1975 Victorian Rally Champions

Probably taken at the start of the 1975 Akademos Rally

After sitting out 1974 due to lack of funds, David Bond decided to tackle the 1975 Victorian Rally Championship with a very clear goal – to win it! I was pleased that he invited me to join him again and I looked forward to being back in the car with David. David, ever thoughtful, used the latter part of 1974 to plan his attack on the 1975 VRC. The choice of the Lancer was obvious - it was the rally car of choice with excellent handling characteristics. David purchased the car from Clark Chrysler, the local dealer, and also negotiated a reasonable sponsorship deal with them. Ian Pearson, previously a navigator, also decided to turn to serious driving and would run another Lancer with the sharp witted Geoff Schmidt as navigator. My good friends, Garry Spence and Noel Kelly, were running a Galant, mostly in the Clubman series, and also gained some sponsorship from Clark Chrysler. We became known as the Clark Chrysler Rally Team, complete with fancy jackets and hats!

David and I first tested the car in close to its showroom form during the 1974 Alpine Rally. As an assistant director, I had David chauffer me around much of the route as car zero. We had a great time throwing the car around the pine plantations at Koetong and through the true alpine country southwards, including the Omeo Highway. By the start of the 75 season the car had some suspension work done but still a bog standard engine. I think the competition engine was being developed by Bob Riley in Sydney, but in any case, come the opening round of the 1975 state championship, it was not ready and we had to run the standard engine.

The Penfolds Trial was held predominantly in the fairly flat and sandy Colquhoun Forest near Bairnsdale (now better known for the modern Classic Alpine Rally) so the power disadvantage would not have that much impact. Some sections ran northwards into the traditional mountainous Akademos country and these would be more telling. The opening round of the championship is always an unknown as new crew combinations and cars were being tried. The navigation was straightforward enough (the organisers supplied an accurate tailor-made map) but we had a completely clean run. The only real drama I recall was fairly early in the event when a freshly fallen tree blocked the road but we quite quickly found a detour around it, just a few metres off the road. Many other people did likewise but there was a protest after the event and we appeared at the hearing in support of the organisers who refused to delete the section. The organisers were our team mates, Ian Pearson and Geoff Schmidt (as was as John Pfeifer), but in reality we had quite a few other supporters on that protest. If the section had have been deleted I believe we migth have dropped a place as fifth placed Bonhomme/Suffern were the big losers at the fallen tree. The event was tightly contested and because it looped around a central control, we were able to get a regular update on the scores. Another minor drama mid event was approaching a control down through a fairly steep dip and we found a closed gate in our way. We smashed through it with minimal damage. We believe a previous competitor must have left the latch undone. Phew! Our main competition was coming from David Hodge, another navigator turned driver, who was running a Datsun 1600 with navigator Mick Brasier. Being closer to the front of the field, we arrived at the finish ahead of them and eagerly awaited their arrival. Despite some failing suspension, they did win and we held second place 3 points (minutes) behind, which we were pretty pleased with considering the underpowered engine we were running. The car had proved really reliable and handled superbly. David’s flowing driving style was clearly combining with the car to form a fantastic package - quite a contrast to some of the other drivers I had navigated for the previous year! In particular, David had the handbrake turns working to perfection. The Auto Action report of the event is here and here.

The next round of the championship was The Derrick which I was helping Noel to organise. I asked Frank Kilfoyle to navigate for David and they had a good time, although were not particularly successful. I don’t even remember whether they ended up in the top six or not. I think the next event may have been the Akademos, run in its traditional territory north of Bairnsdale. It was a round of the Australian Rally Championship, not the state championship, and hence we were up against the likes of Fury, Carr, Bond, Kilfoyle, McLeod and Dunkerton. We had a pretty good run and I think finished around sixth (we do not show in these results, but I think we may not have been eligible for ARC points). My main recollection was that Kilf had gone off in a big way in the Datsun 710 on the very last section which ran up Angora Range Road and all the way back down to the south. It was about 100 kilometres I think. Kilf had put super sticky tyres on the front and was going to have a go, but he ended up so far off the road that we never saw the car! I think we were chatting about it when we nearly went off on the next corner!

Probably on the Akademos (Photo: Klaus Ferck)

The next (third) round of the state championship was the Midlander. It was a fun event run both in the tight goldfield forests south west of Maryborough and in the Mount Cole forest. It was a fully route charted affair but a tricky instruction in the pine plantation area on the east side of Mount Cole caught out quite a few cars, including John Armitage who was to subsequently unsuccessfully protest the instruction. I had plotted the route onto my maps, so I knew where I was going and whether the instruction was TL or THL was of no great concern to me! The first and last parts of the event were around the Amherst area and we were fairly blitzing the competition. We had started Car 9 but somehow we had found our way to being first car on the road, although I don’t recall actually passing anyone (it was very dusty). The only real drama was that we nearly got pinged for a dangerous entry into the final control, which would have been a real disappointment (effective disqualification). David was really flying and as he stopped for the final control the back locked up and we nearly spun. The front of the car just nudged the control official’s table! The adrenalin was really pumping - we were on a high because we were having a great time and we knew we were in command of the event. This was back in the days when control officials often put the timing marker far too close the control point.

Bruce Keys took this at the end of the Midlander.

The next championship round was the Midyear Rally, directed by the tall and wiry navigator, Tony Walsham. It was also fully route charted, commencing with a daylight dash around the Garibaldi pines south of Ballarat, then taking in the forest areas around Smythesdale. The second half was almost entirely in the Wombat State Forest around Daylesford. I think we started third or fourth on the road but when we got to the end of the first night section, at least one of the cars in front of us had gone missing. I hadn’t seen the problem with the instruction where they went wrong, perhaps because I knew exactly where I was going, but we were not too concerned. We proceeded to have a lovely time in the damp conditions and towards the end of the first half we caught and eventually passed the only other car in front of us (there was no dust). It was always a buzz to catch and pass someone since you really knew you were motoring if you could pick up two minutes within a single section. This put us first on the road. We seemed to run the rest of the event in a little world of our own, having a dream run. Various havoc occurred behind us, to be which we were totally oblivious. Once near Daylesford, there were some looping sections and we were able to get news that we were way out in front. In fact we had pulled out to be about twenty minutes ahead of any other car. This played to our advantage because a heavy fog descended on the forest towards the end of the event and it slowed speeds considerably. However, it had only a minimal impact on us during the last couple of sections, whereas cars further back were affected on many more sections. In the end, I think we won by a proverbial country mile, whatever that was in those days (20 minutes or so as I recall).

The Experts Trial was always going to be a tussle between myself and Geoff Boyd, recognised as the top two navigators of the day. I spent a lot of time preparing maps and going out surveying the Graytown Forest, and it paid off. The event was much easier than in previous years, or perhaps I was just getting more experienced. It was also the first Experts to use the Puckapunyal Firing Range area in daylight, but all these sections were fully route charted. The night sections comprised three loops out of the Graytown central control area. There was very little trickery - just lots of map plotting and careful navigation. I was not quite careful enough and two or three times I missed turns and wasted a valuable minute. Harrowfield and Boyd won the event by a few minutes from us, and as I recall, there was a reasonable gap back to third place.

Some great shots from the Experts Trial taken by Bruce Keys

The North Eastern Rally was second last in the series and if we won it, we would win the championship. It turned out to be a fairly wet event run in Stanley, Ovens and Merriang pine plantations around Beechworth and Myrtleford. The wild card was that George Fury was running a works Datsun 710 as a prelude to the Southern Cross, so he would be expected to be very competitive. The first part of the event, which included some daylight, was mostly fairly short sections, and with minute timing I don’t think there was much in it. A long section in Ovens was quite memorable because we caught Doug Irish and Mike Mitchell, who were running first on the road in their Torana. Doug wasn’t going to let us past but it was really slushy with plumes of mud spraying out the back of his car. He was really trying to hold us off and we very nearly ran into his passenger side door on one tight left hander when he got it totally sideways, almost spinning off the road. He then let us past. The sections in Merriang were superb and I recall reaching one spot where we must have looped back on ourselves and we were able to get some intelligence on Fury who was running a few cars behind us on the road. The news was good - he was having some trouble with the slippery conditions in the new Datsun - wrong tyres perhaps, and we were taking the odd minute off him. We ended up winning the event and hence the championship.

The Clark Chrysler Team. perhaps after the North Eastern [photo: Ken Cusack]

Clark Chrysler did a bit of advertising.

It was at about this time of the year that they held the “Holden Dealers 500”, a fully daylight special stage event in the APM pine forests in the Latrobe Valley and south of Sale. The Saturday afternoon comprised a couple of short stages near Morwell and we had a slight off and a subsequent puncture, which cost us dearly. The starting order the next day was in position order so we were way down the field, like about thirtieth. It wasn’t to be our day anyway, and we had some mechanical problems - can’t recall what, but we lost more time. David also seemed to be off the pace and indeed I was overshooting the odd corner as well. It was a good event to not do well in since it was not part of the championship, which we had won anyway.

The last round of the championship was the Hunter Safari held around Erica. Again, we seemed to have a slightly off night and were just off the pace. We finished in sixth place but it was not our event. The stages were generally quite fast and quite short which was never the Lancer’s forté. David assures me that we slipped off the road at some stage and lost quite a few minutes although I seem to have erased that from my memory. We needed to win the event in order to win the “Driver to East Africa” award which Uniroyal Tyres were offering that year. It was based on the best performance in all the state championships across Australia, so that we weren’t directly competing with each other. In the end, John Brock from Tasmania won the award which included an all-expenses paid trip to Kenya to watch the East African Safari.

The final event of the year was the Alpine. We had the luxury of starting second on the road behind Ross Dunkerton and he rolled on the second stage, leaving us first on the road. Actually, we had to stop and help him push the battered Datsun 260Z back onto its wheels and out of the way and we had to claim two minutes back later on. Those two minutes proved critical and I think we finished fifth outright (the results here suggest we finished second but that must have been of ARC eligible cars only), just a minute or two ahead of Garry Harrowfield who matched our times minute for minute for the entire event. We eventually gave up our first position on the road to the eventual winner, Greg Carr, during one of the very long night stages when we punctured. He passed us on Mount Elizabeth Road, way down south of Omeo. It was a long and tough event, which I was to direct for the next three years.

The Victorian Trials Championship was renamed the Victorian Rally Championship in 1972 but CAMS had plenty of old medallions!

In terms of the Victorian Rally Championship, we had three wins (Midlander, Midyear and North Eastern), two seconds (Penfolds and Experts) and a sixth (Hunter Safari). The seventh event was the Derrick, of which I was co-director. It was a very successful year and thus it was a surprise to many people that David decided to retire the following year due to lack of funds. Meanwhile I picked up a permanent ride with John “Dicko” Dixon who ran a Datsun 120Y during 1976 and 1977.