South East speedway stalwart Bill Barrows was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in the King’s Birthday Honours yesterday for his dedicated service to motorsport nationally.

Mr Barrows was inducted into the Australian Speedway Hall of Fame in 2019 and won the Official/Volunteer of the Year at the Australian Speedway Awards the previous year.

A big year for the speedway star was 1995 when he was inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and won the Outstanding Contribution to the Sport Award in Knoxville, Iowa in the United States of America.

In that same year, he was essential in securing the 1995 Australian Sprintcar Title for Borderline Speedway.

Mr Barrows said while he was pleased to receive the Order of Australia Medal he did not expect it.

“I accepted because I know I have done my share and I am naturally pleased to be awarded that but you do not do it for any of these awards, you just do it because you love it,” he said.

“It is about the sport, it is not about me I just happen to be one of the people who has had involvement.”

Mr Barrows was integral in the formation of Speedway Australia in 1997 which was previously the National Association of Speedway Racing (NASR).

Mr Barrows took action at an Australian Speedway Promoters Association conference after continuously hearing more needed to be done to integrate the sport Australia-wide.

“Speedway in Australia was made up of state bodies and competitor groups but there was no one speaking for speedway nationally,” he said.

“I picked out five of these representatives from around the country and suggested they get together and come up with an idea how we could bring speedway together.

“It finished up with getting an organisation which is now called Speedway Australia.

“I made something happen.”

Mr Barrows originally became involved in speedway on a national level to benefit Borderline Speedway and proposed many ideas for the benefit of the sport.

“From the promoters’ associations and all those other organisations, I have probably put some ideas into people’s heads to make some of those things happen,” he said.

“I look back at it and I see some of those changes that have happened and I was probably instrumental in quite a few of those things happening which is great for speedway.

“I loved the involvement nationally and basically being accepted nationally from a little speedway in Mount Gambier.

“I wanted to go to those meetings because I thought it was good for Borderline Speedway and then I got involved in other sides of it.”

Mr Barrows started his motorsport legacy as a sprintcar driver at the Borderline Speedway from the 1960s-1990s.

As a competitor he won the South Australian Driver of the Year in 1978 and Speedway Sportsman of the Year in 1980 and 1981 consecutively.

“I started racing in 1968 with what we call hot box and they were a more crash and bash type of thing, what the Borderline Speedway was initially built for and then it sort of upgraded from there,” he said.

“When I was racing a sprint car probably from late 1970s in that era, I was a recognisable name around the country.

“I raced locally initially like here (Mount Gambier), Warrnambool or Portland.

“Then when I got involved in sprint cars, super modifieds they used to be called in those days, I used to go to Adelaide each Friday night to Rowley Park Speedway.”

This is Mr Barrow’s second national recognition after he won the Bravery Medal in 1991 for rescuing a driver from a burning car in Mount Gambier.

“We had a competitor in what we call a hot rod or a stock rod, the car caught alight, the guy touched in as he was going around the track and hit the fence,” he said.

“It broke a fitting on the fuel tank and then the fuel ran down the track and it caught alight because of the exhaust and this guy was sitting in the car burning.

“Afterwards we found out he had to take his gloves off to get his seat belt undone.

“By the time he got his gloves off it was too hot and he could not undo his belt anyway because the flames were all around him.

“At one stage I got up on top of the roll cage to try and help him get out of the car.

“I still remember holding him as he managed to climb out after he got the belts undone and I think I managed to get in and undo his seatbelt with another competitor.

“On the day you do what you can do and I was only one of many.”

Mr Barrows said he has seen many changes at the Borderline Speedway to what it is today.

“There has been a lot of changes in the speedway and advancements and whatever, the track is bigger and the fencing is all different,” he said.

“I have been there with most of them, I have not missed too many working bees in the last 50 years.”

Mr Barrows can be seen volunteering at the Borderline Speedway every day in the speedway season and prepares the track for every race meeting.