Phillip Island, Victoria
Part 2: 1968-1978
When the Phillip Island Auto Racing Club was forced to sell its property, a cashed-up buyer quickly came forward in the form of retired car racer Len Lukey, who had just sold his muffler business for a tidy sum. His first priority was to reintroduce racing at the dormant circuit as soon as possible, as well as rejuvenating the property with a Japanese-style garden park, a motor museum, an Olympic-size swimming pool and the planting of hundreds of trees. A control tower sourced from the defunct Fishermans Bend track in Melbourne was installed and a complex program commenced to correct the woeful drainage around the circuit.
After a few false starts, motor racing began again on October 22, 1967. The motorcycle fraternity anxiously awaited its turn to try the circuit, which came on New Year’s Day, 1968. This combined car and motorcycle meeting was to become a popular annual fixture for the next decade, with Hartwell club in charge of the bike side of the meetings.
In the five-year period since the bikes had last raced at Phillip Island, there had been some major developments in motorcycle design, although the massive strides in tyre technology were yet to come. The 125 and 250cc classes were now very well supported, due not only to the increasing availability of Japanese machines but from the Spanish invasion led by Bultaco. The 350 and 500cc classes were still the domain of the big British singles, but the newest of these bikes were now five years old and the writing was on the wall. Significantly, the Unlimited class, which used to be a virtual re-run of the 500, was now sprinkled with various examples of
