Yet,
60 years ago it thundered to the noise of high powered and high
revving engines, this was the site of the 1949 Australian Grand
Prix, 30,000 spectators turned up to watch brave drivers, mostly in
machines they had built themselves vie for the title of Australian
Grand Prix Champion. A committee of Leyburn residents run a
commemorative historic race event in the township each year.
Toy Too (The Roaring Ford) in action at the
2003 Leyburn Historic Sprints
The co-ords will take you to a cairn
commemorating the 1949 event...but...There was a reason why there
was a race circuit suitable to run a Grand Prix race on in the
middle of nowhere. Leyburn had been the site of one of a series of
airfields hastily built when the fear of Japanese invasion was at
its height in 1942, once that fear had subsided it became the home
of various USAAF and RAAF heavy bomber units and eventually home to
one of Australia's most closely guarded secrets of World War 2.
Here in the middle of the Southern Darling Downs scrub was the
Z-Special Force secret training camp where many operations simular
to those run by the Special Operations Executive (SOE)in Europe
during WW2 were organised and launched from. A completely new unit,
200 Flight RAAF was formed and equipped with B24 Liberator bombers
to support the Z-Special Force missions into the South Pacific from
this site.
The Z-Special Force airfield Leyburn circa
1945
There
are a few roads into this site (I have been "confused" on most of
them), if you are not keen on extended driving on dusty roads, use
the township of Leyburn as a way point or follow the tourist
information signs to do less than 500m on unsealed roads. Depending
on which route you arrive by you will pass Wirraway Avenue and may
pass Liberator Place, a hint of what the past use of the area
was.
You are looking for a naturally
camouflaged micro cache.
Please bring your own
pen.