The Early Days

 During the early years of the 1950’s Stan Mudford and Ray Dowling were going up to Echuca to race with the local speed boat club members which consisted of mainly of inboard owners. They next turned their attention to something closer to home and through word of mouth they were able to find more people in the Preston Northcote area who had boats and very old outboard motors who had similar desires as themselves. While these guys were racing in the Northern suburbs, another group down the bay were using the flood prone water seepage ponds at the sandpits in Armstrong Rd. Seaford, among these were Kelvin Hosking, Earl Krieger and a young eighteen year old Joe Cameron. All keen to race their small boats around, but looking for more people with similar interests.

I believe the racing on Edwards Park Lake started in 1955, but it could have been earlier. George Hanson is believed to be responsible for the approval to use the lake. Sometime mid 1960’s we were banned because of megaphone noise from the little Anzani’s and Konig’s. Stock motors were ok. But we were forced off the lake by local residents complaining of the noise on the Sunday race days.
Limitations on how often the Club could use Edwards Park lake was also a factor.
This meant that the Club was forced to continually seek out other venues:- they were many and varied up and across the State of Victoria, names like Waranga Basin or Reservoir, at Rushworth, via Murchison East. Lake Modewarre out from Geelong and Lake Bolac down in the Western district.
Then there was the Hume Weir at Albury, Lake Eildon Pondage below the Weir wall near the Eildon Township.
Also we used several privately owned lakes, places such as Twin Lakes up near Ballarat.
The Mercury models, seemed to be able to dominate the racing aspect of out-boarding, this was because of their ‘H’ models. The H for ‘Hydro-Short’ designation were outboard motors that were specially built for racing, namely the 20H, 30H, 40H, 55H and the classic Mk75H which was a 6 cylinder 60 hp motor with a racing leg and gear box. Only one of these motors was known to have found its way into Australia.
We first saw this motor at Wagga Wagga, NSW in the 1960 Australian championships. It was owned by Ronald Boggs, the Commodore of the Sydney based Australian Outboard Club and it dominated the ‘Unlimited Class Racing’.
It was not until about 1960 when Australian companies were able to gain import licences and agencies for the OMC brands, Johnson / Evinrude and the Mercury range of ‘Jewelled Power’  were becoming freely available.


These brands were now being followed by Scott Atwater later as Mc.Culloch, Gale, West Bend, and some of the lesser known European and British brands, Archimedes, Penta and the small powered British Sea Gull,
Then we saw the arrival of the German built ‘Konig’ racing engines , also the small powered British ‘Anzani’ racing engines. These engines were keenly sort after by the more dedicated racers because they had extremely high engine RPM and were capable of high speeds on the lighter built ‘B’ and ‘C’ class boats.
However most of the racing members with the desire for speed opted for the Mercury Mk 20H a twin cylinder powered 20 cubic inch motor with the short ‘H’ leg and the slim line ‘Quicksilver gear box with the 1:1 gear ratio that increased the propeller speed up to that of the engines RPM.
Whilst others looked to the Mercury, four cylinder 40 cubic inch Mk 55H with the short ‘H’ leg and the slim line ‘Quicksilver gear box with the 1:1 gear ratio.