Way we were: Nation stalls on news of Holden’s demise

The year 1968 came into memory this week with the death notice for Holden. It was the year it had its first victory in the Bathurst 1000 motor race. But things we took for granted in 1968 such as typewriters, milkmen, public phone boxes and Brisbane trams are just about all gone.

IT was a year of turmoil and trouble and I remember 1968 through the flickering black and white images of a 21-inch Pye TV, the latest and greatest in-home technology of the time.

Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated within weeks of each other, Soviet armed forces invaded Czechoslovakia and Vietnamese forces launched the Tet Offensive as thousands of Australians protested our involvement in their war. John Gorton was sworn in as Prime Minister after Harold Holt vanished, and Queensland premier Jack Pizzey died in office.

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At the Mexico City Olympics, Australian silver medallist Peter Norman joined a civil rights protest, standing solid on the medal dais with two black American sprinters.

My most vivid memory of 1968, though, is of my mum sitting next to me on the old green school bus taking me down past the horse paddocks and the Starlight Drive-In Theatre on Albany Creek Road to make sure I wasn’t afraid on my first day of school.

The year 1968 came into memory again this week with the death notice for that grand old Australian brand, Holden.

In 1968 the company had its first of many victories in the iconic Bathurst 1000 motor race, then known as the Hardie-Ferodo 500-mile event.

1968 Holden HK Monaro GTS 327.

The winning car was a yellow V8 Holden Monaro GTS 327, a coupe version of the four-door HK Kingswood family sedan and the win set up half a century of rivalry in Australian racing between Holden and Ford, the kind of which we will never see again.

Bathurst race cars were road registered in those days and competed on skinny road tyres.

Bruce McPhee, who drove all but one of the 130 laps in the winning car, picked up the Monaro from a dealership in Wyong and drove it to the race before returning it to the dealership after the event.

McPhee claimed later that an attempt to sabotage his Monaro was made the night before the race at his Bathurst motel and that he found tree leaves in his petrol tank.

He competed on one set of used, almost bald tyres, believing that they were faster than tyres with full tread and after 500 miles (800 km) of hard racing over almost seven hours, sparks could be seen coming from the Monaro’s tyres as they had worn down to their steel belts.

Monaros took out the first three places at that year’s Bathurst, and four of the top five spots.

Kevin Bartlett, who clinched the Australian Drivers Championship that year with wins at Surfers Paradise and Lakeside, north of Brisbane, finished fourth in his Alfa Romeo.

Watching black and white footage of that Bathurst event, shows just how much motor racing has changed in the last 52 years and just how fearless those drivers were.

The Mount Panorama course looked more like a long, narrow twisting country track than a motor racing circuit, with cars hurtling down the mountain like flying boulders, rubber barely touching the road.

Despite a lack of modern safety equipment they were still topping 210km/h down Conrod Straight.

But just like those cars zooming around that bush track, this is a world that moves quickly.

Things we took for granted in 1968 such as typewriters, milkmen, public phone boxes and Brisbane trams are just about all gone.

The Starlight, like so many drive-in theatres has disappeared, too, along with the neighbouring horse paddocks that are now covered with houses.

And this week, the Holden, a piece of Australia that millions of us will always remember with great fondness, also said a sad goodbye.

Grantlee Kieza’s new biography, Macquarie, is published by HaperCollins/ABC Books

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