to see that the airstrips are still very evident. They are not clear at all from ground level!

Alan Dick had some info sent to him that he put in his Classic Driver mag a few years back, from memory, some of the roads that were used around the Nestle's plant were still there.That's Cambria Park.

I got some stuff on that coming,yes its still very evident from the air ,I have quite often seen it when flying in or out of Mangere if the flight plan takes you over there,I used to go out there a lot in the early sixties as I worked in the area ,there was even more perhaps to see in those times,a word though if anybody is going out there remember its now private land ,so don't enter without the land owners permission

Oldfart wrote:Nobody mentioned Seagrove yet.
Southern shore of the Manukau harbour. I went looking in the early to mid 1980s, there were still some of the hexagon concrete slabs evident even then.
Just had a look on the Auckland GIS viewer, I was surpised to see that the airstrips are still very evident. They are not clear at all from ground level!

http://rnzaf.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=print&thread=881, there is a bit of Cambria Park info here.

http://www.vintagecarclub-northshore.co.nz/pdfs/newsletter-september-2011.pdf.
If you go to page 14 in the above link, there i a discription by one of the participants who was one of the originators of Chassis racing at the Cullen farm in 1961.It is a PDF form so it takes a moment to load.

http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Easy/00000026.htm.
Above is a link to the article on its own.

markec wrote:http://rnzaf.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=print&thread=881, there is a bit of Cambria Park info here.

And reference to another Homewood. There is a photo of the memorial plaque mentioned by Woody a few posts back, it only refers to the military camp. There is also a similar plaque at Seagrove at the end of (?)Seagrove Road, at the edge of the old airfield.

The curved part of the Cambria Park track is still visible in aerial shots South of the South-Western motorway as a bare patch amongst the scrub. I guess only grass and weeds would grow on top of the asphalt track.

There are two other places of motor racing interest only 2-3 kms from Cambria Pk. The site of the proposed "Manukau Park" GP track and speedway, and the Wiri Container Terminal which was used by some sports car clubs, and also the "bucket racing" motorcycle enthusiasts. The container terminal has long since vanished, but I recall seeing sports cars racing there some time in the 1980's.

I will post a map or photo or 2 tomorrow if time permits.

Stu

markec wrote:http://www.vintagecarclub-northshore.co.nz/pdfs/newsletter-september-2011.pdf.
If you go to page 14 in the above link, there i a discription by one of the participants who was one of the originators of Chassis racing at the Cullen farm in 1961.It is a PDF form so it takes a moment to load.

Yes, that is the excerpt from the previous link, by Warren Fox.
There are some discrepancies from other material we have from Warren, and from some others involved. I am just sorting through quite a bit of material at present and once I have checked some stuff from those that are still with us I will try and post the 'correct' story along with some cuttings and photos.

Seagrove Airfield, I have just been loaned a book on Seagrove that obviously is mainly about the aircraft activities, but it does have a bit about the motorsport and motorcycle sport that was held there. If you are interested in Aviation history and Motorsport history it is probably a must have, if you have no interest in Aviation there is probably not enough about the Motorsport to justify purchase.
For anybody interested the book is called " Seagrove... Where's That, A history and Childhood Memories of an all but forgotten World War II Airfield" by Max Poole. Published by Chevron Publishing NZ 2011. ISBN 978-0473-19573-1. Author can be contacted at mailto:?subject=&body=. I understand the author has copies available for sale.

Once I have had a chance to read it I will post a little more.

Rather than me rewrite some of it ,have a look here also http://rnzaf.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=Wartime&action=display&thread=1350

Interesting thread, Bob. I recently interviewed Ginger Molloy who talked of having his first race at Seagrove and I wondered where it was (Ginger went on to become one of NZ's most successful ever motorcycle racers).