by Colin Piper
The AMHF houses many treasures, most of which have been donated by enthusiasts, collectors and, let’s face it, hoarders, over many decades. Most of the collection has come from the baby boomer generation who, faced with inevitable choices as to what to do with all the stuff they have amassed over the years, or worse, their surviving children making such decisions, the AMHF has become, a bulging treasure house of all things “motoring”.
In 2022, well-known hill climber and historic racer, Brian Lear donated 47 white A4 folders to the AMHF. When I became involved as a volunteer, I was helping sort through the hundreds of books into various categories. During this process I became aware of mysterious white folders, taking up several metres of shelf space. Upon opening the first one was astonished at what I saw.
The folders cover the years 1903 to 1984 and comprise photocopied clippings of newspaper and magazine reports of motoring and motorsport events. There are over 4,200 events filed in chronological order with an accompanying index of dates and promoting clubs. Many of these were obtained during Brian’s visits to the Mitchell Library in Sydney. Brian would travel by train from Newcastle almost every Wednesday for seven or eight years doing this research. Other sources included internet research, magazines, Trove and his own collections. There are occasional copies of programmes which give an insight into the era in which the events took place.
Having the chronological list of events with dates and the promoting clubs is wonderful, but what was not in Brian’s 254-page index was any reference to the source of the copied printed material. This information he had carefully noted on all the clippings in the folders of course. The more I looked at them, especially the earliest ones, I thought some future researcher might find it useful to have access to an index, and see at a glance exactly in which publication, the publication date and in some cases the page number the related articles appeared. All the extracts are photocopies of the originals which one assumes are available from the archives of the individual publishers: Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Argus, Launceston Examiner and so on. Some of the articles contain results, though these are not the official ones from the event promoter, but published versions in the papers, and some of the articles (especially in later years) have photos. The first contemporary ones of an event are from Norton Sumit Hillclimb held on December 16, 1905. Many of these old images are poor quality, but again, better versions would be available in the original source.
I have retained Bran Lear’s original index without any modification whatsoever. I have made a duplicate version with the added information…are there results? Yes or No. Are there photos? Yes or No. Most importantly, I have added which publications the information comes from, the source, the day, the month, the year and as well as in some cases, the page number. I am collating a secondary index of all the publications, using a mostly a two to four letter key; SMH for The Sydney Morning Herald, TMA for The Motor in Australia, DNWA for Daily News Western Australia. And so on.
At the time of writing (January 2025), I am up to Folder No 24… 1951-1952. It has been a time-consuming process and there are anomalies. Some events mentioned in Brian’s original index do not appear in the folders. That said, there are some separate folders with motor-cycle clippings and a couple of others with personalities and cars. These folders I will get to eventually and make a separate index for each.
What I have concentrated on with the 24 folders I have so far worked through is aligning MY index, with exactly what appears in the folders. This is why I have kept the original index untouched so researchers are able to see the fabric of what Brian Lear assembled. They will also be able to see the anomalies for themselves this way.
