When motorsport fan Robert Jordan set out to find Australia's old speedway tracks, he could not believe what he found — hundreds of abandoned race tracks across the country.

Then, when he started seriously searching for the tracks in 2017 he was not sure if he would even find one.

Since then his Facebook page, Lost Dirt Tracks, has attracted 21,000 followers and a mass of photos which have revealed abandoned speedways around the world.

He has been finding Australia's lost tracks from tip-offs through his Facebook page as well as through visiting former speedways and via Google Maps.

"There'd be thousands of them — it's out of control," Mr Jordan said.

Katanning Speedway closed in 2001 due to increasing insurance costs but was resurrected again in 2016 after the 15-year hiatus. ( Supplied )

Closer to home, Mr Jordan said he found a "few hundred" former tracks in Australia and was "still counting".

While many have since been built-over with housing, football ovals and factories, some show remnants of what used to be — track outlines are still evident when viewed from hundreds of metres in the air.

More than a track, these grooves in the dirt mark something much bigger than a Sunday meet.

Married couples met at these tracks, world-famous bands got their start at them and through them a culture of Australian motorsport was born.

The Bee Gees got their start performing at the Redcliffe Speedway in Queensland as youngsters in 1959. ( Supplied: Jim Fenwick/History Redcliffe )

The birth of Australian speedway

Motorsport has always had its roots in country Australia — so much so that 85 per cent of motorsport remains in regional areas today.

It is a fact the chief executive of Motor Sport Australia, Eugene Arocca, is well aware of.

"It's just an Australianism that I can't explain," he said.

Of the 275,000 Australians who hold a motorsport licence — the highest number in the world — 99.9 per cent are amateur drivers.

"Even the big countries like the UK and Italy and Germany can't brag about that sort of exposure," Mr Arocca said.

Speedway racing peaked in Australia in the 1960s and '70s. ( Supplied )

Its amateur nature dates back to the 1900s when the first records of track racing began.

Fast forward to the '60s and '70s, during the sport's peak, and up to 50,000 people were sitting or standing at Sandown Motor Circuit in Melbourne, the country's premium race track.

By that time, there were tracks right across the country — some commercially built, others built by families on their farms.

Meets often consisted of a Sunday afternoon affair with a BYO picnic arrangement.

Many of the competitors were local and built or maintained their own cars, as was the case with John Jenkin.

A family affair

Mr Jenkin built his first car for the track in 1973 with his friend Jack Payne.

Mr Jenkin raced at the Tolmer Speedway — 'The Bullring' — in South Australia's Bordertown whenever there was a meet which, back then, was usually six Sundays a year.

John Jenkin (left) with Jack Payne (right) and the car they built and raced from 1973. ( Supplied: Ann Jenkin )

His wife, then 16-year-old-girlfriend Ann, would join him, and his son and daughter, Dylan and Jamie, would later both race extensively growing up.

In Dylan Jenkin's eyes, he was at the club "before he was born".

"We don't have access to cinemas and nice bars [in our town] … so you've got to go find your entertainment somewhere else," he said.

Their story is the story of many families who have speedway in their blood.

"In sporting terms of Australia it's probably a small group but it's a passionate group," Mr Jenkin said.

Ann and John Jenkin have been coming to Tolmer Speedway, The Bullring, since they were teenagers. ( ABC South East: Bec Whetham )

Mick Bolognese, senior curator of the Australian Motor Museum, said he was not highly involved with speedway racing.

This is the case for many Australians who do not have a family connection to the sport. Many Australians would not even know it existed.

"I think it's so out of the public sphere," Mr Bolognese said.

"As a young person, you wouldn't think of entering the world of speedway unless someone introduced you to it."

But if you have had a family member who was a "rev head" it would be a different story — as Mr Arocca can attest.

"When Uncle George goes driving in his old BMW, he'll take along his brother as a mechanic, his uncle as an adviser," Mr Arocca said.

"His mother, or his sister, or his cousin or aunt will come along and help out in the pits."

The end of an era

When Dylan Jenkin had three daughters he exchanged "horsepower for horses", but his loyalty to The Bullring remained.

For 23 years the Jenkins family kept the track alive, paying for upgrades, coordinating volunteer efforts and maintaining the track — until last November when they decided to close The Bullring.

Dylan Jenkin now brings his daughters to the track, marking three generations of Bullring members. ( ABC South East: Bec Whetham )

"The everyday running of the club [was] just getting more and more expensive and [there were] less and less volunteers to do the work," Mr Jenkin said.

"You get to the point when there's no one else stepping-up."

The Bullring was set to have its final meet last weekend, but was rained out.

In the two weeks prior, Ann Jenkin watched her husband, son and daughter exhaust their spare time in getting the track ready — a common sight.

"John and Dylan [were] up there every night … watering, mowing, cleaning stuff up around the place," Mrs Jenkin said.

Dylan Jenkin predicts it will take $400,000 to get The Bullring back to proper racing standards. ( ABC South East: Bec Whetham )

"The general population here have got no idea what it costs to actually run a meeting before we open the gate."

Unlike other classes of motorsport, speedways pay their racers to come and compete.

"It's $7,000 or $8,000 to open the speedway track every time we have a meeting," Mr Jenkin said.

Middle Georgia Speedway is one of thousands of lost tracks in the US. ( Supplied: AbandonedSoutheast.com )

Mrs Jenkin said the costs of paying racers, track upgrades, insurance, and new requirements like police checks had not made things easier.

"It just kills little tracks," she said.

"We're just a little town, we're just volunteers trying to make all these things run."

At the end of the day, speedway meets rely on people to attend — something that happens a lot less than it used to.

"It only takes a 21st or a 40th birthday in town to take away the cream of your income," Mr Jenkin said.

Urban sprawl, TV viewing leads to sport's decline

Mr Jordan said after learning of the small track closures, like The Bullring, it had changed his perception of the sport's future.

Coober Pedy Speedway was originally started by two former sidecar riders in 1983 and operated until 2013. ( Supplied: Google Maps )

"There's too much going against the tracks — there's not enough reasons to keep them open," he said.

"I don't think [speedway racing] will be there in 20 years. I hope I'm wrong."

Mr Jordan said a lot of Australia's regional speedway tracks were threatened as housing slowly crept in.

"You'd either be forced to shut because of the noise or they'd outbid you for your land to knock it down and build," he said.

There are many rumours circulating about Eldora Speedway, a one-mile ghost track in Ohio in the US, which never officially operated. ( Supplied: Lost Dirt Tracks )

Mr Jordan said the modern ability to comfortably watch motorsport on TV meant fans did not have to leave the house to visit speedway tracks.

"It's a dirty place and people don't want to go and see dirty racing," he said.

"If they want, they can go to the V8s once a year or the Formula One."

Boom of the corporate 'joy ride'

Mr Arocca has been following the trends of the sport intensely and said there had been an "explosion" in corporate race days.

A driver whips around the track at The Bend. ( Supplied: The Bend Motorsport Park )

"People really get to experience motorsport in a way that's fairly unique, not racing, but participating in time trials or 'joy rides'," he said.

"That corporate-drive day, single-drive day activity has become the largest growth in our sport.

"Mixed in with a corporate lunch [and] a guest speaker at a fantastic track."

It involved everyday people paying a high prices to experience getting behind the wheel for a day.

"On any given day, any track around the country may have three or four of those activities going on," Mr Arocca said.

A popular stage for such events is at a speedway called The Bend at Tailem Bend in SA, 100 kilometres south-east of Adelaide, which opened in 2018.

The Bend has seven circuit configurations, ranging from 3.4 to 7.77km. ( Supplied: The Bend Motorsport Park )

"I believe a township is going to grow around that [The Bend] motorsport track," Mr Arocca said.

He said the era of community events at small town tracks had been replaced with four-hour race sessions.

Despite feeling the way he does about its future, Mr Jordan said he still considered speedway racing something to attend and enjoy.