Anzac Day 2024 : Auto Actions looks at World War Two  - Auto Action (2024)

Anzac Day – April 25 – is for many Australians the most important of our National Days.

The Dawn Service with its rich-ritual of prayer, an address, wreath-laying and the Last Post grabs the gut with emotion in an extraordinarily powerful way like no other. It’s part of the glue that binds the nation together.

While first held in 1916 to recognise and remember the loss of over 8,000 Australians – the Anzacs were Australian and New Zealand soldiers – killed in a campaign to capture the Gallipoli peninsula in Türkiye, the Anzac Day today includes the remembrance of all Australians killed in military operations.

Auto Action, like all Australians, honours and remembers the contribution of all fighting men and women, especially those who fell to allow us to live lives of peace and freedom away from the madness in some other parts of the world.

Last year we covered the exploits of fighter pilot and racing driver FAO ‘Tony’ Gaze. This year we reproduce some words of Australia’s greatest living motor racing historian, John Medley, writing about the contribution of Australian motor racers to the World War 2 effort, and the impacts of that war on the sport.

Prime Minister Menzies declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. The first Australian casualties occurred that month. By the Easter Bathurst meeting in 1940 – the last until 1946 – there were many motor racers already in the services.

“A grab-bag of names (who signed up) highlights two things: firstly, that the incredible ratio of one in every six Australians, man woman and child, served in the forces during the Second World War; and secondly that the motor racing community not only played its part, but because of the average age of motor sports enthusiasts at that time, played far more than its part. Most were young enough to serve, and serve they did.”

“In conjunction with rationing and tighter wartime controls, the virtual collapse of car clubs due to the military service of so many members, guaranteed the disappearance of motor sport.”

British magazine Motor Sport was published in a limited way throughout the war “bringing moments of sanity and fond memory each month to its starved clientele.”

There were some clandestine motor sport events in Australia during the war, “but also little evidence of it.”

After the first air raid sirens were heard on Australian soil in August 1940, more petrol restrictions were invoked with no tyres, tyre repairs and replacement parts allowed. Blackout and other lighting restrictions began.

“Racing cars were sold off or stored away for the duration. “Some owners went away to war and never returned: Russ Johnson historic-raced a rosewood-bodied Ford A Special that he had found in the 1980s. Built for racing at Penrith, the young man who built it didn’t come back after the war.”

What about the tracks? Some, like Lobethal had their surfaces improved, but Mount Panorama suffered given the proximity of military buildings near Forrests Elbow, while the one-mile Penrith Speedway ceased to exist.

Conversely, military camps and airfields provided venue opportunities for entrepreneurial car clubs post-war: Balcombe, Rowville, Darley, Bandiana, Fishermans Bend, Ballarat, Nowra, Caversham, Beverley, Gawler, Leyburn, Lowood, Mallala, Strathpine, Marsden Park, Mooliabeenie, Point Cook, Schofields and Valleyfield to name just some…

Nectar-of-the-gods way back was the smell of vegetable based lubricant Castrol R. Small gatherings of the automotive faithful during the war commenced proceedings by pouring some castor oil on a red-hot bit of steel. “Pure bliss. The urban myth status this story earned is because it reportedly occurred EVERYWHERE.”

“The losses of World War Two loom large. Unaccountable numbers lost their lives, on both sides of the conflict…The Australian toll was no less – particularly in proportion to overall population.”

John Medley’s long lists and narrative of Australian racers who died on the ground, in the air, and at sea “demonstrate the remarkable percentage of the Australian population that served in World War Two.

Neither the USA or Britain (for example) can rightly claim 1 in every 6 people – man, woman, and child – served their country in wartime. And because of their youth and the fact that they were ‘goers’, the Australian motor sporting community provided far more of that service than their numbers would otherwise suggest.”

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Bibliography: ‘John Snow: Classic Motor Racer’ John Medley

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