Bathurst was Australia’s first inland settlement the other side of the Blue Mountains, 200km north-west of Sydney, but the town is best known around the world as the venue for many memorable battles of the automotive kind as the location of Mount Panorama — Australia’s most challenging and most thrilling race circuit. The spectacular 6.10km track was first used in 1938 after bike racing had begun on the nearby Vale circuit in 1931.
Success in the annual Bathurst Easter weekend motorcycle races was for many decades the pinnacle of achievement for the products of the legendary Australian rider factory, interspersed with the occasional victory for their overseas rivals. The first such feat came when Kiwi Rod Coleman became the first non-Aussie to take victory at Bathurst, winning both the Australian Junior TT and Senior TT over the same weekend in 1954. This nicely previewed his Isle of Man Junior TT win later that same year on the unique factory AJS 7R3A, and indeed Bathurst was very much the spiritual Down Under equivalent of the Manx TT course. But while that is still going strong today, Bathurst’s final bike meeting was held in 2000, by which time the circuit was deemed unsuitable for motorcycles following continued modifications to suit car racing, including the erection of concrete walls.
First published in 2003, Bikes & Bathurst by Jim Scaysbrook — himself a former Bathurst race winner — has become a collector’s item as the definitive account of Australia’s greatest annual motorcycle races, with the original hard cover version of this book containing chapters on every event held from 1931 to 2000, including results of every race and hundreds of photographs. But since then, Scaysbrook has continued to amass many more photos — so many that the new e-Book version of his original work has been published in two volumes: 1931 to 1959, and 1960 to 2000. These are available online only and contain a massive total of 839 photos and illustrations, many of which have never been published before, as well as amendments and corrections to the original text. As definitive histories of major race circuits go, this one is hard to beat.
— Alan Cathcart
Published in two volumes as e-Books for computers and large tablets.
Volume 1 (1931-1959) — 139 pages with 335 illustrations
Volume 2 (1960-2000) — 424 pages with 504 illustrations
Download: $12.50 each volume
www.bikesandbathurst.com.au