Peter Ovens here from the Sporting Motorcycle Club. As a lifetime member of Sporting MCC, Barrabool, and a passionate supporter of motorcycling, on behalf of the club I am calling to arms all and sundry who may be able to help us in our plight to save our beloved McAdam Park, Barrabool. In short, we need your help!

SMCC members would be most appreciative it if you could read out this letter at your meeting, and possibly post it in your newsletter and websites. We are appealing to all fans, as individuals, to please help us save our beloved track at McAdam Park, which in the last 44 years has hosted many of the countries top Motocross events, and benefited so many riders, fans and the sport generally. We do not believe our fellow motorcyclists can stand by and watch this iconic track, rich in history, just fade away.

To this end, we are promoting our “Big Picture” Wall fundraiser project, which we have recently revamped with whole bunch of new features and information. The “Wall” is a web based image on our website ( www.smcc.com.au ). We will build this Wall at the track, as a monument to all who helped save our McAdam Park circuit. The image on the Wall is our club logo, a picture of 10,000 ceramic tiles which people can sponsor via the web, or through the mail.
Once all tiles are sold we will actually build the Wall which is 17 metres long by 3 metres high, to stand as a monument to all our “Friends of Barrabool” who helped save McAdam Park.
Each tile on the wall will have the tile owners details etched onto it.

Some clubs would have received a similar email request from us last year, but this is our first mailout to all Australian clubs. Thank you to all clubs who responded last time by sponsoring tiles and getting your name up on the “Big Picture” Wall.
I can not stress how important it is for us to get ‘names on the Wall’. The Wall is like a petition, which gives us lobbying power, not to mention the buying power!

The Sporting Motorcycle Club is one of the oldest motorcycle clubs in Australia, we were founded in 1932. Through the generousity of Clive McAdam, our home has been McAdam Park at Barrabool, since 1964. Clive’s wishes were to have the club carry on after his death, and the family are doing what they can to pave the way for this to happen.

Unfortunately, the land we’ve been lucky enough to use for so long is now for sale, and we’re trying to raise the money to purchase it to safeguard the future of McAdam Park for the coming generations. The SMCC “BIG PICTURE” Wall is an easy way for motorcycle fans to help, and in doing so not only get their name on the Wall forever, but get access to benefits like cheaper membership ($100 off), or a Gold Medallion Lifetime Pass to Barrabool events.

The “BIG PICTURE” Wall

We are in desperate need of all supporters of motorcycling to sponsor tiles on the wall to raise the money needed to purchase the land! As a cheaper alternative to sponsoring a tile there is also a donation button on the website. Also a new feature just added is the “pledge to tiles” option which means people can get tiles now, but pay later when we actually buy the land.
If you’re not too computer literate, you can get a mate to print off a manual “Tile Purchase form” from the website and snail mail it and the money back to us!

Tiles can be bought as either “individual” or “business”. Tile prices start at $100, and go up to $300 (for a premium business tile), plus GST.
Each tile owner is able to put their name and a wellwish message on their tile. We also offer businesses the facility to write a piece about their business and also have an image and link to their website on their tile as well. Your business logo goes on the main page of the website. All this information is visible to site visitors as they move their pointer over the wall image on the “BIG PICTURE” Wall website. Another new feature of the website is the full lists of all sponsors, so now it is easy to see who has sponsored, or if you like, who hasn’t!

In short, all monies are kept in trust in the Saving Barrabool Fund until needed for land purchase. If we fail in our attempts to save McAdam Park Barrabool, all monies will be eligible for refund, less 10% admin costs. After refunds, all leftover monies will be kept for future alternative land purchase.

Please refer to the website for all your questions you may have. There you will find comprehensive explanations of the different aspects of the land sale etc.

A brief statement on history of events:
You may remember late last year we feared the worst as the first lot of McAdam Park came up for sale. Fortunately for us, there were no bids for the land! We were extremely lucky, more-so now the owners, the McAdams, have given us 2007 as extended time to raise the funds. We have been notified that there will be no lease next year unless we raise the funds to buy. This extra time is what we needed to advance our fundraising efforts further to a race winning position. Of course we are also vigorously lobbying shire, government and industry, and making very good progress as they can see we are a facility worth saving, though they all say that we have to be seen to be making an effort ourselves, hence the Big Picture Wall being so vital to us!

Our business plan is to now secure all 3 blocks of the original 300 acre McAdam Park and make it into a one stop ride park for all off road riders! For this to happen we need $2 to $3 million dollars. We know this may sound unrealistic, but with the progress we are making, it now looks a reality! There is a “Future Vision” section on the website where you can see how much better McAdam Park could be if we save it!

Our local shire can see the importance of this and are fully behind us. We have no opposition whatsoever, which makes us extremely confident we will secure McAdam Park! A key factor to getting sizeable government assistance though, is showing we can raise cash ourselves.

The more we raise the more chance we have of getting the grants we need. It won’t come to us handed on a platter. Those of you with experience in such matters, will know it is extremely difficult to get funding to purchase land, but once we gain title to the land, that’s when government support is much more likely to come.

The 5 shires in our region have an alliance, called G21. It is G21 policy to accommodate the more “minority sports” into regional facilities, with all resources and support going into the one “super facility”. This is what our shires are looking at for us here at Barrabool.

In closing, we say thank you to the clubs who have been sponsoring the Wall to date, we greatly appreciate your contributions, though we would like you to stress to your members the importance of also sponsoring as individuals. We fear people may feel if their club has given, then they as individuals might elect not to. Unfortunately that may have the negative affect of cancelling out many thousands of extra donations for us!
There are 10,000 tiles on the Wall, but so far the average is 2.5 tiles per sponsor, so we only need around 4000 people to help and we have enough to Save Barrabool!

So please all fellow motorcycle fans, don’t hold back in helping save one of Australia’s great tracks from extinction! Get your name on the “BIG PICTURE” Wall for all to see, forever!
By doing this you would be helping immensely, and doing your bit to help save a chunk of Australian MX history for future generations to enjoy!
As a bonus to all individual “Friends of Barrabool”, we are always keen to help you out whichever way we can. For example, an interstate rider passing through may be looking for a track to have a ride. We may be able to help you out. There are many other bonuses too, like cheaper memberships, free memberships, life time memberships and lifetime Gold Medallion passes to all McAdam Park events.

Don’t forget we are hosting the International Oceania Motocross Championships on October 27 / 28. You can even get free tickets to the race by sponsoring tiles on the Wall!

We are also looking for volunteers to help at the race, details will be on our website soon.
See the race website on www.oceaniamx.com.au

For more information I am happy to take your call.

This is our one and only chance to change the course of history, and Save Barrabool, forever!

Please support us.

Peter Ovens
SMCC
Operations Manager
Ph 0418332769

sporting@smcc.com.au
www.smcc.com.au