This article has been compiled and written by Ian Irons, who over the years has been an anchor of the Club. He has been President, is still a current competitor and was a founding member of the club. Thanks go to Ian on behalf of all club members for this piece of genuine history.

The Sydney Off Road Racing Association started as a breakaway from the Sydney Off Road Buggy Association, which was originally Kurnell Dune Buggy Club in the late 60s.

S.O.R.R.A. began at Canley Vale in a private house after some of the members of S.O.R.B.A. placed an add in the Sydney papers to see if there would any interest in forming another club in Sydney a bit further west.

In 1978 Les Cowan became president of the newly formed club named Sydney Recreational Vehicle Association. His wife Rhonda, the first Secretary. The name came about because at the time we thought advertising the fact we were Off Road Racing would not help us with the green element that was around at the time. The name brought along to our first meeting a fellow in a 4WD who thought the club was for recreational vehicles, his name was Laurie Shaw who along with his wife Lorraine still became members of the fledgling club & helped to form its direction.

Laurie & Lorraine are life members of the club & you can still see them at events & still giving a hand when needed.

The club started with a group of members from the Sydney Off Road Buggy Assoc & some newer ones from outside the sport ,but willing to learn & have a go at off road racing. The Club members looked around for venues to race at. One of the first places the club raced at was behind the X roads hotel just outside of Liverpool. The club raced here on about 40 acres (16 hectares approx) for about 2 years & in the beginning if everybody didn’t turn up you wouldn’t have enough people or cars to have a race meeting.

The club moved meeting places from the Cowans house at Canley Vale to a church at Fairfield & found a place out at Cattai called Caddy Park, this became the home for Sydney Recreational Vehicle Assoc racing from about 1979.

Caddy Park was the original land grant for the Arndell family from the first fleet & was in the family since the landing of white man in Australia in 1770. The owners of the property (the Arndell’s) did us a deal, they would look after the track & maintain it for us in return for $2 per car, GOOD DEAL Eh!

But all good things can’t last forever & the government (Whitlam at the time) in their wisdom decided they would make a national park out of out race track, the Cattai National Park is what it is called now. They recreated what the Arndell already had done but employed park rangers to do it instead of the family.

At the same time as we were playing at Caddy Park, we still had racing between the 2 Sydney clubs in the Garland Valley about halfway between Singleton & Windsor & at another spot called Hampton. Over the years the club grew& we found another property up the Putty Rd (Singleton Rd) about 40km from Windsor, just north of the Colo Heights service station at a place known as Pierces Quarry. This track lasted about 2 years.

The club in about 1981, in league with Don Raper from Rankin Springs, Garry Connolly (probably better known these days as the event director of the Australian leg of the world Rally Championship in Perth) directed the event, Don organized properties & stuff & paperwork, and our club the manpower. It was the first big Off road event in N.S.W. It was called the Griffith 500.

1981 also saw the first newsletter produced by Mick Grunbaum & Joe Bawden it was believe it or not called SRVA news, the club had a membership of 55 at this time. President Jim Neil guided the Sydney club through this period, Rhonda Cowan was still secretary & we moved to property that we now race on at Colo Park. Our meetings moved from the church at Fairfield to a hall at the Parramatta Showground (now Parramatta Speedway, although the speedway track was already there).

The property we now race on was owned by the Datsun Drivers Club & our club worked with the caretaker/organizer George Sosimenko to help build some of the sheds & stuff you see around the southern end of the property, near the dirt circuit. Our next door neighbour, 5 km up the road, Peter Day loaned George his cement mixer & came down with it to work & help to lay the concrete. Peter & his other half Glenys are still great neighbours & still help our club in many ways.

SRVA grew to a very sizeable membership & helped some of our members from Singleton organize & set up a race at Milbrodale. Yep, it is still the same place. Ian Hedley, Jan Hedley (nee Louis) Doug Adams & others then started the Hunter Valley Off Road club. Mick Grunbaum took on the job of president & Joe Bawden the job of secretary. Joe in later years moved to Sanctuary Point and started the Shoalhaven off road club.

In 1983 Bob Mitchell took over the reins as president, during this time the job of secretary was done by Laurie Shaw, his wife Lorraine minutes secretary. During this time our club was looking at a track at Katoomba called Catalina. It was being used for rallycross, and also at a track down at Wandandian near Nowra. Both came to fruition. Vice Presidents in order during this time were Mick Grunbaum, Bill Croft & Dave Ellam.

In 1982 it was mentioned in the club magazine that racing at our new circuit, Colo Park (Datsun Drivers Club) would be the 3rd Sunday in the month beginning in February. The track was 13km long at this stage and after our first meeting quite a few new members joined. 16 in fact, one of those was Harold Gill who went on to take the number 1 plate in the Australian Off Road Championship.

Club membership grew to about 200 with the newsletter becoming a magazine. I won the job of editor but a lot of the work after I had written and collected articles, pictures and stuff put together and made to look good by Judy Sosimenko, who also organised the printing. The magazine ran up to 1988, after that Lance Proctor took over and produced a newsletter again.

Our club has always had a strong representation on the NSW Off road panel with Bob Stansfield at one stage being the chairman of the panel & President of our club. Bob was President of our club from 1988 taking over from Bob Mitchell. David Ford won the job of Secretary.

1988 saw the club combine the Motocross, Hill climb and Dirt circuit at Amaroo Park at Annangrove for another track to race on. To break even at these events we had to have at least 45 cars. We ran events there for about 2 years until the ARDC (The Australian Racing Drivers Club) decided to sell it to pay for the pits at Bathurst. SRVA’s round of the Tri Series was included in the race at Amaroo. The club was involved in the starts of the Wynns/Australian Safari at Bankstown, Eastern Creek & Amaroo.

Jeff Cripps took over the reins from Bob Stansfield to guide us through 91 to 95. The club Sydney Recreational Vehicle Assoc began moves to change its name, to Sydney Off Road Racing Assoc in 1989/90, finally coming about in 1992.

The Sydney Off Road Racing Assoc, the name the club still has today, was offered the opportunity to take up the lease on the property called Colo Park. The lease was taken up on the 1st of January 1994 after satisfying conditions set down by Crown lands dept, NSW dept of soil and Conservation, The Environmental Protection Authority, Hawksbury City Council, the Police & CAMS.

Once we took over the property we started at once to look around for a Backhoe/loader to help us maintain the place. We found the machine we have now, The Kramer/Allrad 516 backhoe/loader in Newcastle. We purchased it in 1996. The problem with having a backhoe is you discover you need a truck. A small tip truck was acquired and with it the 1946 Caterpillar grader with no hydraulics and a donkey engine to start the main engine.

The Caterpillar came with the property from the Datsun Drivers Club, we could now try & work out a plan to maintain the tracks.

Our new President Adam Barnacoat (95/96) and the members determined that we needed a shed to store machinery in. Werner Zettl supervised the collection of scrounged bits & pieces to build the shed. A working bee was organized along with 3 or 4 cement mixers & the slab was poured. The shed now houses the canteen in one corner & the machines in the rest.

A site shed was offered to the club & it is now the headquarters for our race meetings, on top of it Werner, Ross & helpers built the starting, timing & commentary tower. Of course the next thing you need is a loudspeaker system, so we found one of them.

Warren Irons took over as president 97/98, Tania Nikiforoff, Warren’s fiance took over the newsletter from Lance Proctor.

An event called the Nissan Trials came to us looking for a place to run. We accommodated them and they set to work to build obstacles & stuff for their events which would be semi permanent. Being a large event of some 80 competitors and 4000 spectators, they asked if we would be interested in catering for it. We said yes?

The Nissan Trials has been with us now for about 8 years & our club doing the catering has enabled us to pay for all our equipment.

In 1998 Ann-Maree Kilpinin became the clubs first female President & in this year our club bought a new grader (well new to us & certainly newer than 1946) an Avelling Barford Grader with hydraulics motor that ran on all cylinders & a 12 ft blade. To obtain the finance for this machine, the club, which by this time was a member of the Hawksbury Sports Council, asked the sports council to help us. They arranged an interest free loan for the balance owing.

The next project on the books was a demountable block with toilets & showers to make Colo Park more like home when you’re camping. A suitable building was acquired and moved to NO 1 Engineering’s premises where it sat whilst work on it was done. Again Werner (Extend Constructions) & Ross Barnes (Roztek) took the project under their wings.

Ian Irons(hey I think that’ s me) became president with Steve Maher continuing as Vice President 2000/2001, Anthony Lia took on the vice Presidents job for 2001 and 2002.

The demountable block was moved from NO1 Engineering to Colo Park by Buddy Crowe (AB Crowe heavy haulage) and plumbing connected by Steve Taylor, both of whom are fairly new members to the club.

Anthony Lia became President in 2002 with Glenn Spizzo the new vice President.

There is probably a lot more we could put in here but it is only a short history. If there is any glaring mistakes where my memory went fuzzy or something feel free to add your bit.

We are in the process of making up a list of office bearers over the years, we might need a hand. If you can remember people in office and the dates they occupied same let us know then we can check against our list. Ta!

Do you realize that this is our 25 anniversary!!!! Scary Huh!

Ian Irons.

The lease was owned by the Datsun Drivers Club, who converted the grazing lease to one for Motor Sport back in the Whitlam years, 1978. 

Sydney Off road racing started playing there in 1982, George Sosimenko was the man doing most of the stuff happening up there when we, Sydney Recreational Vehicle Association,( The original name for SORRA at that stage)came along . Tracks for the Off Road racing were put in by local logging contractors when they were working in the area. We would walk around marking trees with tape to show the machine operator where we wanted the track to be. Easy.  Couple of weeks and it was all done, then George would dress it up with the Grader.  Now, the Grader, that was owned by the Datsun Drivers Club, a unique piece of machinery, that it seemed only George could drive. It had its own tinny holder for the driver and a mind of its own!  It was a 1946 Caterpillar, no hydraulics, all mechanical with a 2 cylinder donkey engine that you would start up, get it up to speed then engage the main engine to start it turning over & then you engage the decompression plate and if you were lucky it would start. I have, on odd occasions spent half a day with George whilst he tried starting the Grader, & then changed to a different job for the day instead. 

Working Bees were interesting with the variety of work that was done. As the track was the Datsun drivers Club track, our Club did a deal with them to give us a cheaper hiring rate if we gave them hands to help. The property had 2 open sheds and 2 toilets & in return for our tracks, off road ones, being looked after, our members concreted the floors in the shed at Georges Camp, helped in the construction of just about everything on the property from that point on. 

Some of our working bees have been fairly memorable for what was achieved in terms of work done and things that happened. One that springs to mind was a huge effort to resurface large parts of the track. When the road was widened nearby, a large amount of material was stockpiled across the road from our track. One of the men in charge of the work said we could have some of the spoil, so we did. We hired a loader with operator, and got everyone we knew that had some kind of tipper, big and small, tractors, with buckets and or blades along with the grader. Apparently the RTA was impressed with the amount we moved or was that, not impressed?

Another one of the early working bees involved an Army truck with a huge winch on the front which we were removing small trees to make tracks. A small slip of the winch & the 2 fellows that were locating the wire rope on the tree protector (you do that when your pulling a tree out, apparently) had a problem getting their fingers out fast enough. Len Ramsey had the fingers on one hand crushed, but they came good. Laurie Shaw wasn’t so lucky, he is now short a couple of digits. Now that is all pretty serious stuff, but Laurie being Laurie was in a Torana being driven to the Hospital in Windsor by Bill Croft & on the way up out of Colo, to temper Bills enthusiastic driving, Laurie said to Bill that he had only lost some fingers & wasn’t interest in losing his life, so he could slow down a little (or words to that affect)

The property, COLO PARK, is 300 acres and in the early years, the Forestry department was responsible for the land surrounding it. At this time our track length had grown to 16 klms lap using some of the forestry trails. There was also a Dirt circuit at the top end known as George’s camp used for lap dashes & Autocross. Sometimes, we would run the long course on Saturday arvo & night and the run the Dirt circuit on the Sunday. One of the early Tri Series, might even have been the first one, ran to this format and at the end of the weekend the Presentation was held at Georges Camp with John Chapman, the Old Man Emu, arriving by helicopter to present the Trophies. What an entrance.

A rally Sprint track was also on the property and was integrated into the long course track. This part was lost when the National Parks took over responsibility from the Forestry, and we had to run solely on our own property. Shame about that, we had to come back to a 6.5 Klm track length. A great thing about Colo  they tell me, is that no matter where you race in Australia, there is a part of it at Colo, so if you can get through Colo ,you can do well anywhere. 

Which reminds me about a young fellow who came along to one of the meetings when the track was long? He drove around the whole track in his P76 , a little later one of his mates arrived in his falcon panel van, both had had a couple of glasses of something to warm them up. Steve talked his mate into following him around the track, Steve in the P76 & mate in Panel van. Off they disappear into the night, about three quarters of an hour later Steve arrives back, no mate. Waits for mate, nowhere to be seen. Steve’s off to the rescue, can’t understand how come he (mate) didn’t turn up. Now there is a lot of sand out there and when Steve found his friend he was bogged in the sand. Steve couldn’t go past him & when he tried to back up ,he had the same problem,( his car was also now rear wheel drive). Anyhow, the track being so long, he had no idea where he was, and having had some drinks to warm themselves up before, they were fairly vocal (loud) and yelled , and yelled for assistance. Back at the camp, just under the power lines where the pits are today, they could clearly hear them and decided to turn the light off & head to bed, ( We’ll get him in the morning was the unanimous decision). They Steve & his mate quietened down after a while and went to sleep where they were. In the morning, Laurie’s son ,Stephen walked down to the cars which ,as the crow flies wouldn’t have been 50 mtrs from camping area. If you have driven around Colo track you pass the spot where he was lost, the first jump from the start, in the trees. Funny he didn’t notice all the lights at the camp.

Sydney Off Road Racing Inc bought the lease for the property off the Datsun Drivers club, in 1992. With it came the Grader. It was decided a backhoe/ loader was also needed to help maintain and develop the property.  Then we needed a tip truck, you know how it goes. A canteen was built, then additions to put machines in. Then the block of toilets and showers etc., etc. Starting tower was one of the first things moved & refurbished into today’s 2 story building. The latest addition, Ross’s Barne, named after one of our Clubs great helpers, was completed just before Ross passed on, is a training room, medical room and the Stewards room.  

COLO PARK has been home to lots of different types of events. The Nissan Trials being run there for 10 consecutive years. This event was the biggest inter club 4WD event in the Southern Hemisphere with 110 to 120 contestants and 5 to 7 thousand spectators for the weekend. Nissan Club ran the trials ,our Club ran the canteen, lots of volunteers made money for both clubs. 

The NSW Rogaining Championships were held there, What, you don’t know what that is! I had no idea either, its Orienteering only done to a time limit. They put 4 punches hanging on trees way out in the bush , the winner covered 82 klms in about 20 hours with half an hours sleep. The time limit for finishers was 24 hours, lots made it to the last punch but not back to the base. Interesting to watch, I know the terrain and watching these people with little torches strapped to their heads & a compass in hand disappearing down the side of hills in the dark that I wouldn’t climb down in daylight was amazing. 

Dance parties were held there too. The first one happened when the National Parks kicked one party out of the National Park, telling them it wasn’t allowed & if they didn’t move they, the Parks, would bring in Bulldozers and crush their stuff. Then the Parks rang us & asked if they, the party could do it at COLO PARK. The Parks & wildlife then proceeded to tell us how good the party people were , no trouble, cleaned up after themselves, they just weren’t allowed to do it in the National Parks. Anyway our club let them in to party, never had a problem at any of their events, always cleaned up after themselves. The way they dressed the place for the parties was amazing, you couldn’t recognise it as being the same place.

The Cripps family have been part of our club for a long time now, but in the early days when Laurence  was 7 or 8 going on 25, his uncle, out from England, stayed at the Cripps ‘s home at Wilberforce. He saw his first creepy crawly, a spider. Then Jeff Cripps & uncle sat on front veranda having a few quiet beers, not noticing that visitor was being eaten by mosquitoes, big intro to our wildlife. But there is more, The Family arrives at COLO for the days racing and the Uncle is introduced to our resident Goannas.  Later the racing is moved to the dirt circuit and Laurence, tells uncle he has found a great spot to watch from. Away they go, great spot, raised up so you can get a great view of the entire track. That lasted about ten minutes. All of a sudden, there were two people jumping up & down, screaming, slapping themselves and stripping off their clothes. Those huge Bull ants don’t like Pommies and little boys standing on their mounds they make to live in. We asked Laurence to make a map showing all the ants nests on the property so others would not have the same problem. I am still waiting for him to finish the map, next time you see him would you remind him please?

Driver training, The police, Integral energy and juniors have all been taught there and now COLO PARK has Commercial entities using the property on a regular basis as well. Since Oran Park closed its doors bookings have climbed.  All this helps our Club contain our entry fees for Club racing to a minimum.

COLO PARK is what it is today because of our Volunteers. At race meetings all the Officials , the recovery people and the Canteen people make it all work. And when you stand still long enough, look around , its just stunning to think of all the hours that all our Volunteers have put in to make all the infrastructure that is in place there today and that it is still evolving. 

As many people would know, I had a remarkable wife for 58 years who I lost in August 2019. 

Here is part 1 of my story on how Judy and I started the Datsun Drivers Club and the early days. I want to tell this story so it’s documenting the endless work Judy did to get things up and running to a successful club in that period.

It all started in December 1970 and we bought a Datsun 1600, which had won its class in the Bathurst 1000. Let’s start a Datsun club we both said, and along with a close friend, the club was born. Judy became secretary and I was Vice President.

Word got around there was a new club in Western Sydney. CAMS put in conditions on affiliation in the first year which Judy worked hard and raising Andrew at this stage. 

After the first year, CAMS said yes to continue and by the mid 1970’s, club membership soared to over 800, rivalling clubs like North Shore Sporting Car Club and Hills District Car Club.

Judy was always doing things for members, even after Debbie and Matthew were born. One of the things she started to look for around 1976, at the request of members was the availablity of land to run club events.

Judy eventually found that land, 60km north west of Windsor along the Putty Road. In 1977, lease was made with Council and State Government and Colo Park was born.

Next part will be more around Colo and the fun and games Judy had to face to make it the facility it is today.