The Media Story
The 1968 London-Sydney Marathon has been written by a number of the drivers, reporters and followers of this amazing rally.
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Ron Morgans Memoirs
My name is Ron Morgans. I, along with Frank Spooner was responsible for the picture coverage of this great event for the Daily Express.
Frank and I also assisted Alan Smith in producing the picture book as you state in your credits. I was delighted and amazed to find that this wonderful event has been so well remembered in this brilliant web presentation.
It is only fitting that it should be so as, at the time, the Marathon captured the imagination of the nation and was an event of enormous complexity, daring and expense.
The legendary Daily Express photographer Victor Blackman, covered every inch of it under appalling conditions, sending us back a wonderful record of the competition along with Dave Benson's fine reportage.
We covered a lot of major events for the old broadsheet Express but, I believe, this was one of our finest.
We take Grand Prix and Rally World championships for granted now but this was more than just an international sporting event.
It was a national statement of the bond between Great Britain and Australia that enraptured the world.
Sadly, Frank Spooner and Victor Blackman are no longer with us but I am sure they would be proud of the record you have kept alive of this amazing moment of the sixties.
Congratulations.
Ron Morgans.
The late Victor Blackman
Photo courtesy Daily Express
KEEPING TABS ON IT - John Vass
Charting the progress of a speeding motorcade of cars halfway across the world is difficult enough. To log the exact time taken by each individual car - and they numbered 98 on the first leg of the rally - on each stretch of a 10,000-mile drive was a marathon itself.
Months of work went into preparing telephone and teleprinter links between remote parts of Asia and the Daily Express office in London so that results could be kept up to date. Often communications services had to be specially kept open - as they were in Afghanistan - to transmit results of cars checking through time controls in the early hours of the morning.
From some spots between the Lataband Pass and the Khyber Pass, several alternative methods of quickly sending back results had to be arranged. One by aircraft to a special radio station, another dependent on existing landlines and a third through diplomatic channels.
The system worked well. Not only were results sent back to Britain for computing, but, once checked, were relayed back to rally officials in the Daily Express Flying Control - a chartered Viscount airliner following the rally - for confirmation. In this way, competitors knew how their opposing teams were progressing. The two Dutch national teams even had the results given to them on the move! They had a radio link with a support aircraft - a Dakota which carried spares and servicing crews.
As soon as officials at the London Rally Control in the Daily Express building had prepared placings and the penalty points incurred by cars, these were sent out all over the world. A Marathon Press Service set up to provide information in the foyer of the Daily Express, handled over 25,000 telephone calls during the European leg of the rally alone. And on a giant scoreboard, the staff of the Marathon Press Service marked up over 2,000 individual results.
Even when the 72 cars still in the race relaxed on the SS Chusan, information was still sent back to Rally Control daily and photographs of the teams were sent by radio telephone from the ship's transmitter.
All along the Australian leg of the rally, portable picture transmitters were set up to send back pictures over the main Trans-Pacific telephone cable. From Perth, pictures and stories from Daily Express men, correspondents and an army of several hundred world reporters, went by this cable, first to Sydney, then by link lines to various countries.
More than 40,000 words of reports, and pictures too, went by this giant cable across America, via Newfoundland and across to Britain.
John Vass - Daily Express
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More than half a million people had turned out to cheer the cars from Sydney University on Broadway to Hyde Park in the centre of the city. The crowds spilled on to the roads, waving banners and flags as the cars passed. "Somehow this makes it all seem worthwhile - all the tension and the struggling and the times you asked yourself what you were doing in the Marathon anyway," Barry Ferguson said. "It's been a great thrill - the trip of a lifetime."
At the end of the Marathon journalists and photographers were rushing to their typewriters and darkrooms to produce a spate of books and films on the Marathon. Even before one word hit the streets another Marathon was in the making. The co-sponsors, the Daily Express and the Sydney Daily Telegraph, announced the Marathon would be on again in 1972 to coincide with the Olympic Games.
The next night at the official prizegiving at the Trocadero Ballroom in Sydney, the State Governor of NSW, Sir Roden Cutler, summed up the public feeling for the Marathon:
"The winners are men who have broken the restrictive bonds of caution. They have sparked into a flame the embers of a forlorn chance and captured the world's interest in sporting challenges."
John Smailes
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Preparations did not end with the cars actually in the Marathon. - by Alan Sawyer
The Sydney Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express organised a news and picture coverage of the Marathon on a scale never before attempted. Rival newspaper groups paid the Telegraph and Express the courtesy of organising coverage, some of them even entering cars of their own. Competitors could not ignore the Marathon. News stories like it didn't come very often.
For the London-Bombay leg, British European Airways transformed a Viscount into a flying newsroom at a cost of $5,000. Forty of the aircraft's 70 seats were taken out and replaced by tables fitted with portable typewriters, and there was a fully equipped darkroom and an automatic printer.
For journalists and photographers who could find time for sleep there were six bunks. Two stretchers were also fitted to enable any competitors in urgent need of specialised medical treatment to be picked up.
The Viscount hopped like a kangaroo along the route keeping with the field, bringing readers of the Telegraph and Express, and newspapers throughout the world, news of exploits of the Marathon men and machines.
In Australia, the Daily Telegraph's organisation presented communication problems never encountered before. As the Marathon had been deliberately routed through some of the toughest, most inaccessible parts of Australia, the question of how quickly could news teams get to those places at lightning speed was raised. Or, more important, how could they get the news and pictures out?
After the Daily Telegraph had surveyed the route, it was decided to charter three light aircraft for use as flying newsrooms. The planes were specially equipped so photographers and journalists could work in the air as they followed the Marathon. On the ground, picture transmitters were set up to gram photographs to the Telegraph in Sydney.
All was ready for the start.
People around the world were being caught up in the Marathon as cars swept across Yugoslavia towards the Bulgarian border.
The drama of an international rally was emerging, with the promise of more to come.
The Daily Express established a Rally Information office in the foyer of its Fleet Street offices. It was manned 24 hours a day and, at peak times, handled 500 queries an hour. People wanted to know the progress of cars, facts about the road. There were a great many enquiries about the girls, and the 1930 Bentley. Telephone calls came from newspapers as far afield as Italy, Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Moscow also followed the rally. Each day two men from the Russian Trade Mission in London called at the Daily Express for news of the Moskviches.
Sceptics asked what was the point of the Marathon anyway, with mad men in machines dicing with danger, for no discernible reason. Alan Gardiner, Carreras publicity manager, presenting Clark with the Carreras trophy on board the Chusan, supplied a reason.
"It could be argued," he said, "that you would be out of your mind to want to climb Everest or to orbit the earth or sail alone in a small boat around the world.
"But men (and women) do these things and are pleased to do them because, although the achievement cannot be measured in material terms, it is worth the trying for the challenge it presents."
Mr. Gardiner congratulated the sponsors, the Daily Express and Sydney Daily Telegraph. "Well done, Sir Max Aitken and all your team who turned an interesting idea into a thrilling classic of motoring that will still be talked about when our hair has receded and our beards grow long and grey, a worthy decendant indeed of the great Paris to Peking race of 1907."
At Gloucester Park (Perth's premier trotting track), to flag the cars away, Western Australia's Premier, Brand, said the Marathon was the greatest motoring event in history and well worth the estimated $22m. it had cost to stage. More than 25,000 people watched as girls in red and white uniforms escorted each car. The trotting programme being held that Friday night was cancelled to stage the impressive farewell to the Marathon.
Alan Sawyer
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In Teheran, the drivers struggled to overcome a brick wall of officialdom at the control. Police and car club officials, carried away by wild crowd scenes, were determined to bring order by marshalling not only the crowd, but the drivers, mechanics and press. Several drivers scuffled with police as they queued their cars outside the control to book in.
Sydney cameraman Rob McCauley, covering the event for AMOCO, was hustled from an enclosed area by a policeman who took no notice of McCauley's armband. In desperation, McCauley placed his powerful quartz iodine "sun" lamp on the bridge of the policeman's nose and turned it on. The official was blinded for three hours.
John Smailes - Motoring Journalist
Some of the crowd at the Warwick Farm finish line
Photo courtesy Alan Sawyer
The next day. Scene of the procession through the streets of Sydney
Photo courtesy Alan Sawyer
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Another view of the huge crowd at the finish line, Warwick Farm
Photo courtesy Alan Sawyer
The Daily Express London-Sydney Marathon publication is mostly here because of the efforts of David Benson and Victor Blackman, who went all the way.
It was edited by Frank Spooner and Ron Morgans.
The contributors, apart from those named elsewhere, were an Express team accustomed to ranging the world. The occasional footnotes are from Castrol's marvellous guide to the route. Published by Beaverbrook Newspapers Ltd.
Typesetting by P.W.H. Ltd. Printed by Purnells, Somerset.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
