Geoff Smedley releases book: It’s a Smedley thing You wouldn’t understand

The final paragraph of his citation best sums up this remarkable man and what he achieved during his outstanding career in motorsport and prestige car restoration apart from his many other successful achievements.

It reads.  “Geoff Smedley is a man of immense knowledge and skills and is a mostly forgotten and unsung hero to younger Tasmanian motorsports followers”.

The unassuming 87-year-old has now written a book about his life with particular reference to his involvement in motorsport and covers the establishment of the National Automobile Museum of Tasmania and his time restoring prestige classic cars.

Titled ‘It’s a Smedley thing You wouldn’t understand’, referring to a t-shirt he saw and couldn’t resist buying, Smedley provides an insight into the early days when you had to invent and manufacture what you needed.

He wasn’t able to complete his apprenticeship as a shipwright due to the business closing down so Smedley was given the opportunity by his father to join the Bedford Precision Machine Tool company.

 He jumped at the chance to undertake a five-year apprenticeship in fitting and turning

This was to prove a pivotal experience and invaluable for his future endeavours in race car preparation and component design to the point where years later Smedley was in wide demand, not only in Australia but also overseas.

Between 1952 and 1960 Smedley raced various cars in Tasmania including the Kenley Vincent, which he designed and built, plus a Triumph TR2, MG TC Special and the Lemans Jaguar which he also designed and built.

In early 1960 Smedley was approached by successful race driver Austin ‘Aussie’ Miller, who had moved to Tasmania and was the proprietor of the Monaco Hotel, to engineer his 1959 2.2 litre Cooper Climax for an attempt on the Australian Land Speed record.

The record was 253 km/h set in the Chev Corvette-powered Tornado that had raced at Longford, and to better that speed the little Cooper was fitted with a similar engine.

This engine required major engineering for it to fit and also needed significant updating for many other components.

Bakers Beach was the chosen site on the North West coast and after a number of issues the intrepid Miller established an amazing two-way average of 265 km/h.

This record stood for four years until Donald Campbell broke it in the $3 million jet-powered Bluebird at the Lake Eyre salt pans.

Then came an offer from the late John Youl to relocate the Smedley family to the Symmons Plains property so he could work full time on the 2.2 litre Cooper Climax Youl had purchased.

This was a very successful partnership with Youl establishing himself as one of the best drivers in the country achieving excellent results against more powerful cars and name drivers with bigger budgets.

Unfortunately Youl suffered a huge accident at Sandown in Melbourne caused by another driver and the car was almost a write-off, but Youl survived after being thrown out of the car.

Youl’s father Boyce immediately purchased the latest model 2.5 litre pencil line Cooper Climax from Jack Brabham and the combination of Youl and Smedley continued to upstage the top Australian drivers with consistent top four results.

Space doesn’t allow for details but suffice to say visiting Formula One drivers with current model cars competing in the eight-round Tasman series found themselves under pressure they were not expecting.

To demonstrate his engineering skills Smedley designed and manufactured a twin plug head for the Climax engine that incorporated twin magnetos, as well as revising the suspension geometry to improve the car.

As a measure of Smedley’s meticulous preparation and presentation the late great Bruce McLaren in a magazine article said that the Youl car was the best prepared race car he had ever seen.

This from the man that established the famous McLaren GP team.

When Youl retired due to the need to run the Symmons Plains farm after his father’s death, Smedley accepted an offer to be chief race mechanic for the Brabham of Frank Matich which was part of the five-car Total race team based in Sydney.

It was a totally different environment to that which Smedley had previously enjoyed with Youl, and while Matich was wickedly fast he was also difficult get on with and very hard on machinery, a stark contrast to Youl who would have been very competitive on the world stage.

From there Smedley spent time in Singapore preparing race cars for wealthy businessman P.H.Wong with considerable success.

But then Smedley walked away from it all to fulfil a long time ambition to establish a motor museum in Launceston.

With the ongoing wonderful support of his wife Sylvia they set up the National Automobile Museum of Tasmania at the Waverley Woollen Mills site which also incorporated prestige car restoration.

When the mill closed the museum moved to its present location in Cimitiere Street and is soon to enter a new era when it moves to the Lindsay Street location opposite the new Silo Hotel.

Fittingly, the book will be launched next Saturday at 11am at the Museum’s open day.

It’s a great read which bought back many memories and in this review I have barely scratched the surface.