Tony Webb, born Anthony Brian Webb in Felsted Essex on November 24 1940, eldest of three children. Felsted is an historic village that is famous for its public school where Oliver Cromwell’s sons were educated. Tony has held a lifetime interest in both local history and speedway racing. His family construction company had built Ipswich Speedway stadium in the UK in 1950. Tony’s relative Rod Laudrum was the first signing for the Witches in 1951, this team became home for many Australian riders when his admiration for the Aussies with colourful names began.
During the school boy years he was a keen cycle speedway rider, in 1961 -
Realising there was a need for speedway spares and services, Tony and his brother Jack started Shaleway Products in 1969, one of the first track side sales services, this grew to cover 12 tracks with over 500 customers. A few rides at Mildenhall school followed in 1973/74. An unsuccessful attempt to introduce speedway at the Essex Showground in 1974 with former Ipswich rider Rod Laudrum and Birmingham promoter Colin Barber was another adventure. Receiving an offer for Shaleway he could not refuse in 1982 saw him heading for back for Western Australia.
Several different ventures and ventures followed Woodlands Pergolos in Perth 1983-
A complete burn out in 2004 saw Tony and Maggie retire to their beachside home in Lancelin, after a year of seclusion and getting back to basics they moved to Brisbane in 2006. There were increasing demand for speedway books, drawing on his knowledge of speedway spares he produced a few technical articles, then moved into biographies and history. The book business was one of the first antiquarian shops to go on line. When he sold the premises, the new owners did not want the books or the data base of customers, 5,000 books were shipped to to his retirement home in Queeensland, the business still flourishes on line.
Tony’s life time ambition was to write a specific speedway history, after a series of self published works from 1996, a Brisbane publisher accepted his manuscript on the history of a little known speedway at Davies Park in Brisbane that flourished in 1927-
Apart from speedway ,Tony writes history columns for the Northern Valley News in Western Australia, the Felsted journal in England and publishes the VSRAA magazine, and speedway Workshop. With his wife Maggie they run a bed and breakfast.
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This author is prolific and has many titles published and those concerning speedway are listed below:-
Bluey Scott Story 2006
Australasians in England 2012 DATA FILE
Keith Cox story 2006
Keith Gurtner story 2006
Syd Littlewood story 2006
Queensland Speedway data file 2007
Rusty Rees and North Queensland 2008
Alec Hunter with Jan Hunter 2008
Braund Brothers 2008
Waddell Brothers 2008
New South Wales fact file 2008
Bert Kingston speedway world 2008
Huntings Ten 2008
Jack White Speedway world 2008
Steve Reinke speedway world 2008
Speedway Memories Queensland 2008
Various articles Australian Speedway world 2006-
Speedway Tonight the Davies Park story 2009
Deagon speedway 2014 book 100 pages
Worldwide Speedway adventurer the A J Hunting story 2014 book
Pioneer park story qld book
Wheels of fate Garry Hay story book
The Mittagong flash Buck Ryan story.
Speedway workshop magazine 2013 published 4 times a year.
NEWS VIEWS AND ISSUES. VSRA magazine contributor
Speedway Researcher contributor
Tapes up. tales from down under