Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/142338
Rallyin' round David Gilchrist takes a look at the then and now of Australian rally car racing. A car bursts, roaring, from a thick cloud of red dust. "Five right, 30 long, seven loose," the co-driver calls – quiet, calm, confident. The driver, responding swiftly to his instructions, works the electronic gearshift, turns the wheel, brakes, accelerates. They drive in what amounts to an automotive cocoon, with no upholstery, just bare metal and two carbon-fibre seats tailored to the driver and co-driver. Nearly surrounding them, a roll cage takes up the rear passenger space. Altogether, these things keep the crew as firm, snug and as safe as they can be, hurling themselves along a bush track at high speed. They're racing a horde of other cars – Subarus, Toyotas, Mitsubishis; makes and models of all sorts. This is modern Australian rallying: all precision movements, contemporary engineering and seatof-your-pants daring. 26 In Australia, the sport started 60 years ago, back in 1953; then, it was about sheer, adrenaline-soaked guts in a high-speed fury that was the Redex Reliability Trial. In that first trial, 187 cars raced out of Sydney, grabbing the attention of newspapers and radio stations right along the eastern seaboard. Ahead of them lay 10,500 kilometres of bold driving and bush-bashing, high speeds and crashes, tomfoolery and amazing ingenuity. Seeing them off, a crowd of about 50,000, shoulder-to-shoulder and several deep, stood and cheered along Driver Avenue outside the Sydney Showground as they roared on through Sydney's northern suburbs, onwards to Northern Queensland, across to Darwin, then straight down through the nation's red centre and home to Sydney, with no other strategy among the drivers than keeping their fingers crossed and their accelerators down as they travelled a route (much of it along roads that were little more than bush tracks) dubbed the 'Calamity Trail'. Battling the bush was a menagerie of vehicles. To conquer a big country, there were big cars – and small ones. Among the smallest were Austins, Morrises, MGs and a Porsche. Among the drivers was celebrated race car driver Jack Brabham and the outrageous Jack Murray, who earned the nickname 'Gelignite Jack' thanks to his penchant for using explosives to "clear the road ahead" and destroy the occasional bush dunny. Careering along the track in his Ford Customline was a third Jack: radio personality Jack Davey. And keeping up with the lot was a Movietone News crew, who filmed all the thrills and spills. In the end, the team of Tubman and Marshall pulled in as overall winners of the 1953 Redex Reliability Trial, chugging home in their little Peugeot 203. It was the