The long awaited meeting between representatives of ANDRA management, the promoters of Townsville Dragway and concerned ANDRA members from North Queensland was convened in an open forum in Townsville on Sunday, March 1.

The meeting was originally announced as being restricted to ANDRA licence holders (ie, drivers) which was going to leave more than a few disgruntled people (ie, owners) out of what was supposed to be a meeting to air the problems in the north. After much last minute lobbying commonsense prevailed and the meeting was opened to all "concerned" ANDRA members.

ANDRA was represented by National Control Council (NCC) members and Divisional Directors George Bailey (Western Australia) and Harry White (South Australia) who struggled at times during the meeting to placate the heated feelings of the group of almost 50 people.

The meeting was arranged by ANDRA to gauge first hand the depth of the problems being experienced in the North Queensland Division over the past two years. During the discussions there were many more questions asked of the representatives than were answered, but in fairness to the ANDRA people they were there to listen to grievances and report back to the NCC and ANDRA CEO Tony Thornton. They were unable to give assurances on anything except that they would listen and try to find solutions that could be implemented.

The group was told, "You have to do this yourselves, and to do this you need a good Divisional Director to start with." The NQ Divisional Director was ousted by the members in a controversial vote of no confidence last year.

The racers in the North have, for a long time, argued that they have not been afforded the same courtesies as other racers because of their regional location. The sentiment expressed by many at the meeting was that until now ANDRA did not seem to care about racers any further north than Willowbank and if these problems had arisen in South Queensland corrective action would have been a lot swifter. It was said at the meeting this was evident in the feeling of being ignored by Head Office whenever approaches were made to talk to anyone and try and get answers.

This was refuted by the ANDRA representatives. In view of the magnitude of the problems and the threat of a racer revolt as far back as 18 months ago, the racers expressed the opinion that ANDRA should have placed higher priority on assisting to resolve the issues a lot earlier.

ANDRA CEO Tony Thornton told DRAGSTER that the issues raised by the racers had been put to the NCC over the weekend of March 14 and 15, and it had been decided to initiate a new election for a Divisional Director in the NQ Division, in order to get a Divisional Council functioning again, as a forum for both racers and ANDRA. At this stage the only known likely candidate for the job is ex-Super Stock racer, Ken Melvin.

"Ideally we would like to have the Divisional Director and the Divisional Secretary located in separate centres to aid in the spread of information," Thornton explained, "and that there would need to be at least some measure of rotation of Divisional Council meetings to assist in the binding of this widely dispersed division."

He also rejected charges that ANDRA's Head Office had ignored the NQ Division, stating that all sectors and all divisions receive equal attention, within the limits imposed by both staff and time.