Bardon Hill Climb Brisbane Qld.
When the Brisbane Wanderers Automobile Club approached Tom Payne with the concept of conducting an annual hill climb for motorcycles in his back paddock, they had little idea how popular the event would become.
Folklore has it that, in order to demonstrate the power of their first production model, Indian Motorcycles assembled the motoring press around the most forbidding hill in Springfield, Massachusetts. Despite there being no apparent track to the summit, the Indian Test Rider was instructed to point the machine at the bloke on top of the hill, twist the throttle, and hang on.
Excelsior and Harley-Davidson immediately realised the publicity value of this stunt so by the end of the decade the popularity of freak hill climbing matched that of board track racing across the USA. Promoters scoured the mid-west seeking the most physically demanding slopes on which to hold competitive hill climbs. Many of these extremely steep inclines
