FORGIVE, if you will, this indulgence and reflection, but today is one of those milestone, core memory generating kind of days. 

You see, 20 years ago today, a pimply faced and most definitely beard-free kid from Lyndoch in country South Australia lobbed at his first proper car racing job away from home. 

Yes, there had already been Adelaide 500s for Community Radio, Mallala Development Series and PROCAR rounds for Motorsport News Magazine and rallies and other events for Community TV, but this was different. 

This was Indy. 

Indy on the Gold Coast was and remains the stuff of legend, a must-do on the Motorsport scene that I had, as an avid fan of the US open wheel series, always badly wanted to do. 

And here we were, Champ Cars flashing past your eyes at 300km/hr, methanol making you tear up and the balconies.. well.. if you knew Indy, you knew the Balconies. 

And I was there, though not really sure how.  

Earlier that year I’d started helping out Team BRM on their media work.. writing press releases, updating website and generally documenting their Australian Formula 3 Championship campaigns. 

Team boss Bronte Rundle and I had met when he came in to be grilled on the smash-hit TV show, Torque TV, and I’d like to think he appreciated a South Aussie kid showing interest in a South Aussie racing team.

That year had been a belter, with Karl Reindler, a bright young talent from Perth who you may have heard of, in the midst of a massive title battle and 16 year old Kiwi phenom Nic Jordan doing great things in the old car – let alone one Tim Slade making a fairly explosive cameo at Mallala that year.

With the final round at Indy approaching and some bloke called Marcus Marshall making a one round cameo, ‘BR’ agreed that I should be there to help should the team indeed claim the title – what would be their second in three years. 

And so there I was, having gone halves with the team on flights and having reserved my space on the floor of someone’s room at the the Mari Court Resort, on Wharf road in Surfers just south of the track, where the team were staying. 

With my Motorsport News, fellow F3 team PR colleague and IndyCar fan Mitchell Adam, we lobbed into Brisbane, caught the Air Train down to the coast and wandered into the track.

But what a thing it was for a kid that up to that point had viewed Mallala’s ATCC rounds as a big thing and the Adelaide 500 as the equivalent of a pilgrimage to Mecca. 

That weekend generated all kinds of core memories I retain to this day. I met a journalistic hero in IndyCar scribe in Robin Miller. I saw Champ Cars! Karl won the title, Marshall won the round. There were drinks, dinners, meeting people I’d been keen to meet for ages. A new media centre with actual international media. Bloody peacock’s! Did I mention, I saw Champ Cars?

Oh, the Champ Cars. Wild. 

There was so much more but to this day it’s the little things I cling on to – stuff like getting on the bus to go from the F3 paddock – located rather poorly in the second basement of what is now the QT hotel (I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried to get an F301 Dallara up two levels of carpark rampage, but it’s hard work) – to the pit lane and actually driving on the track.

The BRM lads bolting a new front corner onto Marshall’s car after he snorted it into the tyres at the second chicane early on; I’ve still got the endplate hanging on my office wall. Getting back to the track with the lads from the team and jumping in the pool before going to dinner.

All that stuff was new. For them, it was routine. For me? Incredible.

Some of the stories remain waiting to be told and some exist outside the statute of limitations… though a strong memory remains of Sunday night, when the bouncer at one of the many adult-themed establishments in Surfers we were trying to enter asked if our 16-year-old racing driver – who looked every bit his age – was ‘One of those overseas Indy drivers’ as we queued.

We said ‘yes’ extremely quickly and very generously, he let him in. I mean, it wasn’t a lie..

I started my business proper in 2005, but I consider Indy 2004 the weekend where this entirely surreal journey of mine actually began. 

Twenty years later, literally to the day, I’m back on the coast and it still gives me a buzz. 

I’d never live in Surfers, but I don’t want to live in a world where we don’t come car racing here once a year. It’s still extremely special. After Adelaide and Bathurst, this is my favourite place to come racing for all these reasons and more.  

Speaking of special, so too is my job, which it seems has come a long way since those innocent days of October, 2004. 

This weekend I’ll call Carrera Cup races on National TV, do PR that will go global for one of the world’s best Motorsport brands and perhaps most remarkably, a racing car team that I co-own will compete on the same track I first visited two decades ago. 

It’s wild, right? How does that even happen? It remains entirely surreal and fantastic and incredible that this should be a thing that can and does occur.

And it’s the artist formerly known as Indy, the brilliant Team BRM, the Rundle family, Karl Reindler, F3 and so many other little moments from that first trip in 2004 that were where it all really, truly began to snowball in a completely haphazard, unplanned and gloriously freestyle-y way.

The best thing is this: Twenty years on, I still work with the BRM guys. I saw Reindler for coffee on Sunday morning at the hotel opposite Sydney Motorsport Park while he was there to support his brother, Chris, and I was there to call it.

I’m not going to make any comment on any Sunday night activities this weekend but as the old adage goes, ‘When in Surfers..’

Again, forgive this brief indulgence into my own motorsport journey but then again, TRT is here for the stories behind the sport and this probably fits the bill.

And I thank this sport for indulging me in 20 years of stories and, hopefully, many more yet written.