John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been a huge weekend—and a huge year, actually—in the electorate of Calare, particularly as last Friday night was the end of the formal proceedings of the bicentenary of the proclamation of Bathurst. To the chagrin of places like Brisbane and Melbourne, Bathurst is the third oldest city in Australia outside of the Sydney basin and Hobart. As much as I hate to remind Melbourne and Brisbane, they are not nearly as old as the central west of New South Wales in modern Australian terms.

It was a huge week and weekend. Tuesday was about when all of the V8 supercars started turning up. It was one long practice right through. On Friday night, the gala ball to end the formal celebrations for the bicentenary of Bathurst and the central west was held. It was a huge night. I am very proud to say that all of the drivers came along—which was a big thing of them to do, as Saturday was the top 10 shoot-out and a lot of formal races were to be held on the Saturday. So it was a very big thing for those drivers to give up an hour or so of their time.

An honourable member: Did you race?

No, I did not race, but I am sure I would have liked to—if someone else were driving the car!

Governor Lachlan Macquarie raised the flag in Bathurst on 7 May 1815, just over 200 years ago. As I said, it is Australia's oldest inland city and the third oldest city in Australia, in actual fact, which the rest of Australia will have to learn to live with. Craig Lowndes, Nick Percat, Steve Johnson, Fabian Coulthard, and Renee Gracie and Simona De Silvestro—the first all-female combination to race in 17 years—all came, and everybody shared the very rich history of the establishment of the Bathurst 1000 back in 1973. The Bathurst races obviously have a much older history than that, with Jack Brabham having won there as well prior to that.

The Bathurst 1000 has kept up to its reputation. Over 200,000 people attended and they were all fascinated watching it and quite obviously on the edge of their seats when those two drivers, on successive days, had very bad crashes. I hope Scott Pye and last year's winner, Chaz Mostert, recover quickly. But this is a big boost to the region. It is worth $21 million, which is over $5 million a day for the time that they are there.