Recently I attended the fantastic Leyburn Street Sprints. Billed as the ‘Race Around the Houses’. This event is held in the tiny town of Leyburn, a few hours west of Brisbane. This year, the event celebrated 75 years since the running of the first Australian Grand Prix in the area.
And, yes, it really is a race around the houses! Several of the streets of this quaint little southern Queensland town are blocked off and made safe for old-school racers … and the event start line is just outside the pub!
I’ve been to the Leyburn Sprints several times. For me, it’s a circa 1600km round trip, which hopefully gives you a big hint as to how good the event is …
It’s fantastic!
Anyway, this year, because I didn’t have my new, proper VW Beetle race car built in time, I took my ‘it’s-not-my-race-car’ Beetle. This patina brown 1968 Bug was kinda thrown together from a pile of parts in 2018-19 as a Cars ‘n’ Coffee type cruiser, but instead has spent more time on the high side of 100km/h at various airport sprints and hill climb events than it has being driven on sunny Sundays!
Anyway, despite a problem with my car that prevented me from participating on day two of the Leyburn Sprints, I was very happy with my fifth from 15th in the ‘Under 2-litre’ class, based on just my Saturday runs.
But this year, there was more to Leyburn than just track time. Another car-mad bloke I know, Jonno – who lives local to me and who’s a keen spectator at Leyburn – suggested I tag along for a two-day road trip with his just-bought classic, a 1994 Ford LTD, and three of his mates.
In the past, to travel to Leyburn, I’ve left home late afternoon and travelled during the evening to arrive after midnight, so making the trek part of the fun – rather than being just a hectic after-work, after-dark rush – seemed like a terrific idea!
So on the Wednesday prior to the weekend event, Jonno and his mates, and I, set off for Leyburn. Jeez, didn’t we have some fun! A two-way radio in both our cars meant we could all chat, such as to laugh about work and life, tell bad jokes and discuss sightings of old cars behind fences as we trundled past paddocks and through towns, on the wide open plains of northern NSW.
For our overnight stay we had a site booked in a lovely caravan park, but with rain much of the day prior to our arrival, rather than roll-out swags on wet ground, we instead chose a glorious 1800s traditional two-storey brick-and-tile Aussie pub, which the publican pushed us out of at around 11pm (I think!) after a laughter-filled afternoon and evening of typical car-bloke story telling!
After rubbing our eyes and finding our lost wallets and sunnies the next morning, we walked to an excellent local main-street bakery for some breakfast pies and coffees.
I found a fella to have a chat to – about his bright red ’02 HSV Clubsport parked in the main street, adding a splash of colour to the usual country-town fleet of white Toyotas – before we hit the road again, continuing our trek toward Leyburn, over some terrific backroads under a wide expanse of increasingly blue sky.
Our awesome Aussie road trip lasted little more than 24 hours but jeez it was fun – just what the heart and soul needed!