‘There was no hurdle too great for Peter and even Motorcycling Australia scratched their heads and wanted to know how we pulled it off. To be fair, there was always a spectacular event at Phillip Island each Australia Day, (26th January), that nearly everyone knew of, entered, or visited. After all, it had perfect timing, being bang in the middle of Australia’s holiday season, our summer and the European and US winter, and had the backing of the GP circuit owners and the support of one of the biggest transport companies in the country. That’s difficult to compete with.

And yet, Eastern Creek has a reputation, not only as a 4.5km circuit specifically designed to run an international GP, but also renowned for fantastic racing from the likes of 500cc world champions, Michael Doohan and Alix Criville.

To be fair, the Italians had heard about this event the year before, and with much cajoling, we were able to attract the services of Freddie Spencer, not only as a rider, but a brilliant guest speaker. And so the concept of pre-event dinners and guest speakers took off. We were ably assisted by the master of master-of-ceremonies, Alan Cathcart, and every event was a complete sell-out at the famous capital of soccer, the Marconi Club in Western Sydney.

For me, a year or so previously with a 50th anniversary theme for the Yamaha make, some amazing historic bikes were on display and to top it off, Peter had been able to cajole world champion Phil Read to make the long flight from the UK and to ride some iconic Yamaha equipment, to our complete delight. Remember that Read won a total of eight world titles across four classes, 125, 250, 500 and 750. His career is littered with impressive achievements, including eight IOM TT race wins, 121 Grand Prix podiums and more 250cc world titles than any other rider.

But returning to the Italian theme, one can only imagine what the Italians thought when this unknown Australian rang and asked the champion of champions if he would be interested in coming to Australia to ride our circuit and to speak at our events. Historically, we remember that Ago had been beaten twice in Australia in the 1970s by two fairly unknown Aussies - the first Bryan Hindle, father of our member Glenn, and of course Kenny Blake. But he did come, he was delightful, friendly, drew enormous crowds of motorcyclists and Italian fans alike, and presented the winner of the headline raffle - a brand new MV Agusta - to a very excited new owner who had travelled from South Australia for the event.

Pandemics aside, ensuring the continued existence of significant historic road race events in NSW required the formation of the CMRC. And that is where we have come from.