Bill Tuckey's Story
From: The History of Famous Australian Car Trials
Bill Tuckey, 1989, Golden Press Pty Ltd
.... Pity the poor rally organiser. If you have read thus far, you may by now be blinking at the words through a mist of sympathy for the brave souls who organise long distance rallies.
From the Harry James who decided in 1905 to send six competitors back to Melbourne to get a decision after making them race from Melbourne to Sydney, then to the Blue Mountains and back...... to the unknown official who bogged the Redex field in the swamp near Marulan...... to Carl Kennedy who allowed the 1979 Ampol Trial to be turned into low comedy by an 800 metre stretch of farmers paddock near Wagga...... the organiser can never win.
The history of long-distance motoring competitions is fly-specked with examples of how 'What Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time,' went disastrously wrong. Few events have ended without angry protests. Organisers set up impossible times over impassible sections designed to sort out the sheep from the goats, and what happens? Two-thirds of the field, roll in an hour ahead of time.
Organisers carefully establish pre-event liaison with police months before the event and when they run it they find more police setting speed traps along the route than there are fleas on a junkyard dog.
Organisers talk to local municipal authorities about the trial passing through their territory - and the day before the cars are due, they find the council has graded the carefully chosen horror stretch because they didn't want their roads to get bad publicity.
As a feat of organisation, the first London - Sydney Marathon in 1968 was a masterpiece, particularly compared with the 1977 Singapore Airlines London - Sydney, which was a disaster in terms of event publicity and organisation.
The first Marathon was, of course, just that - the first; like the first Redex, it occupies a unique place in history.
Moreover, it is one of the very few long-distance events to end without formal protests being lodged, without at least one special stage being cancelled afterwards, or somebody being killed or badly injured. The 1988 Paris-Dakar kept that record intact.
By anyone's measurement, the 1968 event was a fairy-tale, a movie scriptwriters dream. The winner didn't emerge until 200 kilometres from the end, the leader was eliminated in a tragic crash when there were no more competitive stages to go; there were heroic feats like the 97-hour drive by Max Winkless and John Keran in their Volvo to catch the boat at Bombay, a teams prize win by the Australian Ford Team, sheer bad luck for the BMC Team of Evan Green/Jack Murray/George Shepheard, who really should have won it, and gross examples of jackboot persecution by the NSW police.
On top of all that, the man who drove into the winner's circle that sunny afternoon at Warwick Farm when the Marathon ended was an unknown Scottish farmer called Andrew Cowan, who was to become famous as the finest long-distance driver the world has ever known. He won the 1977 London - Sydney as well.
There was tremendous interest in that first London - Sydney. Today it stands as the most international rally ever run, with more genuine national entries in a long distance non-4WD event than before or since.
The measure one must apply to a national entry is whether it represents a factory team. There were plenty of overseas entries in the early Ampol and Mobilgas events, and for that matter in today's Repco, but the amount of factory support is the key.
That being so, it bears saying that at 16,000 kilometres it was 4,000 kilometres short of the 1979 Repco round-Australia. As well, it was notable for its lack of Japanese factory entries - just as the Repco and all long-distance events have been. For some reason the Japanese factories have never been able to cope with the lavish lottery that most of these events have become.
The first Marathon, to start in London on November 24 and finish in Sydney on December 17, attracted 100 entries in 43 different models of car from 15 countries - the UK, Australia, France, Russia, Germany, Holland and others. Drivers came from everywhere - Swedes and Finns partnering Englishmen; Redex winner Jack Murray, and a British crew in a 1930 Bentley.
The most popular model was the slow but tough Austin 1800 - 10 of them entered, five by the factory. There were eight Cortinas, built to Lotus-Cortina specs but tougher, five Porsche 911's, one Alpha-Romeo, a 1962 Plymouth Belvedere, and even an E-type Jaguar.
The factories came up with bulk money. There were 11 works Fords - twin-cam Cortinas from the British and Irish factories. Taunus 20MRS from Germany and Belgium, and three Falcon GT's from Australia with No.1 drivers in Harry Firth, Ian Vaughan, Frank Kilfoyle, Bruce Hodgson and Jack Ellis.
Roger Clark and Ove Andersson were pre-event favourites in the twin-cam Lotus-Cortina. The Leyland works drivers in the 1800's were Timo Makinen, Tony Fall, Paddy Hopkirk and Rauno Aaltonen, plus the Australian crew of Evan Green, Jack Murray and George Shepheard.
The Sydney Daily Telegraph, co-sponsors of the event with the London Daily Express, bought up a covert Holden team of three 327 Monaros fitted with the 350 American V8 engines and Turboglide automatic transmissions, plus air conditioning and including such illustrious veterans as David McKay, Doug Whiteford, David Johnson, Doug Chivas, George Reynolds and Barry Ferguson.
In a Porsche was Polish ace Sobieslaw Zasada, the quick little red coupe equipped with roo bars running over the roof from bumper to bumper, spaced - with typical Teutonic thoroughness - at slightly less than the average width of the body of a kangaroo the Germans measured in a local zoo. Unfortunately, what they measured were wallabies, so the bars were too close together. Simca entered three 1100 French models, the Auto Moto Club of the USSR four slow but strong Moskvich 426 models, and the Dutch DAF factory one of their tiny belt-driven auto-tranny models supported by their own DC3 aircraft.
There were some trick solo entries - the formidably quick Sydney pair of John Keran and Max Winkless in a special Repco-modified Amco-sponsored Volvo 144S, retired Grand Prix driver Innes Ireland in a Mercedes 280SE, Frenchmen, Le Mans winner Lucien Bianchi, and Jean-Claude Ogier in an unofficial works Citroen supported around the world by service from loyal Citroen car club members.
Italian GP driver Giancarlo Baghetti and G. Bassi in a Lancia Flavia Coupe 1300, and a semi-works Lotus-Cortina driven by racing driver and journalist Nick Brittan and his wife Jenny.
Amid the Ladbroke's betting market and the media hubbub as 80,000 people jammed into London's Crystal Palace for the start, everyone overlooked two humble Chrysler products. They were the Hillman Hunters, plain, dull, family-man's transport. One was crewed by an RAF team of enthusiastic club members, the other by a Scottish farmer called Andrew Cowan, an equally dour co-driver in Colin Malkin and navigator Brian Coyle.
The Hunter wasn't exactly showroom floor, with its Sunbeam Rapier engine and Aston-Martin rear end. But it was built to last, not go fast, and it was significant that after the Marathon had been run and won, Castrol announced the results of a competition it had run to pick the first five placegetters. Selected by British motoring writers and team managers, the five selections were Rauno Aaltonen (BMC 1800), Peter Harper (Lotus-Cortina), Evan Green (BMC 1800), Eric Jackson (Lotus-Cortina) and Andrew Cowan.
The Marathon was to run from London to Paris, Munich, Venice, Trieste, Belgrade, Istanbul, Teheran, Kabul and to Bombay, where the crews had a cut-off time by which they had to be at dockside to board the SS Chusan for Fremantle and only the leading 70 cars would be loaded.
It was from Fremantle in Australia that the trial was expected to be won and lost, and so it proved. Roger Clark beat his Cortina to death in Europe and lost the Marathon in Australia; Zasada loitered through Europe and, with Cowan, lost fewer points in the entire Australian section in a superlative drive, but left his run too late.
The Australian end was terribly serious - 4,827 kilometres without provision for meal break, service period or rest stop in 66 hours. The average speeds were the highest ever set for a long-distance event, even though the Western Australian and NSW police were making loud noises, as usual, about stopping these speed-crazed fools. And at the end of it, the competitors criticised not only those police for obstructing the trial instead of making the roads safe, but the organisers for making the event too easy....
Two entrants had dropped out by start time, and 98 cars were flagged down the Crystal Palace ramp by Miss Australia, Penny Plummer, with Australian Ford team leader Harry Firth second away.
The first points were lost between Calais and Belgrade, and by Turin the first fancied crew, Soderstrom/Palm in a works Cortina, had broken a timing chain tensioner and lost time finding a replacement part in a used car lot, paying the dealer £100 for a two dollar component.
Near Venice, another works Cortina - Harper/Pollard, had water pump troubles, dropping 1,440 points, and the first retirement was posted at Belgrade when the Vauxhall Ventora of Woodley/Green/Collingford crashed when a cigarette thrown out of a window blew back onto the driver. But at Belgrade the top cars were up to nine hours early.
Just 50 kilometres out of Belgrade the Winkless/Keran Volvo damaged a valve guide. They worked to repair the car, and eventually staged an incredible 97 hour non-stop drive to miss five controls and eventually make the boat at Bombay. It was one of the true epics of long-distance driving of all time.
However, it was accidents and bad luck that cut down the field from Istanbul to Sivas. Some private entries retired with mechanical failure, others had windscreens broken by rocks thrown from the roadside, and the Brittan Lotus-Cortina hit a donkey at 130 km/h and the crew had to argue for their lives with the angry owners of the animal. The first real points were dropped between Sivas and Erzincan. Fastest was the Clark/Andersson Cortina, dropping six minutes, with a huge back to the next fastest, the Taunus of Lampinen/Staepelaere, on 14, Hopkirk on 16, the Glemser/Braungart Taunus on 17 with the Bianchi/Ogier Citroen, and the fastest Australians Bruce Hodgson Falcon GT 18 points, Harry Firth 20, Evan Green 22, Bob Holden/Ian Vaughan 25, Stuart McLeod (the 1979 Repco trial director) 26 in the Alfa, and the Monaro's of Ferguson, Whiteford, and McKay, 26, 42 and 66 respectively.
Erzincan to Teheran was described as a 'milk run', but from Teheran to Kabul the field was badly knocked around by mechanical failure, as the cars started to get tired. BMC drivers Tony Fall and Rauno Aaltonen both had suspension troubles. Fall losing 304 points and Aaltonen just making it to Kabul without loss after binding up his suspension with the cars de-bogging winch.
Half the field lost points, mainly through lateness caused by breakdowns.
On the famous next section, Kabul to Sairobi, Clark again blew everyone away with an incredible display, passing cars on the outside of sheer drops with his wheels spraying gravel into the black depths. But Hopkirk (BMC 1800) and Bianchi (Citroen) equalised his loss of only five points with Jackson (Cortina), Neyret (Citroen) and Staepalaere (Taunus) only a minute behind.
Evan Green was the fastest Australian on eight minutes, with Firth and Holden on nine. Whiteford and Ferguson on 11, and Vaughan dropping to 12.
Then on the next section, Bob Holden's Volvo hit a truck head-on 300 kilometres from Delhi and he was out of the event.
The rest of the field ran through huge crowds into Delhi past stick-waving police, keeping a clear path for the cars, slashing at the millions who lined the route.
Points leaders into Bombay were Roger Clark/Ove Andersson with 11 points lost. Second were Lampinen/Staepalaere on 20, third Bianchi/Ogier on 21. Best Australians were Firth/Hoinville/Chapman (Falcon GT) seventh with 29, with Green/Murray/Shepheard next on 30.
The crews (and cars) had 10 days' recuperation on board the SS Chusan as it steamed to Fremantle, although George Shepheard was to say later that the shipboard endurance events were tougher than the Marathon, with a dispute between the rally crews and the captain about crossing the borders between the first and second class.
Around the pool the crews checked again and again the comprehensive, detailed 'mud maps' supplied to all teams by Castrol, who had surveyed the Australian route three times. They had produced a booklet that showed every kilometre or so, detailing the best tracks around the sand drifts and fallen trees and creek crossings. 'Gelignite' Jack Murray told the British crews the maps were useless. "The wombats move the holes," he said. "They dig fresh holes and put the dirt in the old holes, so you can throw those maps away." He also told them about the blood-drinking kangaroos. "If you hit a 'roo and there's blood on the car, get rid of it any way you can. Piss on it, drain your radiator, whatever - just get rid of it. Why? Because the other kangaroos will smell the blood and they'll come from miles around and attack you."
It was a nervous group of British crews who watched the Fremantle wharfies unload 72 cars. Their tempers weren't helped when WA police checked each car and handed out defect notices for mechanical condition, illegal sirens, illegal roof-mounted lights and almost anything else. After argument from the organisers, the police allowed the cars to start from Perth's Gloucester Park trotting ground as scheduled, on the basis that they would have to go through a police road block at Guildford 16 kilometres out, to make sure all the defects had been fixed. Most cars checked out and headed straight for service.
Seven hours had been allowed for the first section, 563 kilometres from Perth to Youanmi, so there was plenty of time. (Typically, the only car to hit a kangaroo on the whole Australian section was the Austin 1800 of Murray, almost in the Perth suburbs.)
From the old goldmining ghost town of Youanmi down to Marvel Loch was 386 kilometres of narrow, winding but fast dirt, which had to be covered in four hours three minutes - an average of 100 km/h. It was easy for the leaders at the head of the field, where the dust was not as thick. But Marvel Loch - Lake King was dynamic. It is still talked about, whenever Marathon veterans get together.
Just on 190 kilometres of dirt, it's literally a tunnel through thick scrub growing right to the edge of the road. Passing was impossible and the dust hung like a white shroud for hours. It was run in the early hours of the morning, with the drivers having to average 100 km/h through it. Ian Vaughan said later that it was one of the most incredible drives of his life. "It was like driving in a tunnel and the high edges of the road kept the car in the tunnel, so I was just going faster and faster until my co-driver started yelling at me."
However, it wasn't the happiest of sections. Somehow, a BMC service crew in an Austin 1800 ute got into the section and started playing rally drivers. It held up several cars. Evan Green, who dropped only two minutes to be the fastest Australian, still says that Harry Firth in the Falcon (who dropped five), held him up deliberately. "We were pushing him in the back bumper and he still wouldn't let us past," he said.
There were three clean-sheeters - all overseas drivers. The incredible Clark was five minutes early, with the advantage of being in front. Lampinen was four minutes ahead, and Bianchi was made it in even time. Hopkirk had two punctures and a broken steering rack, to drop 14, but Vaughan dropped only five despite a puncture, and Cowan lost only five. The legendary Aaltonen dropped back in the dust to lose seven minutes.
It was expected to rain on the Nullarbor for the next section. 1,462 kilometres from Lake King to Ceduna at an average of 100 km/h, but it didn't rain, and off-duty drivers slept comfortably in the other seat as the big Citroens and Falcon GT's sat at 160-180 km/h over the endless gravel straights. It was from Ceduna to Quorn, as the field ripped into the red-dirt town of Port Augusta and turned north-west for the Flinders Ranges, that the Marathon played its first wild card.
Coming into Port Augusta, the incredible Clark stopped, his Lotus-Cortina with 2 burnt valves. In a wonderful gesture, team-mates Ken Chambers and Eric Jackson, who not long before, had set an endurance record - driving a Ford from Cape Town to London, gave Clark their cylinder head and retired, to give the fastest Ford a chance of outright.
Clark clocked into Quorn 14 minutes late, to make his total points loss, 25 behind Lampinen/Staepelaere and Bianchi/Ogier. The field clocked in and out of Quorn for the 109 kilometres of dawn darkness, in one hour 17 minutes to Moralana Creek, over the country where Sturt started his overland explorations, and into typical Flinders Ranges country of hidden dips and crests and washaways. Clark incredibly, made up nine minutes, to drop only five more points at Moralana.
In daylight, the field stormed out of Moralana up into the Flinders towards Brachina - 117 kilometres at an average of 79 km/h. Stewart McLeod, by then retired, was making money selling details of a shorter route through the Ranges, his home rallying country, but George Shepheard had spent weeks surveying the area and had found another shorter and faster route across the paddocks, the Green Austin 1800 actually passed Firth on this section without Firth ever seeing them, and Shepheard didn't tell Harry until years later how they did it.
Green/Murray/Shepheard were now fifth, ahead of Cowan, and looking good.
In the gorges where the leaders stormed up the long straight from Parachilna, where the old publican, Jock McKenzie, stood in the sun for hours with kilt and bagpipes, to pipe Innes Ireland through the right-hander around the pub, where there was a blind crest that turned left in mid-air and dropped down to a right-hander into a dry creek bed full of rocks. Clark came over the top absolutely flat out (maybe 160km/h) with the car pointed the wrong way. He flicked it the other way, then the other way, and arrived at the crossing dead straight and going back to third. By Brachina, Clark was back on time.
There were three casualties on the long (336km, 82km/h average) from Brachina to Mingary. The unluckiest was the Green 1800. Back at Quorn, an enthusiastic BMC mechanic had overtightened a rear wheel bearing. In this section, Green stopped to winch back onto the road the Cowan/Coyle/Malkin Hunter, which had slid into a ditch. A few kilometres later, their rear wheel overtook them and they stopped. They tried to fix the damage, but gave up, and wrote a message in the sand in insulating tape, calling for the service aircraft. Relaxing, knowing their Marathon was over, they stripped off and were basking naked in the sun when Steward McLeod drove up to ask if he could help. Shepheard and Murray were cavorting around his car like hairy nymphs, until they realised Mrs McLeod was inside. On the same section, near Mingary, George Reynolds rolled the No.1 David McKay Monaro in loose sand and ended up in Broken Hill hospital with severe head lacerations. The second Telegraph team Holden, driven by Ferguson, broke a differential and limped into Broken Hill to replace it with a unit from a car on the showroom floor of the local Holden dealer, but they lost over an hour.
As the field streamed down into NSW, the police swung into action. Lampinen/Staepalaere, second to Bianchi/Ogier since Augusta, were stopped by police on the way to Edi and argued for minutes against the police impounding their car for speeding. From Edi, south of Wangaratta, the field went through Ned Kelly country - and down the back tracks of Mt. Buffalo in the darkness, over typical BP and alpine rally country, that the Australians knew only too well. But at Omeo, Roger Clark's race was run. Four points behind Bianchi/Ogier, he limped in with a broken axle half-shaft. He scoured the town and bought a replacement unit from a surprised Cortina owner parked at the kerb and made the swap, but his chance had gone and Paddy Hopkirk had moved up into third.
By this time, Vaughan, Hopkirk and Green - back in the event - were going crazy, slashing through the dangerous mountain roads with only one or two minutes points loss at controls. Through the notorious Ingebyra section, through Jindabyne to Cooma it was still Bianchi/Ogier, Lampinen/Staepelaere and Hopkirk, with Cowan fourth. At Cooma the NSW police struck again. Freighting motorcycles in by train, from all police areas in southern NSW, they hunted and trailed every single Marathon car through the long, long 60 km/h restricted zone of Cooma, booking Zasada and the little Dutch DAF for defective mufflers, among other things. The world's best rally drivers had come this far for such harassment.
At Cooma, the cars started the second-last and hardest section of the Marathon - 56 kilometres over the Numeralla road across the infamous Big Baja to Hindmarsh Station at an average of 80 km/h. They left the slightly-damp, fog-shrouded control, outside Cooma at around 8am, with Hopkirk wound up like a steel spring and the others little better. At this stage it was a road race. There was only a handful of points between the first five cars. Staepelaere, running second, tried too hard. He clipped a cattle grid post and broke a tie-rod, jamming the car half-way up a bank as Hopkirk stormed past. Firth, looking for third or fourth, seized a wheel bearing near the end.
They started the last section, a gentle, smooth gravel stage from Hindmarsh Station 156 kilometres into Nowra at an average of 77 km/h, with the Marathon sewn up for Bianchi/Ogier. Then, not far from the Nowra control, the weary Citroen, with Ogier driving and Bianchi dozing in the right-hand seat, met head-on a Mini coming into the section the wrong way. The Citroen was wrecked, and Bianchi was badly injured. Many rumours spread about the Mini. True or not, it was a fact that police had done nothing to control spectator cars. One of them, Renault executive Jerome White, radioed for an ambulance and drove on to pick up Bianchi and take him to meet the ambulance coming in.
Hopkirk, a personal friend of Bianchi - who was later to die in a racing accident - was even further upset by the way the police again haunted the Marathon field throughout the slow drive up the Princess Highway to the finish at Warwick Farm. At that magnificent, now-dead race circuit, he parked the weary Austin 1800 to allow the winner, Andrew Cowan, six points ahead, to drive in to his hero's welcome. To the press, Hopkirk spoke bitterly about police 'Gestapo' and 'Nazi' and then drove off sadly to his hotel. He was not to compete again in Australia - a country he loves - until the next Marathon in 1977.
Cowan/Malkin/Coyle won the $21,429 Daily Express first prize. It was not to the credit of Chrysler Australia that they did, because until the field was half-way across the Nullarbor, the then-lethargic Adelaide manufacturer had not realised they even had a car in the event, and had given absolutely nothing in support. By Warwick Farm time, Chrysler Australia executives were rushing around trying to cobble up a newspaper victory advertisement. The Hunter had lost 50 points - 50 minutes late over all that road. Paddy Hopkirk (BMC 1800) was second with 56, and Ian Vaughan, now a senior Ford Australia engineer, a tremendous third with 62. Fourth was the valiant Zasada in the Porsche with 63, then Bruce Hodgson (Falcon GT) on 68, Rauno Aaltonen (BMC 1800) on 70, and West German Kleint seventh in a Taunus 20 with 91. Firth was eighth with 114 to give Ford the teams prize, while Frenchman Neyret was ninth in his Citroen on 123 and the incomparable Clark tenth on 144.
It was over.
There were no protests. Everyone said the next Marathon should be tougher with fewer rest periods. Everyone was angry about the NSW police. Everyone was angry about the Bianchi crash and what it had done to Hopkirk. But it was interesting that apart from Hopkirk and Aaltonen, and, of course Bianchi and Ogier (Ogier who two years later, was to dead-heat the 1970 Ampol) the European rally aces hadn't been the all-conquering heroes they were expected to be.
Names like Clark, Andersson, Soderstrom, Lampinen, Fall, Harper, Vic Elford, Davenport, Gunnar Palm and others were beaten by the conditions.
The car that came out of the Marathon with most honours - the BMC 1800 - went out of production not long afterward. The Hunter lasted a little longer. Only the British twin-cam Fords, which the Marathon had laid down the basis for future years of domination of both long-distance and sprint rallies, learned their lessons.
IF ONLY -
There has never been a long-distant event as close as that. Any one of the first six cars at Cooma could have won by the end of that infamous second-last stage over the Big Baja.
There would be another one, of course. But it wouldn't be the same........
- Bill Tuckey
Read Bill's account of the Aftermath of the Marathon
Home I A Tale Of Two Cities I How It All Began I The Entrants I The Rules I Timetable I The Route I Their Story I Photo Albums
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Ladies I How They Finished I BMC I Ford I Holden I Other Marques I Site Map I Memorabilia I Credits/About Us I Links
Home I A Tale Of Two Cities I How It All Began I The Entrants I The Rules I Timetable I The Route I Their Story I Photo Albums
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Ladies I How They Finished I BMC I Ford I Holden I Other Marques I Site Map I Memorabilia I Credits/About Us I Links
