In 1972 Ian Bailey was a foundation member of Lower Mountains Off Road Club.
What started out to be a collection of trail bike riders who wanted to get away from their nagging parents for the weekend, quickly turned into a full blown race club. Trail bikes were abandoned for the new Japanese motocrossers.
Ian was very much at the fore front of open racing in those days and was a party to the emergence of the Japanese dominances of dirt racing. He purchased the first Honda Motocrosser, the Elsinore in 1972 . With that machine, he was the first club member to enter open competition in motocross, enduros and short circuits racing.
Soon others followed and the mould was set to abandon forever the original concept of a non competitive club. Not many people realised that the first club meeting was held in a garage out the back of a house in Mt Riverview in September 1972.
Over the past years LMMCC has held rounds of the NSW Senior Motocross titles at the Clarence track, Australian Thumpernats series at the Hartley grass track, also at the Hartley track in conjunction with St George MCC was the Des Club Teams and rounds of the High Country 4 way interclub series at the Clarence track.
The Clarence track is also available to other MX Clubs for day hire but other than official race meets the track is not available to the public.
The Clarence Track History
The Happy valley springs motocross track that is more commonly known as the Clarence complex is situated about 10 min drive along dirt road at the zigzag railways, following the green Newnes sign off the bells line of road at Clarence just outside of Lithgow.
The Lower Mountains Motorcycle Club (LMMCC) owns the complex. The complex was originally built in around 1973-74 by Joe Partridge and Victor Watkins and now contains a senior track and a newly built junior track as well as Enduro style bushland.
The Dukes family updated the original senior track in the late 80’s early 90’s. The modern senior track is 1600m long and is a mixture of clay and sand with emphasis on the sand. The track contains two tabletops, a step up and step down, numerous single jumps and bermed and off camber corners. It has a 30 gate concrete start and the finish is about a 7-8 m tabletop.
The junior track was built in 2002 it is also a mixture of sand and clay. The track is 800m in length and contains a 25 gate start, several large tabletops, a step up, single jumps and bermed and off camber corners. Classes ran on the junior track include: