PETROL heads not put off by flies and red dust should circle September, 2022, on their calendars.
That is the likely month - actual day dates have not yet been set - of the next Red Dust Revival event for pre-1940 cars and motorbikes on Lake Perkolilli, a remote claypan 37 kilometres north east of Kalgoorlie which from 1914 until 1939 hosted an annual motor race meeting that became legendary.
If you love the smell of Castrol R in the morning - for the uninitiated, Castrol R was a distinctly aromatic castor oil-based engine oil used in racing and aircraft engines from 1909 until the early 1950s - then Red Dust Revival 2022 is for you.
As with the inaugural Red Dust Revival 2019, a range of time trial and speed events are being planned to allow drivers to go as fast - or as slow - as they feel comfortable with in cars or on motorbikes either built before 1940 or cobbled together from a collection of old parts in the spirit of the racing "specials" that dominated all levels of Australian motor sport from the beginning.
The organisers are five old car and motorbike enthusiasts who have held five events at Lake Perkolilli since 1997 - only the rain washed-out 2014 Centenary of Speed commemorative event and hugely successful Red Dust Revival 2019 were open to public spectators.
This time they are teaming up with the Goldfields Variety Club of Kalgoorlie.
Kalgoorlie Mayor John Bowler who flagged away the first cars at Red Dust Revival 2019 and the Goldfields Variety Club - WA's most successful charitable fund-raiser for children, whose members ran a bar and pizza stand in the evenings at the 2019 revival - are enthusiastically behind running another event in 2022, according to one of the organisers, motoring historian, inveterate tinkerer and replica builder Graeme Cocks.
So too are a legion of enthusiastic veteran, vintage and classic car and motorbike owners across Australia, with members of the Lake Perkolilli Motor Sport Club of which Mr Cocks is president, fielding a steady stream of enquiry: "When's the next one?"
Mr Cocks is aware of collectors and restorers around Australia who are building up 1920s and 30s period racers especially to bring to Red Dust Revival 2022.
"It's not so much about the speed and who wins, it's just about having fun and being part of it," Mr Cocks pointed out.
"But the golden rule of Perkolilli is don't hold 'em every year, because it takes about two years to get the dust out of your car."
He and Goldfields Variety Club member and former president Paul Burgess had lunch together before Christmas at Mr Cocks' local pub and settled on September 2022, probably during the school holidays, as the date for the next Red Dust Revival.
While setting the date was laid back, the actual planning is exhaustive and exhausting, but it has to be meticulous.
Red Dust Revival 2019 attracted about 30 motorbikes and 60 cars - the oldest a 1913 model and the furthest travelled a 1936 Lagonda shipped out especially from the United Kingdom by Stephen 'Waldo' Alexander who failed to complete his first lap of the 3.2 kilometre smooth but dusty oval track before the engine crankshaft broke.
The nearest petrol bowser and mechanical workshop is almost 40 kilometres away.
Somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 people - spectator entry was free so numbers are an estimate - visited Lake Perkolilli over the four days and despite there being only rudimentary facilities available, many camped around the lake for the duration.
"Putting on an event like this (involving potentially relatively high speeds in ancient vehicles on a dirt circuit at a remote location where anything more serious than gravel rash may require a helicopter medivac) is an enormous logistical exercise and the paperwork is truly horrendous, so we've enlisted the Variety Club to help," Mr Cocks said.
"They (Variety Club) will do the logistical stuff and we (Lake Perkolilli Motor Sport Club) will organise the competition side of it because we've got the experience at that."
His organiser compatriots are wife Cathy, financial analyst Greg Eastwood and Confederation of Australian Motor Sport - now MotorsportAustralia - husband and wife officials Ross and Lynn Oxwell.
Mr Eastwood is the MotorcyclingWA connection.
He rides an AJS - a famous British sport brand which had multiple wins at the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy race.
According to Mr Eastwood his is either a 1926 or a 1928 model, "depending on which bit you are looking at".
The Oxwells have a beautiful Riley 9 racing special - a very successful sports model produced from 1926 to 1938.
A journalist turned author - Mr Cocks has researched and written more than 12 maritime and motoring history books and his books have been short listed in the motoring section of the UK Book of the Year awards. He was involved with the Duyfken replica of the Dutch sailing ship credited with the first European discovery of Australia in 1606, the former Fremantle motor museum and the York Motor Museum.
His first car was a 1960 Morris Minor, which he still has.
But his garage now also includes a restored 1913 T Model Ford roadster which wife Cathy pushed up to a heady 90 kilometres per hour around Lake Perkolilli in 2019 - not bad for a 106-year-old car with a 20hp 2.9 litre motor, a three-speed planetary gearbox with one of those speeds being reverse and only a transmission brake that worked on the rear wheels, to stop it.
Under dust covers there is also a fully restored 2015 T Model 'Tin Lizzie' tourer that is yet to see any Perkolilli dust - 15 million T Model Fords were built between 1908 and 1927 and up to 85 per cent of cars sold in WA in the early days of motoring were Model Ts, so they and their British equivalent of low-cost basic transport, the Austin 7, were the two best represented marques at Red Dust Revival 2019.
Then there is a 1926 T Model Ford single-seater streamliner with rare Rajo overhead-valve conversion on the motor - reminiscent of many of WA's early racing cars which started out as mundane road cars but were stripped of extraneous parts such as mudguards, doors, back seats and luggage trunks to remove weight and engines modified to make them go faster.
"Unfortunately, not many of WA's racing cars from the period of 1914 to 1939 when Lake Perkolilli was operating, survived and still exist," Mr Cocks said.
Pride of place in his garage goes to a replica of Chrysler 'Silver Wings', one of the most successful cars to race at Lake Perkolilli during the 1920s, including setting a national 24-hour speed record there in 1927.
His car was built using the chassis and running gear from a Chrysler sports roadster, the most powerful car the company made in 1928 and relatively rare, with only about 3000 built.
But by the time Mr Cocks got hold of it, the original body had long been removed and it had been used as a fruit pickers' utility in an orchard.
His Silver Wings replica, completed in 1997, is probably the reason the Centenary of Speed event and Red Dust Revival 2019 came about in the first place, which in turn, with interest from the Kalgoorlie community coupled with veteran, vintage and classic car and motorbike owners clamouring for more, led to the 2022 event being planned.
"I became interested in historic motor racing as a fun thing to do back in about the 1980s and the most famous car was this Chrysler Silver Wings and I wanted to recreate it," Mr Cocks said.
"It was while I was researching the car, that the history of the track came out," he explained.
His research resulted not only in his Silver Wings replica, but a magnificent 484-page self-published coffee-table book titled Red Dust Racers, a history of the cars and drivers competing over the years and of the Lake Perkolilli track.
In conjunction with freelance photographer Sharon Smith and others, Mr Cocks, who trades as Motoring Past books and publishing, also produced another glossy picture book appropriately titled Red Dust Revival following Red Dust Revival 2019.
But not satisfied with his current car collection, Mr Cox and his son Daniel are building up another Chrysler special to race at Red Dust Revival 2022 - Chrysler's big flat-head six motor responds well to an extra carburettor on a homemade manifold and a free-flow exhaust and Chryslers had four-wheel hydraulic brakes from 1924, an important consideration when building up an historic race car.
He hopes that some people reading about Lake Perkolilli and the Red Dust Revival events in this RIPE might be spurred into action to build their own cars for the next one.
"While a lot of the old cars are gone from farm sheds now, a lot of farmers still have bits and pieces lying around and I'd love to see them use those bits and pieces to build a car for Perkolilli - it doesn't have to be an exact replica or a correct-in-every detail restoration, it only has to comply with the spirit of 1920s and 30s motor racing, that is, no modern bits," Mr Cocks said.
While some owners of fully-restored veteran and vintage vehicles did risk paintwork and mechanical damage trying them out at Red Dust Revival 2019, most cars entered were specials built up from bits or old cars and motorbikes and were in "pre-restoration" condition, he said.
"Those backyard-built specials have a unique place in motor racing in Australia," Mr Cocks said.
"Because we - and WA in particular - were so far away from anywhere else, race drivers here didn't have access to the latest high-performance equipment, they had to make do with what they could get their hands on.
"That meant finding a powerful engine - usually a big American engine - and starting from there, using their ingenuity, to build a race car."
Mr Cocks would also like to hear from people who have old photographs or other memorabilia from the hay day of racing at Lake Perkolilli - one year race organisers had a timber grandstand hauled out from Kalgoorlie, inserted a couple of chicanes in the then circular dirt track and called it a grand prix.
After Red Dust Revival 2019 some of the battered trophies handed out - and later taken back - to category winners were from when Lake Perkolilli was operating as a race track.
Anyone interested in Red Dust Revival 2022 should keep an eye on www.motoringpast.com.au for updates.
People contemplating picking through the junk pile behind their shed to see if there is anything they can salvage to build a Lake Perkolilli car, can also find tips and information on what is allowed, on the website.
