Official Pass

One of a collection of passes and speedway memorabilia collected by Wally Woollatt. This is an official pass to the Rowley Park Speedway made out to Woollatt for the 1955-56 season. The small blue-green card is printed with the image of a motorcycle rider.
Speedway is a popular form of motorsport which arose in the 1910s and 1920s. Its origins are hotly contested, with competing claims that the sport was conceived in Australia and in the USA. Motorcycle speedway involves four riders (and sometimes more) riding counter-clockwise along an oval track with a dirt, shale or dolomite surface. Specialised motorcycles with no brakes and only one gear are used. The sport was widely followed until the 1970s, and several venues for speedway were built around Australia. The Rowley Park track was opened in the Adelaide suburb of Brompton in 1949 and closed in 1979.
This pass was issued to local South Australian speedway figure Wally Woollatt (1902 – 1992). Woollatt’s speedway career had long ended by the time this pass was issued but he remained involved in motorsport for most of his life, tuning motorcycles for other riders and attempting a series of speed records on beaches and salt flats.