The Tasmanian motorsport and classic car communities are paying their respects this week, following the loss of racecar driver, engineer and Launceston motorsport legend Geoffrey Smedley, who died on Thursday, December 30, aged 90.
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Born in Launceston on September 16, 1931, Henry Geoffrey Smedley - who often went by Geoff - was one of five children born to parents George Thomas and Millicent, who lived in a house built by Geoff's father in Trevallyn.
An enterprising young man, Geoff began an apprenticeship in his mid-teens down at Launceston's boat building yard on West Tamar road. After the builder he was apprenticing under suffered a damaging accident, however, Geoff was given the opportunity by his father to join the Bedford Precision Machine Tool Company, where he undertook a five-year apprenticeship in fitting and turning.
Several years later, Geoff was introduced to motorsport through his brother Don. By then an engineer, Geoff took the sport quickly and began racing himself in the early 1950s.
Between 1952 and 1960 Geoff raced several 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.
After making a name for himself around the state, Geoff was contacted by high-speed driver Austin Miller to engineer a vehicle capable of taking on the Australian Land Speed record. Geoff set upon the task with vigour and successfully helped beat the previous record of 253 km/h after averaging a two-way run at Bakers Beach clocking in at 265 km/h. The record stood for four years.
Following the win, Geoff began a successful engineering stint working closely with Tasmanian driver John Youl. According to friend and former fellow-racer Brian Higgins, the duo were an exceptional team.
"Geoff was virtually it - as far as the pit crew went. There's not a lot of people who can take a Gran Prix winning frame and improve on it - but Geoff could," he said.
According to Mr Higgins, Geoff's engineering prowess and ability to think outside the box was widely recognised among the racing community.
"He had an ability to think away from convention and he was one of those unique people that would say, 'I can do this,' and he really could," he said.
Around the same time, Geoff established his self-named performance centre on Paterson Street, next to the Penny Royal, where many of the country's fastest cars were prepared, including the cars of the famed Geoghegan brothers.
With his reputation now cemented, Geoff continued to be a highly-sought addition to racing teams from the 1960s onward, eventually accepting an offer to be chief race mechanic for Frank Matich's five-car team in Sydney. In the proceeding years, Geoff would also go on to establish a high standing in Southeast Asia, spending considerable time in Singapore preparing race cars for wealthy businessman P.H.Wong.
Then in the late 1970s, Geoff returned to Launceston to spend more time with his wife Sylvia and his three children, Ross, Malcolm and Graham. There he bought a disused service station at Rosevears on the banks of the Tamar River, where he could feed his love of motorsport and classic car restoration, a love he passed on to his children, including his son Graham.
"Our whole growing-up process really revolved around cars and motorsport. It was such a big part of my life," he said.
Both Graham and his brother Malcolm - who passed away in 2010 - spent time racing after catching the motorsport bug from their father. While back in Launceston and with the support of his wife, Geoff also began to pursue a decades-long dream of starting a car museum in the city. In 1987 the couple achieved that dream, opening the National Automobile Museum of Tasmania at the Waverley Woollen Mills.
A versatile and intelligent mind, Geoff was also a talented musician and took great joy in attempting ambitious modelling projects.
"He could turn his hand to anything. Anything that was broken he would fix it and if he couldn't buy parts for it he would make parts for it," Graham said.
"I remember he built a scale model of a SS 100 Jaguar just from photos," he added.
In the 1990s the museum moved from the Waverly site to stand on Cimitiere Street before ultimately ending up at its current location across from the Silo Hotel.
Phil Costello, who currently heads the museum and began visiting Geoff in recent years, said that until recently the true extent of the late engineer's impact on motorsport had been little-known.
"He was a very humble man and wasn't one to boast about what he'd done," he said.
That recognition came in 2013, when Geoff was inducted into the Tasmanian Motorsport Hall of Fame. Several years later he and Sylvia celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary and shortly after Geoff released an autobiography, It's a Smedley thing, you wouldn't understand, which was launched at the museum in 2018.
Mr Costello went on to say that the book has continued to sell well and has helped introduce a new generation of motorsport enthusiasts to Geoff Smedley's considerable impact as a racer, engineer and classic car restorer.
According to his son, Geoff's legacy in his family was as a joyful paternal figure.
"He was one of those people everybody just loved. My wife has known him for 20 years and considers him a father," Graham said. When recalling fond memories together, Graham made particular note of the holidays he shared jointly with his wife and parents.
"We've done a lot of overseas holidays with my parents and they're probably the best we ever had - I imagine that's not something every family can say," he said. Geoffrey is survived by his wife Sylvia, two sons, four grandchildren, Nick, Rebecca, Damon and Bradley, and three great-grandchildren, Lara, Logan and Evie.
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