History
NOTE THE LARGE RUBBER BAND USED AS THE START GATE.
The Cairns BMX Club celebrates its 30th birthday this year, and in September will be hosting the Queensland State Championships. Cairns is now the largest club in Queensland and would be one of the largest, if not the biggest club in Australia. Cairns boast 270 licensed riders. We race every Friday Night with the exception of school and public holidays. On each of these nights we have anywhere between 140 and 150 riders turn up to put in some hard pedals. Right from its beginning Cairns has had strong well established, devoted Committee Members. It is on the backs of these dedicated people that the club has grown from strength to strength. The Cairns BMX Club was first founded by Mr Ray Drinnan (it’s then President) and Mr John Ackers in 1978. The track itself was located at the Cairns Velodrome. The first race took place on the 7th May and consisted of 7 riders of mixed ages. My, haven’t we come a long way. Within a week the numbers grew to 15. Not long after this small beginning the track was relocated to our current position in Scott Street behind the Cairns Showgrounds. The start hill and bridge, as the club then had, was constructed after 1981. Lindsay Harth, John Snell and Malcolm Morris (the Committee of the time) worked jointly to put the track together. Lindsay Harth engineered the structure of the hill with the help of engineers at Roela. Besser supplied the bricks for the walls and piers of the hill. The first walls of the bridge sank and Mr Snell along with others put the new foundations and walls in place. The replacement wall was built under the existing sinking wall so the bridge span was able to be positioned on the new wall. While the first construction cost the club almost nothing because materials were donated, the replacement structure was paid for by the club, except for the foundation’s concrete. A club member with concrete trucks, (BORAL) donated the concrete and its delivery. Other companies who contributed to the tracks original construction were Cairns Earthmoving Contractors (CEC) and Cairns Pipeline Contractors. CEC still to this day help in a big way when work is done to the track.
Following is an excerpt taken from the ‘Condon Family History Files’. Written by Glen Condon about he and his son Tim’s involvement with BMX and gives us a true feel of what BMX was like in the 1980′s.
In late 1979 or early 1980 Tim was given the all-clear to ditch his crutches, with the proviso he limited his sporting activity to either swimming or bicycle riding – BMX became his sport of choice. I was very pleased with his choice for a number of reasons: firstly his orthopaedic surgeon would be happy (providing he stayed upright!); secondly the bikes appeared to be mechanically simple enough for us to maintain ourselves and keep costs to a minimum and, Bicycle Moto Cross being recently introduced (1977 I believe) into Australia and the ‘in’ sport, it was an activity we could do together and grow with the sport.
Tim was one of the early members of the Cairns BMX Club when it was established at the showgrounds, inside a trotting training track off Scott Street (riders had to be particularly careful not to disrupt the horses during their training), after having relocated from the velodrome. The humble beginnings consisted of a starting mound, a few humps and bumps, a couple of berms and a make-shift shed (clubhouse). Not much was known about BMX racing in the early days, so it was a matter of trial and error, both for track design and construction, and how to organise and run the race meetings (riders wore ‘bibs’ with their racing number on it and, would you believe, we had ‘seeded’ draws in the program). Progressively over the next few years, with a lot of hard work from many dedicated people, the Cairns Club evolved into one of the most innovative in Australia, with outstanding facilities both on (Chas Bolton set up electronic timing) and off the track. The original portion of the clubhouse/canteen was, I believe, designed and built by Ken Frost in the early 1980s, after he navigated around old bike frames, car bodies and the like, which appeared while excavating for the foundations.
Some of the early families involved were: Adcock, Akers, Anderson, Billingham, Bolton, Callaghan, Chibnal, Demaine, Drinnan, Finglas, Frost, Gillespie, Harth, Holmlund, Kelly, Lyons, Marsh, Masding, Massey, McGahan, Mittelstadt, Morris, Quinn, Newman, Pendrich, Pradal, Shang, Snell, Stroud, Taylor, Thygessen, Webb and Williams. These were the ‘core’ people who did the hard yakka ‘outside’ (building, upgrading and maintaining the track) and the thankless paper-work ‘inside’ (nominations, programs, race results and canteen), and many-a-time ‘Webby’ (Tim Webb) and I had to clean the shitty (literally) showground toilet block before a big meeting.
From the time we became involved in the sport, whenever my work would allow, Tim and I traveled to meetings throughout North Queensland. Tracks were established at Atherton, Innisfail, Mackay, Malanda, Mareeba, Moranbah, Mossman, Mount Isa, Townsville and Walkerston and, while Tim raced, I did the commentating. Somehow or other I fell into commentating from the start, perhaps it was a gift-of-the-gab or my regular radio and TV broadcasts that helped prepare me, but it all seemed to come naturally. It was a job I loved doing and I especially enjoyed helping other clubs who had difficulty encouraging someone to do their spruking. The ultimate ‘high’ for the Club, and for me personally as a commentator, was hosting the Queensland State Titles in 1986. The meeting attracted almost 300 riders and went off without a hitch.
By the time Tim retired from BMX in the late 1980′s he had accumulated dozens and dozens of trophies and ‘plates’, mainly in 20inch (a best of Q4), occasionally in cruiser (on borrowed bikes) and he and Ben Anderson or Bruce Webb were virtually unbeatable on a side-hack.
During the clubs continued growth, regular racing was held over Saturday and Sundays to cope with the boom of interest the club was attracting. Our first ever Australian Number One Plate went to Wendy McGahn in 1983. She was to hold this prestige’s honour for nine years as it wasn’t until 1992 that another Cairns rider would bring home the gold.
On the 1st of June 1985 the Cairns BMX Club along with members of surrounding clubs, Innisfail, Atherton and Malanda, participated in the Cairns City Games. This carnival was much like the Suncorp Games of today, where many different sports come together in the one City to Compete. In this year (1985) 60 sporting categories and approximately 9000 competitors took part. BMX had the honour of leading the Opening Ceremony Parade and although the track was a little slippery due to the conditions on the day, 16 new age lap records were set with the fastest time of the day going to Cairns Senior rider Glen Mittelstadt at 37.66 seconds. Some of the big name riders of the day and whose names we might recognise were Tim Condon, Brian and Dean Frusher, Rusty Taylor, Chris Finglas, Jason Whalin, and the Stroud Brothers, Landon, Glendon, Preston and Clinton who is now our Zone President. In 1986 we hosted the 6th State Titles where 630 riders from around the State nominated. Glen Condon was commentator for the big event. The track and surroundings were said to be in pristine condition. Newspaper articles stated that Cairns had the most famous set of Canyons on any track in Queensland, they became known as the ‘Infamous Canyons’. It was said that this State Titles had the most amount of spills of any State Carnival. Some of the big name riders of the day were Tania Cutting, Corrine Holmuld, Glen Holmlund, Rusty Taylor and Tim Condon.
By 1992 racing had been moved to Wednesday nights and pulled in around 150 riders each week. Even back then Cairns was considered to be one of the ten largest clubs in Australia, and hosted its first Australian Titles apply named “Titles in the Tropics 1992″. In preparation for these Aussie Titles the track was reconstructed under the guidance of John Moore. Vic James took on the job of redeveloping the canteen and clubhouse. The President of the time was Colin Frusher. Eighty Cairns riders took place in this National Competition and 24 of those riders proudly secured an Australian Plate. Riders names that jumped out at me when researching this era were Ronnie Dugdell, Jeffery Walters, Neil Muller and Dean Nash (Though at this time Dean was a member of Island BMX) Cairns has hosted many large competitions, the Australian Titles, the most recent being in 2005, the Queensland State Championships along with the Far North Zone Championships and several Queensland County Championships.As we move through the years and on into the 2000′s Cairns BMX is stronger than ever. Some of our big name riders have been Peter Martin, Roger Hastie, Ronnie Dugdell. Ryan, Kurt and Dave Nicholls, Dean Phillips, Joshua Mules, Ross Weber, The Bridges family Thomas, Luke and Natalie. Many have been and still are Australian and World Plate holders. We continue to look forward to a prosperous future and have a huge contingent of very talented young riders some who are and will be our future champions. Josh Nash, Shaun Gray, Jonathan Geck, The Vandenhooven Brothers, Ben and Nathan, The Fieldhouse’s Hayden, Jessica and Ryan. Taylor Foster, Ashley Crowther, Nathan Knight, Josh Standen, Brenden Miano, Brian Borusiewicz, the Hoad’s Mitchell and Ruby-mae. The Sperling Boys Dylan and Kyle, Samantha and Jarod Ince, Luke and Isaac La Spina, Hayden and Branden Anderson. Ethan Brockman, Ryan Hurst, Aislynn and Ronan Weber and Kellie Coden, just to name a few, but the list could go on and on. Some our recent past Presidents have been David Elms and Kent Druery, today’s President is Paul Ince.The start hill and finish line are now both completely covered, with the gate being operated on a ‘Smart Start’ system.Up until 2000 the track had a tunnel with an overpass but this was then changed to a semi paperclip layout. In October 2004, under the guidance of Dave Nicholls and Brian Sperling the entire track was demolished and re-built to UCI World Standard. This project took eight weeks and countless man-hours by a group of dedicated volunteers. The project was also made possible by the generosity of a number of local businesses and we thank them very much for their support. At this present moment the track is, once again, undergoing some changes in preparation for the up and coming Queensland State Championships.
