Bevan Gerrard became the most recent Life Member of the Southland Sports Car Club after the organisation’s 72nd AGM last month.

Mr Gerrard, originally from Winton and now based in Invercargill, has been involved with the club for more than 45 years after good mate Ray Galt got him involved initially. 

“Car trials were a big thing at the time, we had one a month and we did alright,” Mr Gerrard recalls. He also competed in rallysprint and sprint events in a Ford Anglia that he and Galt built up while rallying was another discipline in which he competed both as a driver and co-driver with Mr Galt and another club stalwart Rodger Cunninghame.

Once he stopped competing, Mr Gerrard became involved behind the scenes, firstly on crash crew duty before becoming chairman of the social committee.

“I don’t know how I managed to get that job,” he joked. “We had all sorts of activities in those days.”

One tale told at the AGM related to a club working bee where Mr Gerrard and Mr Galt were tasked with building a brick wall. After completing the job, they went upstairs into the clubrooms only to hear the wall fall over. In his defence, Mr Gerrard remembers that “it was blowing a gale at the time”.

Mr Gerrard became a member of the race committee in 1991, working in timekeeping and lap scoring and becoming chief timekeeper. Initially stopwatches were used but in 1997 timing became computerised and Mr Gerrard had to become computer savvy.

Helping at the club became a family affair for the Gerrard family. His wife Liz, who he met through Mr Galt (Liz had gone to school with Mr Galt’s wife), has worked with him in timing over all those years, while the couple’s children, Alice and Leon, both spent around 10 years working in the timing team at the circuit.

The family also worked together on the club’s rally events when Mr Gerrard was the Assistant Clerk of the Course.

“The whole family would head off to the start of stages to perform start line duties,” Mrs Gerrard said.

For the last nine years Mr Gerrard has been chairman of the race committee, which involves planning and organising the many race meetings held at Teretonga Park. It was a role Mr Gerrard said he would do “a couple of years”.

On receipt of his Life Membership Bevan acknowledged the support of his family particularly that of Liz, who has worked alongside him as they have run the timing team together.