There are three circuits on the page of the Gold Coast street directory that covers the centre of Surfers Paradise. There’s the current CART circuit, mapped out in the streets by the beach, the Southport track of 1954/55, and the Surfers Paradise International Raceway.

In the nineties, the Indycar circus was introduced to Australia via the current track, and it was Queensland’s answer to the tourist dollars going to Adelaide and Melbourne for the Grand Prix. In the fifties the spectacular and dangerous Southport provided the fledgling tourist Mecca with another feather in its cap as it presented just two meetings and provided Lex Davison with his first AGP win.

But in the sixties, seventies and eighties it was Keith Williams’ Surfers Paradise International Raceway that gave enthusiasts regular racing and – for a time – fostered a new interest in endurance events.

Williams, now known as the developer of Hinchinbrook and the man who built and lost Hamilton Island, was and is an entrepreneur. He was also a motor racing enthusiast and in fact took out a class win at one of his own endurance races in a Porsche.

 Ski Gardens Spin-off

In 1957 he bought a dairy farm on the banks of the Nerang River and by 1959 had developed his Ski Gardens. The property included land on the other side of the Nerang Road, and by 1960 Williams had decided this would ultimately become a sister operation to the Ski Gardens as a racing circuit. He put a 20-metre long sign on the site to proclaim his intentions that year.

It was 1965, however, before finance could be arranged and detail design begun. By the beginning of 1966 it was taking shape, the complex including a drag strip along the main straight, with a very fast right-hander under a Dunlop bridge leading to a tight corner that turned the track back to a medium-length straight , then a fastish left hander before rushing into a series of rights and lefts that skirted the only hill on the property. A slow right that opened up brought the track back to the main straight. Within the circuit lay an airstrip and quarter-mile dirt speedway similar to the one that used to sit within the lower part of the Amaroo Park circuit.

Drag racing commenced at Easter in 1966 and Williams’ operational team, which included Bill Pickett (from Lowood and the QRDC) and Kay Bartlett, were ready for an introductory meeting on the two-mile circuit on May 22. Brian Foley had the honour of winning the first race in a Mini.

That day also produced some rare events – John McDonald winning in the Patterson Tasman Cooper, Wally Mitchell winning a sports car race in his ill-fated RM1 when Frank Matich ran out of fuel. The main race, the Queensland Series Production title, going to Kevin Bartlett was no surprise, nor was the lap record falling to Matich in the Elfin Traco Olds by the end of the day.

 Timing Right

In retrospect, the timing of the opening couldn’t have been batter. When Williams announced plans for his first Speed Week there was a lot of interest in racing as Jack Brabham embarked on his first campaign with Repco engines and all facets of the sport were gaining in popularity. There was new interest in ANF1 as Kevin Bartlett graduated to the 2.5s, Leo Geoghegan and Greg Cusack bought ex-Jim Clark Tasman cars and the arrival of the V8 Elfin followed nicely on from the introduction of the Scuderia Veloce 250LM to build interest in sports cars.

“To us it was a sport, but to Keith we always knew it was a business,” Lakeside founder Sid Sakzewski told us, and his approach to the Speed Week shows that clearly. To attract the crowds to the Gold Star weekend he imported Brabham and his F1 car fresh from four wins on the trot!

For the following weekend he had even better things in store. A 12-hour race was scheduled – the first endurance race in Australia since the Mt Druitt 24-hour in the early fifties, and only the second-ever – and the place was crawling with cars never seen before and surpassed only by the Sandown WEC fields in the eighties and the Adelaide Millenium race.

A Ferrari P2, another 250LM, a Ford GT40 with Matich sharing the wheel! Those who had seen Ken Miles a year earlier in the 427 Cobra could now enjoy a banquet, no matter how tasty the earlier snack had been.

Not only were the entries first-class, but the racing proved likewise. Brabham may well have faltered after just a lap and a half, but he had set a new benchmark lap time of 1:12.1 in practice and given Kevin Bartlett an opportunity to show his style. Then in the Gold Star race (Brabham had only run in a 10-lapper because his car was a 3-litre), it was Jackie Stewart guest-driving the Scuderia Veloce Brabham who got a good look at the back of Bartlett in the Mildren car.

Stewart also won the 12-hour in the SV Ferrari by a mere lap from the Sutcliffe/Matich GT40, though there was much ado about the lap-scoring for some time.

For the next three years there were 12-hour races, but the 1968 and 1969 events were for the emerging series production cars as the V8 versus Alfa scenario prevailed and in those years the Sporties had six-hour events. Even then they starred, with the works Datsun R380s being seen here on that one occasion.

The move to six-hours was also propted by the local V8 sports car revolution, as these cars were not considered suitable for the longer events. Matich’s SR3 entered in 1968 and 1969, but both times faltered in the second half of the race. These races are in fact best remembered for the success of David McKay’s ‘Old Red Lady,’ which won three of the four (all with different drivers!) and didn’t enter the other.

From 1970 the circuit kept up its endurance tradition in the same was as Sandown, holding an annual event for the Bathurst cars several weeks after the race at Mt Panorama. Entries came to depend more on positions held in championship pointscores than anything else, and it was often a race for the locals.

 Open-Wheel Paradise

In most respects Surfers was to live out its days as one of our first rank circuits, featuring Gold Star, ATCC and later sports sedan races. Although it wasn’t to host the Queensland Tasman round until 1968, when Jim Clark won, and was then to alternate with Lakeside, from 1970 Surfers was considered better equipped for the Internationals and the races stayed there.

Graeme McRae and Frank Matich won two of them, John Walker and Teddy Pilette the others before the series died. The Australia-only Rothmans Series from 1976 to 1979 produced two wins for Warwick Brown and one for Irishman David Kennedy, who left the lap record virtually unreachable in the Wolf F1 car that final year. In 1976 the Surfers weather dumped three feet of water over the circuit to cancel the event after Bruce Allison won pole.

The highlight of the other open-wheeler racing was the 1975 AGP, won by Max Stewart after John Leffler had drowned his electrics in the Bowin P8. this race came 21 years after the Southport event just two and a half kilometers away. And the rain that affected these races was just an indication of the conditions that ultimately led to the circuit’s demise.

 Williams Sells Up

In 1970 Williams opened Adelaide International Raceway, having first bought up Mallala and closed it. It would re-open only after court cases showed that new owner Clem Smith could not be restrained by the covenant put on the property now that the Trade Practices Act was in force.

This, according to Williams, was “a fluke. I put in the applications and they were approved!” The move was just part of a plan to build a string of motor sport complexes across the country. “We had options on land in Sydney, three in Melbourne, but we kept coming up against negative decisions from the councils,” he told me.

The plan was to build a road circuit, banked oval and drag strip in each of the capitals, and Williams had had talks with NASCAR people almost 20 years before Bob Jane built the Thunderdome. He owned, in 1970, three circuit – unique in Australia – but it wouldn’t last.

Increasing traffic on the Nerang River led to the need to move the Ski Gardens, and approval for the construction of Sea World saw him expanding in yet another direction. Certainly there were areas where red tape slowed proceedings, but none so red or as hard to cut as that surrounding the circuit expansions. Ultimately he gave up, but not before planning a replacement for the waterlogged Surfers Paradise.

Selecting a site at Yatala, he sold Surfers with a 12-month lease-back arrangement to allow the new development to get under way. No more floods, levees holding out the spill from the Nerang, pumps emptying the channels that crossed the infield: now he was going to have a circuit with a three-quarter mile banked oval as well.

But more difficulties brought the project to an end. In the end he even sold off the improvements that hadn’t been included in the Surfers deal so that racing could continue without him being involved. He went off to develop Hamilton Island as others ran meetings and sporadic attempts on the lap record disappointed Charlie O’Brien in the Ralt Formula Atlantic and rewarded John Bowe in the Veskanda sports car.

 Record Attempts

Another aspect of Surfers was the number of endurance records set there. As Williams schemed it for approximately 100mph laps for the then-current ANF1 2.5-litre cars, only Sandown was faster. Surfers, however, was more available and easier on the cars, so quite a number of manufacturers and Australian distributors set about getting some good ad-copy by haring around for 24 hours non-stop.

Testing was also popular, Frank Matich in particular making frequent trips from Sydney in the F5000 days to test tures and new developments on his cars. It was in testing at Surfers that Niel Allen crashed his new Lola T300 and put an end to his racing career.

The layout had been planned for safety, too, and only a couple of accidents resulted in serious injury. Warwick Brown in 1973 had a tyre deflate and went off under the bridge, smashing both legs after a wall-of-death for hundreds of metres on the mount ended abruptly at a depression in the banking. He nearly died when fatty embolisms got into his bloodstream.

In 1979 Tony Edmondson tried a suicide manoeuvre in the same corner to pass Phil Ward’s Monaro, counced off in to the fence and then the Alfetta burst into flames as it cartwheeled up the track. Mini driver Tony Rafferty also suffered burns on another occasion.

There were other incidents, notably two fence-bouncers from John McCormack – notable because of the rarity of crashes in his career – and Allan Moffat damaging his Mazda RX7 on a stump after bouncing off Dick Johnson’s Falcon in a wet race. Fires were the not-uncommon results of spins at times when the grass clippings had dried out after mowing.

Strict scrutineering was one cause of controversies, with the very public exclusion of allan Grice (later to become the local member of State Parliament for the area!) after the infamous thermostat incident. He won a touring car title race there in 1975 and then the thermostat was found to be missing from the engine and was found in the glovebox. Grice’s sole paid mechanic had defected to an opposing team on the eve of the meeting…

At the 1971 Tasman Frank Gardner was sent back to the paddock to change his Lola’s wings in practice. As they lined up on the grid for the race, Matich caused a stir by demanding the spot in the middle of the front row, which would give a better start due to the cleaner surface there. While TV viewers around Australia waited impatiently for the start, the scrutineers noticed Gardner had the wrong wings on again, and the first two spots on the grid were vacant as the arguments went on. Graeme McRae was urging the officials to start the race without them.

Less public was the unlawful stopping of an Audi record attempt in the mid-eighties by the encroaching local residents.

Although the circuit still exists and street drags continue to be held there, it is fading. The old SPARC Clubrooms, formerly the Captain’s Table Restaurant that was moved to the site from its original place just metres from the current Indy track, was only moved away a couple of years ago, but some billboards remain. Billboards that showed forever that Keith “was in it for the money.”

But that is not an indictment of the man, for he brought us much pleasure along the way. When we paid our $3.00 for the ticket to see Brabham, Stewart, Bartlett, Geoghegan and all, we were entering the most up-to-date racing facility in the country.

Clearly, had Williams been able to go ahead, there would probably be no Eastern Creek, but a bigger facility in the same area. There would have been a three-mile circuit on Mt Kororoit outside Melbourne, and Bob Jane would not own Adelaide International Raceway. Who knows, there many not even have been a need to put the Grand Prix circus into Victoria Park, although that is more a political question.

Like Lowood before it, Surfers whimpered its way into oblivion. Its lore is gradually being forgotten, its appetite for tyres, the tastiest hot dogs ever made, the bikini girls, the lap-scorers struggling to identify the cars against the glare of the headlights as the Ferraris howled on into the night…