Does anyone know about this one?

I'm quite sure it's not on the lists we have here, but I was talking to a bloke the other day and he mentioned that he watched a Falcon GT having a big lose over the Dogleg, then rolling and sliding into the old dam on the inside of BP on its roof. The driver, he says, drowned.

When I told him I'd never heard of it, and that if it was a race meeting that I must have been there, he checked with a friend of his to see if his memory was faulty. The friend confirmed that he recalled it also.

Does anyone know about this? He says it was at a race meeting, but even outside of race meetings we already have two Oran Park deaths listed, I cannot see how this one would have escaped our attention... if it happened.

Or did the incident happen and the driver survived?

I have not heard the one your asking about or the other 2. who were the other 2 deaths?

A motorcyclist who came over the dogleg to find the water cart (an old blitz with a water tank on the back) crossing the track in front of him... driven, I believe, by a 14-year old... and John Delbridge, who crashed a Mazda 1300 he was preparing for Bathurst.

thanks ray. hope your answer is found soon

I attended every OP race meeting from mid 1960's to early 1970's and i don't recall any car going into the little dam(forget when they filled it in),Moffat went close in the Coke Mustang (1969?) to going in the one on the outside,lower left,at BP..
May have been an obscure club fixture or practice but surely it would have made the papers/magazines.

Hi Ray,

My father worked at Oran Park from its opening to its closure. If it occurred I am pretty sure he would know about it. Can you point me to the "lists" you refer to, they sound like an interesting read.

Stan Coleman was killed when he crashed his bike into the fence that protected the concrete wall coming out of the dogleg!!!...The dogleg was known as the "flip flop" to the bike guys. There was no water cart and this was about 1972.

I think Ray Bell refers to the accident that claimed the life of Keith Smith, about 1967
http://www.motorsportmemorial.org/focus.php?db=ms&n=9184

Yes, that's the one... with information only filled in by P (Peter? Phil?) Scaysbrook a few weeks ago...

I remember it well because at the time I was flag waving at a number of circuits. I went to an NSWRRC meeting for officials and there was a discussion about the whole affair, including the 14-year-old driving across the track.

MK1220... if you go to this thread and got to the bottom of the page where it says 'enter keywords' and 'search topic' and put 'oran park' in there you'll find the relevant mentions of deaths at Oran Park.

In short, I counted in Brian Pugh, who suicided a couple of years after becoming a paraplegic in a crash with Michael Rock going into CC; John Delbridge, who died while practising for the Bathurst race in a Mazda 1300; Ray Heffernan, whose Cooper inverted and dumped him dead on the track at BP in 1963; John Marchiori, who died the same day when he crashed into an abandoned FVee in his Lotus 20 and Emmanuel Xuereb, injured in his Anglia while racing in a downpour in 1972 and dying about two weeks later.

Checked in with the old man and he does not recall the accident but said it may have occured at a NSWRRC meeting, most of which he did not work at.

I don't think there were any NSWRRC meetings back quite that far...

Only the AARC were running club meetings on a regular basis in the period, it was only after the closure of Warwick Farm that anyone else saw any purpose in running the lower level events.

Anyway, that doesn't change the fact that I would have been there if it didn't clash with a major event somewhere else. And it would have been reported in RCN irrespective of the stature of the meeting.

If, however, it was a sprint event, a lap dash, then maybe it could have been missed.