Charlie Monk – Speedway’s Enigma Machine Part Three– Australian Seasons

British fans probably had little understanding of the Australian scene in the mid sixties. Speedway was just part of a composite motor sport night involving both sidecars and midget cars and was little more than an extended second half with about half a dozen heats often featuring handicapped races. Australia’s geography meant that it was often uneconomic to travel to other tracks for a booking. Adelaide was 450 miles from Melbourne, 850 miles from Sydney, 1250 miles from Brisbane and a whopping 1675 miles from Perth. So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that riders usually rode at only one track or certainly stayed within their state. However Glasgow fans would have been appalled to know that their hero had actually a day time job back home.

Adelaide fans were no doubt excited about Monk returning home for their season in the winter of 1965, but unfortunately it really didn’t turn out the way they expected. His first night at Rowley Park was a success, winning four out of five races on borrowed bikes. However it was another four weeks before his own machinery, which was being brought out by Jimmy Gooch, arrived. In this period he rode a “bitsa”, largely made up from parts left by Geoff Mudge, with a corresponding lack of success. Things were expected to be better when he got his JAP back. Sadly they weren’t. Sometimes it went well and he went well. Other times it didn’t. It seemed he was experimenting with it ahead of the next British season. After a prolonged spell of problems, he lost his chance of the Australian title when his bike failed in the semifinal stage – and possibly that was his best chance of ever taking that title, as things never seemed to go his way “Down Under”

Australian Championships

He never won this title and seemed dogged by bad luck in these events. Things didn’t improve after 1966. His home track at Rowley Park staged both the South Australian and Australian championships the following year – and remarkably on successive weeks too! Gote Nordin, Eric Boocock and Ray Wilson were all based at Adelaide and were eligible to take part in both events. Monk was interviewed before the South Australian meeting and was unusually forthcoming stating “I’ve given up hope right now. My bike blew up and it’s got me beaten.” When it was suggested that his luck must change, he replied tersely “That deserted me eighteen months ago” and shrugged and walked away – the British Final episode being eighteen months previously. As it turned out, despite an engine failure in one of his three qualifying rides, he made the final of the South Australian event. He led the final but it was stopped after Nordin’s first bend fall. In the rerun he again led briefly but was passed by winner Jack Scott. The Australian Final was no better. His bike failed during his qualifying heat and he had to push home to ensure a place in the Repercharge heat where his bike slowed allowing Bryan Elliott to barge him off his line, leaving him to pull up and reflect on what might have been. Jack Scott took the title, ahead of Nordin and Ken McKinlay.

The next three Australian championships were staged in Sydney, never a happy hunting ground for Monk. He didn’t ride in the 1968 championship and the following year finished down the scorers list with seven points in a sixteen rider, twenty heat meeting, contested by riders of all nationalities and won by Jim Airey from Ken McKinlay. Although the 1970 format was restricted to twelve Australian riders, his six points left him well adrift of the top three of Jim Airey, John Boulger and Kevin Torpie.

Monk didn’t travel to Perth for the 1971 event but managed to secure the South Australian title at Rowley Park. With Britain in the grip of a seven week postal strike between late January and mid March, no details of this meeting seem to have made it to the Speedway Star and seem to have been lost to posterity – Monk’s bad luck holds good! He signed off his Australian title quest the following year scoring ten at Rowley Park but not really challenging the top trio of Jim Airey, Ole Olsen and John Boulger

Australia V British Lions Tests

This series was revived in the winter of 1967/68. At the time there was a feeling that South Australian riders tended to be overlooked by Australian selectors with Sydney and Brisbane based riders seeming to be automatic picks. Certainly Monk only appeared in the fifth, and deciding, test at Rowley Park when he topped the Aussie scorecharts with twelve as the Lions ran out fairly comfortable 62-46 winners. By the following year the test series had grown in stature and Monk was capped for all five tests – in Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and two in Sydney. The Aussies gained revenge taking the series 3-2 with Monk and Airey leading the charge. Monk scored 60 points with a further ten bonus points being most noteworthy for a rider who rarely scored any in Britain. His eighteen point maximum at Rowley Park was one of the few scored in the tests of the late sixties.

He returned in 1969 probably in need of recharging his batteries after an arduous British season. He got off to a bad start when making his debut at the huge Claremount Stadium in Perth. Shaken up after a first race fall he struggled to three points which can’t have impressed the locals, many of whom had barely heard of him. As it turned out the British tourists had a similarly traumatic time adapting to the 680 yard circuit and lost 61-47. He was certainly fired up for the second test back in Adelaide. Local reports tell of him charging under Ray Wilson and giving the Englishman “quite a few looks at the fence” before being passed on the last bend. A few races later he was excluded after colliding with Martin Ashby which saw both going into the fence and leaving Ashby with an ankle injury. His seven point score was mirrored in the next test at Sydney Royale as the tourists took a 2-1 lead in the series. He only managed two at Brisbane and was dropped for the final test – and other than appearances at Rowley Park in 1971 and 1972, scoring an impressive fourteen both times, that was the end of his international career.

Like a true enigma, he was impressive, indeed almost unbeatable, in tests on his home track in Adelaide but rarely showed any great form away from his stamping ground and possibly, like a prophet from Biblical times, he was “without honour in his own country”. He was, and still is, revered in Glasgow, appreciated in both Halifax and Adelaide but not overly considered in the outwith South Australia.