Street Machine Australia – September 2019

SNAP SHOTS

STORY CARLY DALE

M

OST kids in the late 70s read fairytale

books, whereas my preferred brand

of childhood fantasy and excitement

was found in my dad Russell Parker’s

personal drag-racing photo albums, chronicling

his quarter-mile exploits in 1960s and 70s South

Australia. Trying to choose just a few photos for

this yarn was not easy, so we’ll continue the journey

next issue. For now, we’ll take a look at Dad’s

adventures at Brooksfield, South Australia’s first

drag strip (which he helped get up and running), a

bunch of his FED rails, a couple of cool streeters,

and a demolition derby car!

01: BETWEEN Dad’s exploits and those of Pinky

Tuscadero from Happy Days, you can bet that I

was smitten with the art of the demolition derby.

The hands-on-hips, helmet-wearing fashionista

in the top photo is yours truly, looking very proud

of Dad’s efforts to completely destroy a mid-

60s Ford Fairlane. The cute li’l blondie beside

me is my brother, Scott Parker. “It was my mate

Gary Datson’s old Compact Fairlane that we put

in a demo derby just because the car was there

really,” Dad explains. “It had Compact running gear,

probably a 260ci in it. The demo derby was run at

the end of the season at Rowley Park Speedway.

We straightened the Compact out a bit and had

a second run, then that was the end of that – I

scrapped the car.”

02: DAD is full of funny yarns from when he was

a lad, including this ripper that features his red

Model A Ford roadster: “Peter Hines had claimed

to have run 100mph at the dirt Brooksfield track,

so I strapped an old alarm clock to my dash and

painted ‘100mph’ on it and raced down the track.

I then just kept racing into the saltbush, returning a

fair while later to claim that I too had run 100mph!”

03: 1966 saw Dad’s first foray into the new sport

of drag racing at the freshly opened Brooksfield

nine-chain (about 180m) track, which was narrow

and rough, with minimal bitumen. Dad, then just 18,

had hand-built a HAMBster from RHS steel and

spare parts, including a sidevalve Ford from one of

my poppa’s old trucks. “It also had a sidevalve car

gearbox – I only used second and top gear – and

behind was a full-width standard diff of the era, with

an Austin 7 front end,” Dad says. “I had mounted

the Holden steering box the wrong way; I was

young and I didn’t know any better! It really was a

weird-looking car.”

04: BY 1967 the cumbersome HAMBster had

RUSSELL PARKER

SUNSHINE COAST, QLD

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