From small beginnings seventy years ago, the Eastern Southland Car Club has much to celebrate as it marks its 70th anniversary with a function at the Croydon Lodge in Gore on Saturday 10 October.
The night will bring together some of the club’s early members alongside many from the current generation.
Club President Nigel King says, “The evening will feature a dinner, the club’s 2025/2026 prizegiving and a rally panel segment including Hayden Paddon, Emma Gilmour, Jeff Judd, Derek Ayson, Andrew Graves and others.”
King says, “Things are really good within the club as they look towards the celebrations. The rally panel will bring so many good stories from New Zealand and around the world, and it will be good to have many former Presidents, Executive Members, and members present.
They’ve done the hard yards before us. The club is so inclusive, and who would have thought that, as we celebrate 70 years, we would be approached to run a National Championship rally.
The club started life as an Eastern Southland branch of the Southland Sports Car Club in August 1954, with some keen locals travelling to Invercargill for events. The first meeting of the Eastern Southland Car Club took place in the Charlton Hall on 11 June 1956.
The first President was Gordon Gregory, and the club was initially very active with events such as grass track racing, standing quarters, standing miles, etc., most of those events on seal. Life member Stewart Quertier remembers those early days well.
“The club used to approach farmers to get grass tracks. As a teen I thought it was marvellous. That was the only revenue the club made; we would take a bucket collection. Chittocks Hill was our only gravel event in those days; it reached Gold Star status. Chittocks Hill was also used as part of the club’s 50th celebrations.”
Quertier recalls the club’s first foray into rallies. “Graham Grieve was a chap who was a trials expert. He timed crews in those events, and if you had Graham, you knew you would win. He was keen to run a rally so the club paid for him to go over the West Coast to look at one.” Stewart laughs as he recalls.
“We thought it would cure him, but instead he came back and said we have to run one! We were running one event per month at that stage, and a rally was like running four or five speed events on one day.”
Quertier remembers how the club initially used kitchen clocks for rally timing.
“They were all laid out on the clubrooms floor and left overnight. We got twelve people and they all put the battery in their clocks at the same time with the clocks set to the same time. We had to keep them lying flat so the second hand didn’t stick.”
“We also used hand-wound phones. We had one at each finish and one back in timing and the call would come through to timing with a call of “car coming now” and the time would be written down.”
Even in those days the club’s events attracted drivers from all over New Zealand, including top drivers such as Mike Marshall and Paul Adams.
Stewart, himself a South Island Grass Track Champion, credits Roger Laird and some of the people around him with keeping the club going in more recent times – “he kept the club going, he lived for the club.”
Another Life Member of the club, Wade Paterson, also remembers that the club was initially about grass track racing, hillclimbs, plus standing & flying ¼ miles.
“Today the club has swung towards rallying and gravel events. It is hard to get a road for a decent tarmac hillclimb,” he says.
“The club held the first rally south of Christchurch in 1975 and has also run rallies in the Catlins, Wyndham and Rankleburn. They ran Rankleburn for a number of years. It had a central Service Park, and there was no touring. The club recently ran the Barry Robinson Memorial Rally Southland, a round of the NZ Rally Championship, their second ever national rally.”
“It has always been known as a friendly club with great camaraderie and good people,” says Paterson.
“They focus on young drivers with motorkhana’s and autocross. I sold the club my late wife Heather’s Starlet, and it was thrashed and bashed by plenty of young drivers.”
“It was also probably one of the first, if not the first club, to run an all-ladies event.”
Paterson recalls that in his early years at the club, they met in the Gore High School building.
“That was until we bought our own premises, an old Nissen Army Hut that regularly flooded. We then went to the East Gore Hall, and nowadays the club meets at the Croydon Lodge.”
“It is a unique club that bats well above its weight, and it has produced names such as Inky Tulloch, Graham Crawford – who won a Group 1 rally title at the 1980 Motogard Rally in a bog standard Mazda RX3, Barry Robinson and more recently Derek Ayson, Andrew Graves, Caleb MacDonald and Ari Pettigrew, who we claim, to name a few.”
Wade well remembers a Flying ¼ Mile event at Wendonside, right by his home.
“Inky Tulloch in his OSCA Capri recorded a speed of 183mph. The road would have been close to the minimum width, if not under it. I remember a few years later as an Area Steward turning down a permit from another car club for that very reason – their road was not wide enough.”
“The club has got a good feel about it. Heather and I spent a lot of time there, and there were Christmas parties and Santa for the kids – it had a family feel. I think that has a lot to do with the Southland and Otago rural communities. They are a bit more inclusive.”
Header Image: Graeme Fraser
