Greg Growden: My favourite gravestone (2024)

Australia reveres its best sporting figures so you imagine the athletes who supposedly engross the nation will be marked in death by some pretty garish, wildly extravagant gravesites.

Instead, the resting place of Australia's most admired athletic figures are generally low-key. Many of their gravesites are in poor condition, nondescript, lacking imagination, often difficult to find. Some are in desperate need of repair. Understatement is the general trend, indicating that a nation that loves to latch onto those who achieve sporting excellence is as quick to forget. Australia is clearly more into sporting statues, as shown by how the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Sydney Cricket Ground are surrounded by bronzed life-like figures of those who used to dance at either arena.

There are still a few sporting graves that dazzle, as flamboyant as the people they celebrate. Walter Lindrum's grave in Melbourne is a classic, its centrepiece a billiard table with three balls and a cue at the ready for a little cannon magic from the long-time world master of the game.

My favourite gravestone is of someone who was also adored by thousands but, unlike Lindrum, is now long forgotten. It is a reminder that apart from the pursuit of leather in either the form of a cricket ball or football, Australia has also had a long, unabashed passion for the pursuit of outright speed. It also emphasises the darker side of this obsession. Sport can kill.

At South Head Cemetery at Vaucluse in Sydney rest some of Australia's mightiest figures, including print moguls such as the Packer and Fairfax families; the country's first Prime Minister and one-time first-class cricket umpire, Sir Edmund Barton; and the admired New South Wales Governor Sir Roden Cutler, World War II hero and committed rugby union supporter.

Names to lure.

Instead you are drawn towards a striking monument that appears to be a bit comic book, somewhat art deco, with a touch of what would some years later be known as pop art.

It's a helmeted man happily driving his own gravestone.

Reginald Gordon (Phil) Garlick is forever at the wheel.

In the 1920s, Phil Garlick was one of Australia's best known and admired racing drivers. Newspapers described him as "the idol of speedway crowds" because he was so fearless, so eager to see how fast he could go in his new automobile contraption.

In his supercharged emerald green Alvis, with the words "Lucky Devil" imprinted on the radiator and, to prove he wasn't superstitious, the number 13 on its tail, Garlick drew capacity audiences, especially at the new Maroubra Speedway.

Aptly, from his grave, Garlick is peering down the coastline directly towards that venue where he was king, but which also took his life. He is also looking at another nearby cemetery, which contains countless other tragic sporting figures. A few kilometres away is Waverley Cemetery, where the grave of Dr Claude Tozer, who on the verge of Test cricket selection was shot dead by a deranged patient, is surrounded by those of notable jockeys killed at various racetracks -- including James Flanagan who was trampled to death, aged 14, when seven Caulfield Cup horses crashed in 1898. Nearby is Arthur Cavill's final resting place after he froze to death during a swim in the United States, and his legendary brother Charles, who drowned during a marathon swim in San Francisco.

In the same daredevil fashion as the Cavills took to the water, Garlick treated the speedway. Here he could show off his outlandish streak.

A debonair figure, with a striking moustache, Garlick, away from his speed machine, was a composed character. Hailing from near Bathurst, he was a devoted husband to Nellie, and a respected businessman. He had some say in the game, as he was the managing director of Automobiles Limited, a firm that handled numerous fancy, fast cars, including the Bayliss Thomas and Lancia.

He was not renowned as a risk taker, until he put himself behind the wheel of a car. Then he transformed himself into a thrill-seeker.

Maroubra Speedway was his domain. Officially known as the Olympia Motor Speedway, its construction in the early 1920s on sand hills near Maroubra Beach tantalised the Sydney public, attracting an attendance of 67,000 spectators for its opening. The only attendance in Australia larger that year was at the Melbourne Cup.

You can easily comprehend why the crowds came. This was a wild track, a one-mile concrete bowl that had one large bend and two smaller ones, with the banking in some parts at a precarious 37 degrees. The crowd could either watch from the middle, where they would mingle near a large totalisator board offering the latest odds for the cars whizzing past, or they could sit on the upper edges of the track, their legs dangling over the edge, as the souped-up automobiles went within a few feet of their own feet. Also, the nearby sand hills gave vantage points to those short of dough who couldn't find the admission price. And if you couldn't get there, Sydney radio station 2BL covered the events live.

There also was the ghoulish factor, as it wasn't long before this track boasted victims. Maroubra soon became known as "The Death Trap" and "The Killer Track".

A few days after the opening, Leo Salmon and his mechanic, Albert Vaughan, were killed in practice when they sped up the northern bank and hurtled over the edge. This was followed by Syd Dutton, driving a Zenith motorcycle, crashing into the safety fence when a tyre blew out. He died shortly after.

That did not deter other drivers and riders, including Norman 'Wizard' Smith who wanted to break the 24-hour record. While nearby residents complained all night about the incessant noise from the track, Smith kept going around and around and around in his Chrysler, covering 1468 miles to break the record with more than an hour to spare -- even though he had to regularly stop to change tyres because of the rough concrete surface.

But the real Maroubra star was Garlick, who two years after becoming the proud owner of a "supercharged racing machine" was being described as "Australia's premier speed driver".

He won every class of race at the track plus an abundance of major trophies, including the Paramount Cup and the Skyrocket Cup. In June 1926, he achieved the fastest time at the track, with the Lucky Devil hitting 98 mph.

Garlick believed he could hit the century mark, and that pursuit kept sucking in the crowds -- including more than 15,000 who headed to the track on a balmy summer evening in January 1927.

One of the main events was a handicap event for cars whose speed exceeded 80 mph. Garlick was as usual on scratch, giving his opponents Hope Bartlett one second and Peter White three seconds. Entering the fifth and final lap, Bartlett was leading and Garlick, having passed White, was drawing level when manoeuvring his car up the steep northern bank he suddenly skidded and flew off the track. He rocketed towards an electric light pole, and disappeared over the edge in a cloud of sand. It was virtually the same spot where Salmon and Vaughan had been killed.

"Garlick was frightfully injured. There was a large hole in his head, he was covered in blood, and his clothes were torn."

Nellie Garlick, who rarely attended the speedway, was at home in Rose Bay listening to the radio broadcast. The announcer calling the race described how Garlick had flown off the track; realising the driver's wife could be listening, he immediately cut off the broadcast. A distressed Nellie immediately contacted 2BL, with the station staff declining to provide any more details. Instead she had to wait for speedway officials that night to contact her to confirm her husband was dead.

The newspapers provided the gory details.

The Sydney Sun's speedway reporter went to town, explaining how: "To the horror of his onlookers, his car, in the fraction of a second, flicked over the edge of the track into the darkness beyond. It dropped 20 feet and turned somersault after somersault.

"On its way over the embankment, the car hit a telegraph pole supporting the lights on the track, and snapped it off like a carrot. The crowd was struck dumb with horror and dismay. There was hardly a murmur, though here and there could be heard the muffled scream of a woman.

"Garlick was frightfully injured. There was a large hole in his head, he was covered in blood, and his clothes were torn."

The Sunday Times reported: "The car turned three somersaults and came to earth, twenty yards from the track, with Garlick underneath. He was killed instantly, practically every bone of his body being broken."

Two days later, after thousands had attended his funeral service and a procession of cars two kilometres long had driven to the cemetery, Garlick was buried within 100 metres of both Salmon and Vaughan.

This coincided with a Sydney Morning Herald editorial, which argued that Garlick's death was proof the NSW Government should regulate the sport of speedway as it had become too dangerous.

"We are not in the least desirous of interfering with any sport simply because of a certain element of danger in it, for we believe with Adam Lindsay Gordon that every sport which is worthy of the attention of rational men must necessarily embody some chance of mishap," the Herald editorial said.

"But there is such a thing as allowing this element of danger to become too pronounced; allowing it, indeed, to become not so much a possibility as a probability. In this category, the 'sport' of motor racing must be included."

After a fund-raising race meeting at Maroubra, where luckily there was no repeat crashes, the stunning memorial was placed on Garlick's grave.

But crowds at Maroubra began to dwindle, and the speedway was doomed after Freddie Barlow catapulted out of the track on the same bend as Garlick and died from his injuries some days later. In 1928, it was closed and, even though occasionally used in the 1930s, then demolished after World War II to make way for Housing Commission units.

The speedway followers of that time found other pursuits, but the sport and Australia's pursuit of speed refused to die. Speedway is no longer a mainstream sport in Australia, but the old Parramatta Speedway has for decades under various names been a popular rev-head haunt - in particular for fans of sprint cars.

Other dirt-track venues are dotted around the country, while motorcycle speedway will return to Etihad Stadium in Melbourne for the final round of the World Speedway Grand Prix in October. The field is scheduled to include Australia's 2012 world champion speedway rider Chris Holder.

Australia's fascination with speed, ranging from Formula 1, V8 Supercars and Bathurst, hot rods, billy cart races to the pursuit of world speed records continues.

As a 60s child, one can never forget how British driver Donald Campbell's quest for the water and land world speed records in the Bluebird enraptured Australia, in particular during his successful pursuit of the land speed record on Lake Eyre in South Australia in 1964. Campbell's campaign was almost as big as The Beatles' visit to Adelaide the same year.

A Bluebird replica model car was pride of place in the bedrooms of so many Australian kids, and I never got over the fact that one of my cousins stole mine during a sleepover.

Campbell, like Garlick, was killed while pushing the boundaries; he died in 1967 on Coniston Water, Cumbria, England, when the Bluebird flipped and crashed at a speed of more than 300 mph. His body wasn't recovered for another 34 years.

Campbell's grave in Cumbria is impressive. But the best tribute to those prepared to risk all in their fixation to push the boundaries remains Garlick's. His monument is well worth a visit. A salute to speed.