Newcastle Classic Bikes March 2017 | Page 6

A typical Belmont MX club day would mean 100 or so paying riders would front up after spending Saturday arvo digging long drop dinnies , erecting same , putting rope fences up cutting bracken fern down with one of the worlds first brush cutters , painting tyres as track markers & placing them where we wanted the track to go to stop erosion & damage to grazing lands . The after race clean up was an event in it self & led to some skin removal by those who still had enough energy to play soccer with no rules after consuming a few cool ales The Trail bike class was great success , we would start the juniors 1 minute behind the trail bikers mostly their dads , so dad had a target on his back , the kid had 30 minutes to catch & Pass him the prize sometimes was the looser washed the both bikes , wives & other children had to come along as backup for their team & they would get involved to helping waving flags Ect Norm Fraser nailed the opportunity sold the husband a trail bike so his wife got the car that he usually drove to work the kid would need a mini bike in the deal so he could race with dad at weekends Norm would throw in free Centurion crash helmet so winners all round he got his farm opened up & we had a place to ride . We had several other play grounds like Bishops Bridge where again we built a pallet bridge to link several areas into a continuous loop over about 10Klm that could be run in either direction set up the lap scoring area for our ladies to work in where the riders had to stop engines dismount & push their machines past the girls & yell out their riding numbers to get lap scored the entrants soon adapted to the new club rules & the quiet area for our crew to work in in these 4 hour events that was catching on with their own classes for MX & trail bikes I would sometimes shoot silent super8 movies of events & process them & show them at next meeting & add my personal sound track to embarrassment of many victims at the Belmont Sporties big hall where the general meetings were held to a packed house . Ken & his wife , Sadie sadly no longer with us dedicated much of their lives to the Belmont motorcycle club & its members as the club evolved training others in the skills they both possessed Sadie could lap score a 30 rider field when left to it she trained many wives & girlfriends to this thankless task that was vital to our sport , rain / hail or sunshine with choking dust , they were there taking numbers we loved them for it we changed the scoring rules to make their job easier Sadie made many of the racing bibs we wore with our numbers on them in different colours for teams events besides her love of Highland dancing & their children Under Kens guidance we built more tracks that were harder on your body & mind & kept the speed down to the 80KPH the sport demanded , still the membership grew as we evolved We ran some interclub events with Sydney clubs only 1 club could be invited at a time them , s was the rules at the time so we worked with it & the club kept growing .