Renwick Museum casts headlight on local racing

Sharon Evans has a deep connection to racing. Her father, Noel Daly, pioneered motorcycle helmets in New Zealand, making and selling them out of New Plymouth.

Sharon also has a deep connection to history. She is part of the committee that runs the Renwick Museum, where exhibits highlight the community’s past.

So, when she uncovered relics of racing in and around town, a lightbulb – or was it a headlamp? – went off.

The idea coalesced into an exhibition she playfully refers to as “Race-y Renwick” that casts a Klieg light on the arcs of horse racing, motorbike racing and auto racing in the area. Fellow volunteers Debbie Etheridge, Sandra Gibson, Megan Ross and David McLuckie helped put the pieces together.

Running at least through June, it just so happens to coincide with a season of races at Eastern States Speedway about 2km northeast of the museum. This weekend, 27-28 February, brings the Bridgestone Blenheim NZ Stockcar Grand Prix.

The synchronicity between the displays of speed turns out to be serendipity.

“We need to keep thinking ahead about what to do for the next exhibition,” Sharon explained on a recent weekday morning, as two visitors examined the exhibit. “I came across something in our files about racing, and I realized how long ago it was.”

Telling the tales

The origins date to 1854. Locals frequenting Renwicktown’s first pub, the Sheepskin Tavern, established the Wairau Jockey Club at Brydon’s Paddock (now the Grove Mill Winery).

“A shortage of local racehorses didn’t stop them,” Sharon recounts in a written retelling. Several walked steeds 160km from Nelson by way of Tophouse. There was no road – and on the day slated to start racing, “the weather wasn’t kind”.

Nonetheless, on 10 January 1854, Kick up the Dust took the inaugural win by covering the 3.2km course in 4 minutes and 48 seconds. The fledgling organisation evolved into the Marlborough Jockey Club and relocated to Waterlea.

“Fast forward a century,” Sharon continues. “Cars and motorcycles had been invented, along with the temptation to see who could make them go the fastest. Renwick in the 1960s and 1970s was a mecca for petrolheads, with four racing circuits for cars and one for motorcycles.”

A wall map in the exhibition room shows the path of each course.

In a nod to the speedway, Sharon notes that “the sound of fast cars racing still carries to ears in Renwick, on Saturday nights in the summer.”