The speedway landscape in Australia has been rocked by the news Parramatta Speedway in Sydney is to be demolished due to the compulsory acquisition of the land on which it stands. So what will this mean for competitors from Mildura, and Mildura’s speedway scene itself? Renowned motorsport commentator and speedway advocate Wade Aunger discusses the ramifications.
THREE weeks ago the phone rang at Parramatta Speedway in Sydney.
A voice on the other end said, “Hello, it’s Sydney Metro here. Did you know your Speedway is being demolished?”
No, the promoters of the speedway and the owners of the lease at Parramatta Speedway didn’t know that.
And they certainly weren’t expecting it.
Managing directors Barry and Felicity Waldron had been negotiating with their landlord, NSW Crown Lands, for the past two years trying to extend the current licence (due to run out in 2026) for a further 30 years to ensure the longevity and the surety of the track at its current location well into the future.
Never during that two years of applying for the extension and burning down the government’s emails and phones trying to find an answer did the raceway receive any clue that the grounds would in fact be used as a stabling yard for driverless trains as part a $20 billion underground rail system.
It came as a bolt out of the blue.
It was like that scene in the iconic Aussie movie The Castle when Darryl Kerrigan gets a letter from the government advising that they are forcibly acquiring his house.
The industry in Sydney went into a tailspin.
A rally was organised immediately and within 24 hours almost 1000 people showed up at the track with their race cars, their placards, their children and their worried looks.
Every major news TV station, radio station and newspaper was there.
Speedway owners, teams and fans felt like the little kid who got kicked off the swings.
The government suddenly announced that this was the plan all along and that a new replacement venue would be built and provided before the planned demolition of Parramatta Speedway in June 2021.
Again, nobody in management had any idea this was happening.
It sounded very much like the story was being made up as it was going along.
As it stands currently, no agreement has been reached and the sport is very much in danger in Sydney at a venue that was built 42 years ago in the heart of the Parramatta-Granville business district.
Fans all over the world are being encouraged to visit the Valvoline Raceway’s Facebook page and sign the online petition along with the 30,000-plus who have done so already.
So how does something like this affect a place like Mildura?
The reality is that it won’t short-term, but it sure could in the longer. This has been a huge wakeup call for the sport.
Parramatta is the hub of the sport of sprintcars in particular.
It’s a venue that people all over the country, and indeed the world, aspire to race at.
This coming Christmas many of the best modified sedan drivers from Sunraysia will travel to Sydney to race in a two-night NSW title that will be beamed live across the country and also throughout the US on the American live-stream giant DIRTVision.
“Everyone wants to race at Parramatta,” says now V8 Supercars star Cam Waters, who will also race in the event for Red Cliffs car owner Travis Shore.
“It’s the pinnacle of speedway racing at that place. We haven’t been able to complete a night there so we’re very excited about this opportunity.”
The city of Mildura is a unique place.
Nowhere else on the planet is there not one but two speedways – one for cars and one for bikes – in the same town.
Olympic Park Speedway annually attracts the best two and three-wheel racers not only in the country, but the world.
It has spawned some of the greatest speedway riders of all time, not just Victoria.
Timmis Speedway is regarded as one of the true little gems in regional Australian speedway and a place where the country’s best compete against the Mildura stars.
The Parramatta situation is a stark reminder for any speedways in Australia, and any sporting venues, businesses and houses, that something like this can happen at any time.
It should serve as a reminder that it’s easy to take things for granted and how important in retrospect it is not to.
Speedway and indeed motorsport, as far reaching in some circles as it is, is still regarded by many outside the sport as a niche interest.
It doesn’t have anywhere near the broad interest as that of AFL, cricket, NRL, horse racing or even NBL in some regards and as such can sometimes be extremely vulnerable in situations like this.
Motorsport fans are as passionate, diehard and as committed as any code in any walk of life, even though that’s not always as visible on the surface.
Teams travel thousands of kilometres each summer and spend thousands of dollars on their equipment, on their accommodation and on their consumables in each town they visit.
The economic impact that Olympic Park and Timmis Speedway’s events have on this city and surrounding areas cannot be underestimated.
It wasn’t underestimated in Parramatta either by the sport’s insiders, but it wasn’t even a factor in the NSW Government’s decision to level the place in 2021.
The City of Parramatta is worried, as well it might be.
They know that millions of dollars worth of tourism dollars and flow-on expenditure in their region is set to be lost with the impending relocation to Eastern Creek if the plans indeed go ahead.
Could it happen here?
We’d all like to think not, but then nobody at Parramatta Speedway thought that either.
The news in Sydney needs to further motivate the two speedways here in Mildura and their respective fans and teams to stand together and to at all times do their best to work together, encourage the growth of the sport of oval dirt track racing as a whole and to keep accurate information on the financial impact that their race events provide for the region.
And if you think “we already do that,” just remember that Parramatta Speedway did too.
We need to love what we have, loud and proud, as often and as publicly as we can.
It’s a sobering reminder that in moments like this, you really don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.
