Abandoned racetracks: Port Wakefield

Port Wakefield is distant memory today. It’s so long since the last motor race was held there that many motorsport fans today probably have never even heard of it. Port Wakefield was a failure, operating only for eight years, and yet the South Australian circuit is highly significant in the history of motorsport in this country.

It was our first permanent, purpose-built road racing circuit. Yes, Mount Panorama came some 15 years before, but the Bathurst track used public roads – it was, and remains, a part-time circuit. Port Wakefield is the first of its type in Australia; the very first time that anyone set out to design and then build a track on a ‘greenfield’ parcel of land – not using public roads, like Mount Panorama (and indeed the ‘banned’ circuits in South Australia which Port Wakefield was effectively replacing), and not using disused airfields like Mount Druitt in the ‘50s, or even Mallala, the track which would later replace Port Wakefield.

Many factors were against this pioneering exercise, not the least of which was the remote and somewhat extreme location. While it was also frequently criticised for its short, flat layout, in lots of ways Port Wakefield was the prototype for the raft of new permanent tracks that would soon spring up around the country, starting with Calder a matter of months after Port Wakefield closed.