I believe that CAMS introduced the Victorian Clubman Series (VCS) in 1972, but it was a bit of a shambles with Grade 3 crews being regraded during the year. Bob Bird and Warwick Smith nevertheless won the first series. They cleaned up the rules for 1973 and this coincided with the plans of a budding young Elsternwick boy, David Bond, to tackle both the VCS and VRC in his newly prepared Ford Mk II Cortina. He had one problem though - no navigator. David was a member of the Light Car Club but was perhaps not fully active and engaged with other members, so he was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Well he put an advertisement in the motor sport paper, Auto Action. After Geoff Doyle decided to focus on his training as a lawyer, I had no plans for 1973 so I gave David a call. I didn't live far away, but with no licence I guess I drove around on my Learner plates with my Dad. I recall meeting much of the Bond family, certainly David's father Albert, who ran a concrete pumping business in Elwood (David still runs a similar business today) and tended to call the shots a bit regarding David's rallying pursuits. I would certainly have also met David's doting mother, Alma. I must have checked out OK, as I was offered the ride, and the car certainly looked well prepared. I don't even think we went for a "fast" drive before the first event of the year. Soon enough I met some more of David entourage including brother-in-law Jim and good friend Dick Gill who were always in the service crew. Dick and I became good friends over the years and was the key service crew for me when I was driving, including in the 1979 Repco Round Australia.
So back to 1973. Our first event was the first round of the VCS in central Gippsland (the Huntingdale Auto Club "Invitation Trial"), with the first division running in the area to the north of Briagalong. We seemed to be doing OK. The second half was over towards Erica, Walhalla and Seaton but we never made it there. Somewhere near Glenmaggie one of the rear wheel departed company. Well actually the axle did also. It was held on, I believe, by a kind of shrink-ring, and it let go. I'm not sure if we found the wheel. Exactly the same thing happened in our last event of the year, the Alpine, and on that occasion I recall that we never found the wheel!
Undaunted, we then entered the first round of the VRC, the Penfolds, and came second. Our results in various other VRC events were variable, to say the least, and these are describe in Learning to navigate and the Experts Trials. We finished off the year well with another second place, this time in the George Derrick Memorial Trial.
So back to the Clubman Series. The second event was the VADC Amateur Trial. The first half of the event was in the Strathbogies and Warrenbayne with a quick run across from Violet Town to Murchison for a division break. The second half was in the Whroo forest, but we didn't make it there. Somewhere on a seemingly straight dirt road west of Violet Town we descended into a thick cloud of dust and then crashed headlong into some scrub. There wasn't a lot of damage but the radiator was holed and we were forced to retire. It was a salutary lesson, since the section was almost certainly easily cleanable.
I have no recollection of the next event, the Brass Monkey Trial, which was apparently run in west Gippsland around Yinnar and Mirboo North. The report indicates that we missed a passage control and fell from contention. Perhaps that's why I can't remember the event!
With three heats down and zero points, our chances for the championship looked bleak. But we broke through to a win in the Midyear Rally which was run in areas to the south of Ballarat including the Shepherds Flat pine plantation and Scarsdale pine plantation, with the second half up towards Daylesford. I think this was the event where we started last car on the road. By the time we had cleanly found our way through the first section in Shepherds Flat we had already passed many cars. Fortunately there was no dust so our road position didn't hinder us much.
We followed this up with another win in the Hunter Safari, which ran in the forestry area to the north east of Yarrum, what we generally refer to as the Kangaroo Swamp forest. Between the mostly fast main forestry roads there are many smaller narrow tracks and the navigation was quite demanding. We had a clean run and won convincingly.
With two straight wins we were now back in the running for the Clubman Championship, in fact we were leading by 3 points from John Coleman and Bernard Peasely. The finale was the HAC Winter Trial, which apparently had been postponed from "winter" to"spring" and ran in November. We lost the event, and the championship when we were penalised several points (minutes) for speeding on a transport section heading from Heyfield to Seaton. As I recall, the instructions were not entirely clear and when we passed the derestriction sign leaving Heyfield I though that was the end of the 60 km/h speed limit but the organisers intended the "Quiet Zone" to continue well out of town past various houses. We took the incident to protest on the basis that the instructions were not explicit, but we lost. We would have won the event and the championship but those penalties dropped us out of the points. The championship went to CCRMIT members Ross Turner and Ian Pearson who won that event and beat us in the championship by a single point! C'est la vie.
