50 years after a shotgun blast

By ERWIN CHLANDA

Peter Gunner stood in a paddock just south of town with a shotgun and fired it into the air.

Being in a public place, today this would unleash a lengthy judicial process and given that it was close to the airport, it would swiftly set in motion an airspace terrorism probe.

But that was the Queen’s Birthday weekend 50 years ago and the only thing the blast unleashed were the 56 competitors in the first Finke Desert Race.

It took Geoff Curtis nearly four hours, along the old Ghan railway line, to cover the 230 km to the small Aboriginal town on the banks of the oldest river in the world.

He won the “Out and Return,” now usually described as gruelling. I seem to recall Geoff the night before at Finke having a can of Coke, admiring his disciplined sportsman’s like conduct, until I discovered it was half rum.

Barry Taylor, who also competed in the first Finke, says Geoff was on a DT250 Yamaha two-stroke, “very modest horsepower,” which he rode to work in his day job with his dog sitting on the fuel tank, clinging on to a piece of carpet glued to it.

Barry came 9th, and rode in four Finkes, finishing three.

Now the event is known the world over.

It is the quintessential example of a town making its own fun, except on a massive scale.

Booked out this year again with 750 bike and 200 car entries, and expecting 15,000 spectators, more than half the town, the desert race's turnover is $2m and bringing $11m tourism dollars into the town, says Barry.

His Finke success was less on the dusty dirt track, flying over the whooppty doos, but as the Finke’s first secretary, during the transition from the Alice Springs Motorcycle Club to the Finke Desert Race Inc.

On the face of it his task was overwhelming.

The Old Ghan was still chuffing up the old narrow gauge line for a couple of years. The track runs trough a cattle station. Thousands of spectators are camped along the unfenced track. How to find a lost competitor? Booze consumption is legendary. Who would feed evening meals and breakfasts to the hundreds of competitors, crew and spectators at the tiny Finke township? How can they find out who’s missing at the end of the day? How could they evacuate them? Big questions!

There was one thing Barry and his organising team had on their side: It was the privilege early in the Finke era of locals still being able to do pretty well what they liked. They kept ahead of the approaching red tape tsunami and when it finally caught up, it was too late for the bureaucracy.

Barry says the event was initially seen as an adventure, an exciting social event, and he set about creating the paperwork and drawing up rules and objectives and registrations. But soon the competitive nature of the Finke took over, first for bikes only but later joined by four-wheelers: Which one is going to be faster, became the big question.

That is now decisively settled, says Barry: The massive trophy trucks with six or seven litre engines are way out front, reaching speeds up to 220 km/h on this bumpy bush track.

Territory CLP and Labor governments soon got behind the Finke: “They knew very well on which side their bread was buttered,” says Barry. “I got yesses wherever I went. Everyone was cheering me on.”

And so did companies and NGOs. Did the National Railways still need that service road along the old track? Nah, not really.

Bill and Jan Hayes from Deep Well cattle station became Finke fans. We’ll feed the multitudes, said dozens of volunteers. We’ll staff the checkpoints at the former railway sidings – Deep Well, Rumbelara, Bundooma and Finke. St John came to the party. No-one is lost any more – each competitor now has a transponder, additionally measuring progress to the accuracy of split-seconds.

“I’ll do that” became an enthusiastic response, all from volunteers.

Barry says Motorcycling Australia, Motorsport Australia and insurances, which effectively decide who can organise a race, needed to be dealt with: Again, the relentless growth and popularity of the event encouraged the adaption of legalistic requirements to the Finke’s unusual character.

A coronial inquest into the death of a trackside photographer was a close shave.

Keeping outsiders at arm’s length from the Finke management has worked well for the event.

Cash, advice and technology are gratefully accepted but the decisions are made by the committee, headed up by Antony Yoffa for a quarter of a century and still going strong..

Over the decades it’s become a convention for spectators to return to “their” camping spots, same as the volunteers have settled into their jobs.

Will there be another 50 years of the Finke?

Barry is carefully optimistic. The cost of fuel is a worry. Trophy trucks burn more than 300 litres of expensive Elf turbo engine gas for just one way to Finke. And it’s a long road trip for interstate competitors, crews and spectators.

Says Barry: “Everybody is rooting for the Finke. I reckon unless there is a catastrophic event, a car ploughing into spectators, something like this, I think we’ll have the Finke for quite a few more years.”

IMAGE: 2025 Kings of the Desert – Corey Hammond (bikes); Travis Robinson & Paul Currie (cars). From the 2026 Finke program.

[ED – I covered every Finke and produced many TV news, current affairs and documentary reports for all Australian and many overseas networks. Erwin Chlanda.]