THERE is no pretender to Lobethal's crown. When we look at the circuits that have seen racing in Australia, we might place Bathurst at the top of the list, or Phillip Island, or Gnoo Blas or some other. But they’re all on a different list to Lobethal. As a circuit, in its magnitude, in its mystery and in its innocence, always alone.

I first saw the name in Bill Tuckey’s book. Scene of the 1939 Australian Grand Prix - 60,000 spectators in the hot sun. That was all, because Bill hadn’t seen it. Then, during the running of the 12-hour race at Surfers Paradise in 1966 I was talking to Doug Whiteford, and I asked him what circuit he thought was our greatest. “Lobethal!” No hesitation, no questions - just a raft of comment about the inadequacy of the circuits of our day.
 
On October 8, 1972 I drove a Datsun 180B SSS around Lobethal to begin an obsession. I had seen some of the great ones. Longford and the fabulous 1965 Grand Prix, Bathurst, even Southport and the striking Victor Harbor could not hold a candle to Lobethal. I had seen it. Rising from somebody’s dream in 1937, Lobethal township in the hills East of Adelaide was the focus of motor racing activity after the awakening brought about by the Centenary GP through Port Elliot the previous year. Today the originator of that dream has been forgotten, though it may have been Claude Black, a local car dealer, or possibly another local who saw the benefits racing brought to the community at Victor Harbor.

There had been hill climbs at Lobethal in 1936 and 1937, but these were on a metalled track out of town in the opposite direction to the circuit that was to come. When the movement to a race began, a group called Lobethal Carnivals was formed, and the Sporting Car Club of South Australia together with motorcycle racing people collaborated to make a reality of the first all sealed road circuit in Australia.

Reality. That’s a word that comes to mind with Lobethal. The reality of 8.65 miles of high-crowned bitumen roads wandering through the farmlands to converge on this pretty town. The reality of roads so dauntingly fast that - more than anywhere else in Australian racing history - they rewarded the ones who combined skill with bravery.
Analyse the figures. At Nuriootpa, Whiteford in Black Bess lapped at 73.47mph, but Lobethal saw him lap at 86mph two years earlier, despite the blind brows, the two hairpins and that mad downhill dive into town. Jim Gullan drove the Ballot Olds in both races to finish four and a half minutes behind Whiteford at Nuriootpa, and lapped in times that would have put him over seven minutes behind Whiteford at Lobethal over the same distance. And he was no slouch, with very consistent times and the handicap winner of both these races - 68.39mph and 76.81mph being the respective average speeds No slouch, but not as brave nor as skilled as Whiteford, so while Black Bess gained 13mph, the Ballot Olds got only a portion of that.

When I spoke to Whiteford, he described a hump-backed bridge followed by a curve, more of a kink, and from the start of the race this was the first little trick in the circuit. On this long, very fast leg of the circuit, roughly parallel to the railway and the Onkaparinga River, it was mostly flat and mostly flat out. Just six or seven gentle sweeps or kinks and the crowd at the hotel in Charleston to keep the drivers interested as the tachos showed top revs for almost three and a half miles. Then came Kayannie Corner, a sharp intersection with an included angle of about 60 degrees, with a gentle downhill rush across the river then a climb to the brow of the hill overlooking the town. Here it got interesting as a sharp brow led into the esses, downhill esses that were tight enough to claim a lot of cars and provide plenty of spectators with a great view. The straight that led into town came from the last left hander dipped and rose to another crest, but then the road simply dropped away and heavy braking was the order of the day as the T-intersection with the main street was reached. The circuit then climbed again, with a dip towards the end of the shopping centre before levelling out between the house then swinging right and beginning the roller coaster ride that sorted the men from the boys. It’s this section that defies adequate description, the three miles of ups and downs, of blind brows, of fast curves between the dairy farms that made Lobethal a legend. The Charleston section tested the engines, the run to town tested the brakes and handling, but like nowhere else in Australia - and I include McPhillamy Park, the Needle’s Eye, and every other fast corner - this stretch tested the commitment of the drivers.

It staggered me that the lap speeds recorded were possible, so I asked the 1939 AGP winner how they could have done it. “With those comers following so soon after the blind brows,” I asked, “you can't turn a corner with your wheels off the ground, and you had to be airborne . . ?” His response defied the capacity of a wheel rim to contain the overstressed wire spokes, the very thought that there was a conscious perception of risk. “We turned the car before we got airborne.” Forty years later he still remembered how it was done, but no way could he do it. Alan Tomlinson was the youngest man to win the AGP, and in his fifties he returned to Lobethal during a trip from Sydney in a Ferrari 308. “I know this road,” he told himself as he decided to ‘have a bit of a go.’ He scared himself very quickly. His times in the MG have left a trail of mystery that attracts and defeats people with similar cars. Ross Hodgson is acknowledged as one of the fastest drivers in Historic racing today, and Ross looked at the prospects. He measured and analysed the maps, the car’s potential performance, the sheer difficulty of lapping the place that fast. With stop watches, brave passengers and a Ford Falcon V8, he tried to see where the speed came from. With fried brakes and smoke from the front tyres they gave up, determined that it was the watches, not the MG, that was supercharged. But nobody there that day questioned either the times or Tomlinson’s bravery. Nor Barrett’s or Kleinig’s or Saywell’s as they demonstrated what could be done with the right car.

In 1938, when racing first came to Lobethal, it was the K3 MGs that set the pace on roads that brought a new dimension to racing in Australia. Spectators caught the train direct to the spectator areas at Kayannie Corner or the Grandstands at the start finish area at the Mt Torrens end for just 5/- return. Notices in the papers advised those driving of the best routes to take, and grandstand seats were 2/4 (23c) more than the general admission - a figure we don't know - with programmes 6d (5c).

The raw speed was what they wanted to see, and the Alta of Englishman Alan Sinclair was expected to provide it. Instead the K3 of Lyster Jackson set the initial practice pace at around 6:56, eclipsed in the second session by Colin Dunne’s K3 with a 6:36. By race day the times were really tumbling as Dunne got down to a 6:02 and Reg Nutt in the Day Special broke six minutes to come close to an 89mph lap average. The legend had begun. One can wonder today what impact this and the later Bathurst AGP meeting had on Alf Barrett and his Morris Special, a Lombard radiator sitting in place of the passenger's seat to add cooling capacity. A year later he was back with the Alfa Monza (bought for £950!) and ready to show some real pace, and Kleinig's legendary Hudson along with the 2.9 Alfa of Jack Saywell were out to beat him. With an ever more competitive bunch of cars, this was to be the fastest road race run in Australia in the pre-war years despite a shortage of suitable tyres for the sustained high speeds. Oh, to have been there, perched in the paddock above the esses, or on Schubert's farm watching the faster cars fly through that stretch. On these downhill swoops there were many cars reached higher speeds than they were capable of touching on the run to Kayannie. And just picture the sight through the township as the exhausts echoed from the shopfronts - and Colin Dunne mounted the footpath to pass one slower car!

This was the longest circuit ever raced on in Australia, and it begs comparison with the Spa Francorchamps of the same era. The same length, the same lap speeds for comparable cars, the same number of slow corners, more of the fast ones and less straight road. But while Spa was part of a circle of tracks visited by professional teams in the course of their annual competition, Lobethal was a remote outpost visited by gentlemen participants in a sport in its infancy, a vestige of a time long past, a dream of an enthusiast and a creation of enthusiasm. 60,000 saw its one truly great race meeting - by 1940 the clouds of war were gathering as the racers returned.

Kleinig had engine trouble (little wonder as his splash-feed Hudson engine tried to push the MG chassis as fast as a pukka Grand Prix car!) and Saywell was missing, so Barrett was easily quickest. But these were handicap races, and it was Tomlinson again starring as he tried to overcome the much greater time deficit he'd been given after his big win in ’39. That year he spent three weeks at the circuit, perfecting lines and approaches corner by corner, preparing to meet an unknown foe. In 1940 there was ten days practicing and walking the circuit before the meeting, then a pit stop to richen the mixture - now running 80% alcohol compared to petrol in ’39 - added to his determination. While Barrett was eight seconds slower, the MG went quicker - maybe twenty seconds quicker than the 6:22 of 1939. Apart from the fuel, the car was further developed and all restraint was lifted - “We had no further use for it, we’d go for broke!” Tomlinson recalled forty years later, recounting how he even managed to take one corner flat that he’d not been able to in the Grand Prix. It was a left hander at the bottom of a hill near Schubert’s Farm, surrounded by big trees “that had claimed a number of victims, mainly on bikes,” he told me. The combination of going into shadow and overcoming the psychological barriers had made him lift momentarily before, but not during this drive. But it ended in the esses, when he’d been unable to avoid Jack Boughton’s strange Morgan monoposto limping back to the pits.
 
Tomlinson made a big impact on his time in Lobethal. Crew member Bill Smallwood took down the Ostler’s bell at the hotel where they stayed and hid it. The manager told him to put it back so he did. Later it arrived in Perth in the post. Smallwood also tacked a lightweight trotting horse shoe onto the dash of the car, and it went missing after the crash. A spectator picked it up and kept it, having heard Tomlinson had died. In 1979 he was watching the Wanneroo AGP presentation and saw that reports of Alan’s death were exaggerated, so he sought him out and sent it to him.
 
Many were missing from the final meeting, New Years Day, 1948. Some had died in the war, some found other things to do, some had cars that weren’t ready. But new faces emerged to find the magic of this place Tony Gaze, Ron Edgerton, Norm Andrews, Steve Tillett, Harold Clisby and a young Peter Manton. Gavin Sandford-Morgan ran a C-type MG and found the length of the circuit made a driver seem lonely at times. Lex Davison was coming up to pass Gavin just out of Lobethal in practice and went to the right. Gavin did too, as the organisers had adopted a pass on the left rule, with Lex finishing up with a very bent TC (leading to its rebuild as a Special) and a hospital stay. Fast man of the meeting was Doug Whiteford, the winner Jim Gullan. Spectacular was Norm Andrews in the big Stewand, so spectacular it lost a rear wheel in the esses, the wheel bowling a policeman, the knock-on indenting the head of a young spectator. In 1985, Barry Lake was at the Adelaide Grand Prix Rally and struck up a conversation with a man in his fifties. The subject of Lobethal seemed clear in this man’s mind, so Barry asked “. . . how come you know so much about this?” The answer was given by displaying the dent in his head.

During this meeting there was a lot of trouble with grasshoppers. “Most cars had flywire over their radiators,” Gavin Sandford-Morgan recalls, and I well remember how it felt when one hit you in the face, and they made some parts of the road quite slippery.” In addition to this hazard, the youthful Gavin had taken lots of advice on how to prepare his car from experts - tyres highly inflated, dampers wound up tight - then a loose nut in the steering column added to his woes. Later they realised the front axle was in back to front, further compounding the problems. Though the pace of the fastest cars didn’t match that of the pre-war maestros, there was still fireworks. Gullan, after winning, had some celebrating to do and went on a buying spree at the local fireworks shop. After firing a few rockets in the air he started aiming them up the street from a launching position that was formerly a bench in the park.

They were certainly different days. Cars pulling up in front of one of the two pubs - one at Charleston and the other in town - and various passengers imbibing as other cars kept on practicing. Spectator control so lax that John Crouch remembers aiming his Alfa at the crowd encroaching on the road so they’d move back and give him a chance at his line. One competitor stirred things up by taking a shortcut from Charleston to the top of the hill heading into Lobethal to set a demon time! One driver had a penchant for arson at a pre-war event. Occasionally he’d pull up during practice and flick open his cigarette lighter and apply it to the strawbales! And apart from bravery, discretion was sometimes shown. Local engineer Bill Jolly had a well-developed Morris Minor which was over-reaching its braking capacity. Down the hill into town he realised he wasn’t going to make it, so he climbed down under the scuttle and “waited for the accident to finish.” This car he later rebuilt with a Bedford engine and made his own disc brakes to pre-date the Dunlop items - it still races as the Bedmor.
 
Naturally there were some nasty accidents as well as some lucky escapes. 1938 passed free of injury, though Moulden’s Sunbeam crashed on the downhill run into town after persevering with only first and third gears from the start. In the confusion, Bob Lea-Wright lost his Hudson, with his passenger hanging dangerously out the left hand side as he skated to a halt. A police officer held up the passenger’s head to stop it dragging on the ground, a spectator leapt for the safety of a blackberry bush (and tore his shirt, enraging his wife!), and all the while the passenger was screaming to Bob to “keep going!” A bent wheel ended their run. In the AGP, however, Vern Leech died in his MG, at Gumeracha Corner. Lex Davison’s rollover was the main damage in ’48, although the Itala Mercury lost all its loveliness as it scattered itself in a paddock. Legend has it that driver Seeliger was still sitting strapped in his seat and holding the steering wheel - and the remains of the rest of the car were elsewhere, with the chassis and body so badly damaged that owner Dennistoun gave them to the landowner! Ron Uffindel, a handicap winner before the war, put his MG through a fence.
 
Two months prior to this meeting there had been an event held just a few miles closer to Adelaide at Woodside, round the Army camp and through the village, and providing funds which built a children’s playground and maintained it at least into the 1980s. This three mile circuit was to continue in use until 1952, alternating with a new one at Nuriootpa, which had backing from the Barossa winegrowers, until the South Australian Government banned racing on public roads. This had to come, of course, with the uncontrolled crowd behavior of the day a real danger. Tomlinson recalls looking ahead at people crossing the road. “They were miles away, and you’d think it was alright, but at 120mph you’d be on top of them before you knew it!” Echoing John Crouch’s comment, he also recalls crowds coming onto the edge of the road en masse. Whiteford, too, mentioned the spectator risk, particularly to those sitting on the roadside with their legs dangling in the gutter just after that hump-backed badge. “They couldn’t move to escape if a someone lost it there - there would have been dozens lose their legs or be killed.” he said.

But the main point of Lobethal is that you have to see it to appreciate its magnificence - to have your own obsession. It’s still there, even though the roads have been somewhat improved. Daunting, charming the enthusiast, whispering into your mind the thought that some brave men raced here, what it might have been like to have been there. Heroic deeds in an era long gone, and all the more heroic because of that special beckoning this piece of road had for those willing to take up its challenge - a challenge few pieces of road are able to issue.

Lobethal sleeps today. It will not be woken by those who read this and go to visit, nor by those who find it by some other means. It’s like a grave that has been visited by a doting family a thousand times, getting older, but only returning the love of those who hold it dear in their imaginings. The coming of each New Year adds another year since its quiet end, when nobody knew it would slip into an eternal sleep. The echoes of exhausts from Woodside soon ended, but fabulous Lobethal will remain alone in the Adelaide Hills, the envy of every place any racing car has ever been driven, the dream of anyone who’s been there.


LAP RECORD
The lap record is almost an anti-climax to this story:
1938: Colin Dunne (MG K3), 6:02 (86.022mph)*
I938: Reg Nutt (Day Special), 5:58 (86.983mph)*
1939: Frank Kleinig (Hudson Special), 5:54 (87.966mph)
1939: Jack Saywell (Alfa 2.9), 5:45 (90.261mph)
1939: Alf Barrett (Alfa Monza), 5:40 (91.588mph)

Barrett only recorded a 5:48+ in 1940, Whiteford being quickest in 1948 with 6.02. Times given for Dunne and Nutt*) are presumed from published reports, which gave only lap speeds for the then assumed lap distance of 8.75 miles.

My thanks to John Crouch, Alan Tomlinson, Clem Dwyer, the late Alf Barrett, Barry Lake, and particularly the late Reg Nutt and Gavin Sandford-Morgan for material required to complete this story as accurately as possible.

+ Later the late Jack Nelson informed me that newspaper reports he has been through credit Barrett with a 5:40 again in 1948.