October 17, 1925.
It was 100 years ago this week that Australian motoring took a leap forward. On the day, at Seven Mile Beach at Gerringong on the New South Wales south coast, a man drove faster than any man had ever driven in Australia – 107mph.
While it was a speed achieved overseas many times, it was the first time anyone had ever gone beyond 100mph in Australia. But it didn’t only set a new speed benchmark, it kicked off a decade of speed in this country that accelerated both our motoring industry and motor racing before World War II.
Unfortunately, this history is unknown to most Australians, even those obsessed with all things on four wheels have never heard this story.
But I have, because the man who set the speed record at Seven Mile Beach 100 years ago was my great-grandfather, Donald Harkness.
I spent my whole childhood hearing the stories about Harkness from my grandfather and my mum. As I’ve grown older and spent my career in journalism I have been able to add more context and detail to those stories that were passed down.
Speed records were all the rage in Australia’s 1920s motoring scene, as cars grew faster and faster. Most notably, Britain’s Vauxhall was selling a new model that it claimed was capable of more than 100mph.
Naturally, people tried to test that claim out but none could achieve triple digits. So, in 1925 The Daily Guardian newspaper put up a silver cup as a prize for the first driver who could become the first in Australia to break the 100mph barrier – regardless of the car.
Many tried and all failed – including Harkness. He made three attempts in his usual racing car, Whitey II, trying various gear ratios and even stripping the bodywork from it to save weight in order to try and reach his goal.
Realising that the solution was more power, with at least 100hp required, Harkness found a 200hp Wolseley Viper V8 aero and paired it to a Minerva chassis. On October 17, 1925, Harkness raced along Gerringong Beach at a speed of 107mph – winning the Daily Guardian’s cup and becoming the fastest man in Australia.
Harkness attracted plenty of attention for his achievement, with the newspapers lauding his achievement. This success, coupled with the rising motor racing scene, largely on dirt oval tracks and then the concrete Olympia Speedway, made him a star of the era.
But he wasn’t alone, there is an entire generation of speed pioneers that are lost to history. When most Australians think of ‘the olden days’ of motor racing, they go back to Bob Jane and Harry Firth and the dawn of touring car racing. There were several generations before that, men and women that raced a variety of cars on whatever surfaces they could find.
The success at Gerringong spurred on the speed race, and Harkness would go on to build several more specials to set an even faster Australian Land Speed Record before then making an audacious attempt at the World Land Speed Record, but that’s a story for another day…
Discussion about this post