1954: Gelignite Jack, Pt.2

Continued from Part 1.

A quick note on the newsreel footage from which I've taken most of the following screenshots. There are two versions on YouTube: one by the British Pathé channel, which is of higher quality but incomplete and broken up into bite-size chunks, and one on a private channel, which covers the full distance but (as you no doubt noticed) is rather short of pixels. I haven't embedded it, because even by 1950s standards it is remarkably racist. Just for example, there is a slur for a woman of indigenous extraction which also happens to be one of my preferred alcoholic beverages, yeah? Well, the voiceover drops that word as if it's an honest-to-goodness technical term. That sort of thing comes out of nowhere and hits like a wrecking ball, and since I don't know how sensitive each reader will be, I haven't embedded it. It's fascinating footage and well worth a look, but if you do decide to check it out, consider yourself warned.

Now let me undo everything in the previous paragraph by including this very "period" map of the trial route, complete with racist caricature of a First Nations man (citizens since 1948, not that anyone seemed to've noticed...).

Broome to Meekatharra
Crews were scheduled their only 24-hour rest in Broome, but this was shortened by a couple of hours to close up the now-sizeable gaps in the field. It's estimated 167 competitors remained in the game at this stage, so scrutineers jumped on the opportunity to check as many cars as they could, finding (among other things) that the fancy Houdaille shock absorbers on Gelignite Jack's Ford were close to collapse. He was currently leading the trial, but how much longer could that last?

The road south to Port Hedland proved another horror stage, as several cars got stuck in a patch of soft mud about 35km out of Broome. Bill Lee's Hudson (car #226) was stuck there for more than two hours, and when finally released he had to sit on 150km/h wherever possible to make the Port Hedland control on time. He made it, but wiped out his front suspension and steering rack while crossing a creek bed a few hours later, so it availed him nothing.

This is a Hudson, but it's the #80 Super Wasp of Bob Gudgeon and Alan Platt. They would eventually finish 98th, with 276 penalty points.

Roads in this part of the world were a paradox. The wheel tracks themselves were usually a pair of soggy grooves up to a foot deep, worn into the sand. The crown between them, however, would pack down with the passing of vehicles until it set as hard as concrete. Suspension systems that had been battered by the trial left many cars now sagging and prone to bottoming out, leaving them vulnerable to striking the hard-packed crown, and the results were severe: at least fifteen sumps and gearboxes would be wrecked before the trial reached Marble Bar.

The Daily Telegraph's motoring editor, Tom Farrell, hit one of these patches of baked earth in his '54 Ford Customline (car #33) and broke a gearbox mounting. The 'box was left dangling precariously from its sole remaining support, but mechanic Frank Denlay was able to fashion a strap from a piece of scrap iron and bolt it on. Farrell drove carefully at first, but then upped the ante, then a bit more until, by the end of the stage, he was going absolutely flat out trying to make up lost time. The strap held all the way to Port Hedland.

Today, Port Hedland is Australia's busiest by tonnage, the point of departure for countless tonnes of exported iron ore. In 1954, however, all that was in the future, so the population (all 895 of them) made their living serving the cluster of nearby gold-mining towns. With its famous Comet gold mine, Marble Bar was one of these towns and, just as it is today, was renowned as the hottest town in Australia. Some of that was due to the atmosphere overhead, where the sub-tropical ridge constantly drew in air baked by the deserts of the Red Centre; some of it was the iron-rich rocks beneath your feet, leaving you effectively standing on a giant hotplate. This was the Pilbara, the region that would one day make Gina Rhinehart the richest woman in the country¹, and by some sort of inverse miracle the road leading there was even worse than the one that had brought them to Port Hedland.

The roads here wound through rugged, rusted hills, criss-crossed with deep gullies and rocky creek beds, testing the tired drivers every bit as much as their cars. Crews had to give it everything to meet the 50km/h average: if fatigue meant the driver was a touch late on the brakes (or those worn-out brakes didn't bite immediately...), the inevitable result was a crash. At least four cars turned over on this section, but three of them were able to push on. The fourth was Andy Spanner's embattled Chevrolet, which flipped over twice after an axle broke and a wheel was sent careening into the desert. Taking the hint, Spanner finally abandoned the trial.

Black Jack
Even Andy Spanner might've bought himself a lottery ticket after hearing what befell Jack Brabham on the following stage, however. Australia's future F1 World Champion had the misfortune to wreck his Holden on a huge boulder climbing out of a creek bed on the long run from Marble Bar to Meekatharra. Upon learning of this, Yours Truly reached for his copy of The Jack Brabham Story to see if the tale was recounted in the man's own words – and, hoo boy, yes it was. The woes of Black Jack are a useful counterpoint to the bottomless "arse" enjoyed by the Murrays: this is what the Redex Trial looked like if everything didn't go right.

Tommy Sulman, driving a big Humber, led us out of Marble Bar at night. We were supposed to be ahead of him, so I was keen to pass and pressed him pretty hard. After about 10-12 miles, we dipped down to cross a dry creek bed. I think the diff beneath Tommy's Humber hit a big rock, which it hooked and stood up on end, right in my path, and I hit it. The impact sounded like a bomb. [Mechanic] Harry and I were slammed forward. The rock smashed the car's entire front suspension assembly right back, leaving the front wheels outside the front doors, jamming them shut on us!

We were blocking the whole Trial. Eventually enough cars were backed up to provide sufficient manpower to lift the Holden bodily and dump it at the roadside. Everybody then rushed off and we were left alone. There was no sweeper vehicle nor back-up in those days. We just slept in the car 'til morning, then examined our problem. Basically we were stuffed. – Jack Brabham, The Jack Brabham Story

With no official vehicles following behind, it fell to another failed competitor (the first vehicle they'd seen in twelve hours) to drive them the short hop back to Marble Bar. Even in this established outpost of civilisation, however, help wasn't easy to find.

I found the tin-shed local garage deserted. At that moment a jeep drew up outside. Kennedy, the driver, worked for the Blue Speck goldmines and had come to "town" for supplies. I thought if I could get some oxygen bottles and welding gear, I might be able to get the Holden running again. Kennedy then drove me to the mine to get some oxy bottles but they were about 8 feet tall. There were piles of scrap metal around the site and I collected some pieces which might help us. We loaded the gigantic bottles and some welding rod into the jeep and drove back to Harry.

Our friendly miner said he'd give us a hand with the repairs and, for sure, we'd have the car running in an hour. When he saw it he just blanched and gasped, "Blimey mate! You are in trouble aren't you?" He made his excuses and left. Under Trial rules we had seven days food and water. Once again we were alone.

Next morning we began working. The front subframe was folded back and the radiator smashed around the front of the engine but we had a spare in the boot. We had to rebuild a frame to support the new radiator, and then remake a chassis subframe to locate the front wheels in approximately the right place. A real problem was a steering ball-joint which had been wrenched apart. We used some fencing wire to bind it up.

At about 4pm Harry announced a car was coming. I was under the car welding. It was another jeep driven by a local who had a station about 50-60 miles further on. The driver stopped and seemed riveted by our gigantic oxy bottles and how we got them. While he stood and watched, we restarted the Holden's engine but it made a terrible noise. The sump had been crushed in and the crank was hammering against it as it rotated. We had to remove the sump, hammer it straight, and then refit it. But it would not fit tight against the engine block. It was warped and created an oil leak that we couldn't fix. Still, we crept off at about 10-15mph following our "helpful" jeep driver. After 30-40 miles we reached a bar with a pump and refilled from our meagre spare supply. We bought all the oil that they had and limped on to our new friend's sheep station. He and his wife provided an enormous meal – our first in days. – Jack Brabham, The Jack Brabham Story

One can only imagine how interminable five-hundred miles of outback must feel when you're alone, tired, and stuck in an analog limp-home mode. Their steering broke "three or four times" before they reached Meekatharra, and despite hoarding all that oil, they ran out just short of their destination and were forced to sit by the roadside for several more hours until a stranger could pass by and sell them some more.

Nobody involved in the Redex Trial had a clue where we were. We'd been posted missing. Meekatharra, however, had telephones and we got a call through to Sydney. My father was on the other end and he nearly burst with relief! I told him we'd spend a couple of days in Meekatharra to do a better repair, then we'd drive the last 500 miles to Perth to meet him. But his last words were that he might try to get to Meekatharra to help us.

We rang the Perth dealership for parts … We desperately needed a new sump, fan belt, and our new radiator was leaking because our rough support frame had twisted the bottom off it. We'd been pouring in Barr's Leaks [sic] and anything else we could think of to seal it ...

They arrived by plane that evening but one suspension wishbone was cracked and about to fail completely, so we had to ring Perth again. However, instead of waiting for another plane, I welded the cracked wishbone and we set off. But the engine wouldn't run on all six cylinders and we wasted so much time trying to clear this that the plane with the part became due.

We drove out to the airstrip and the plane taxied in... and out stepped my father. Three-up, we drove pretty happily on to Perth. After three days in the GM dealership workshops we replaced the Holden's entire front end and finally drove it the 2,500 miles across the Australian outback to Sydney. We finally returned to Sydney about two weeks after the Redex Trial had actually finished!

I thought [our entrants] the Savells would be furious with us, but instead they seemed thrilled to bits with all the publicity – proving the endurance of the mighty Holden! It had been a fantastic experience, but after the trip I decided to stick to circuit racing. It was generally more comfortable. – Jack Brabham, The Jack Brabham Story

Meekatharra to Perth
Meanwhile, the rest of the crews arrived in Meekatharra – another gold rush town, albeit currently between gold rushes – and were greeted by the welcome news that the officials had decided to double the six-hour rest period that had originally been scheduled. The Murrays arrived with 80 minutes to spare², but had another run-in with the boys in blue over some unexplained explosions. Some even accused Jack of throwing gelignite at competitors who refused to move over and let the Grey Ghost pass, to which Jack responded: "I've got too much respect for gelignite to toss it from a moving car. But then we used to make a few stops, and that's a different story..." Naturally, the papers didn't let the truth stand in the way of a good story, cementing the legend of Gelignite Jack in the popular imagination.

MEEKATHARRA, Wed. – Police tonight booked Redex Trial leader Jack Murray for exploding gelignite in the street of Meekatharra.

Murray was driving out of the one-street town on the way to Perth.

He threw a stick of gelignite out of his car.

It exploded with a terrific bang, which startled all the residents.

Constable Reg Carr stopped Murray and took him and his co-driver, Bill Murray, to the police station.

He detained them for five minutes, took the number of their car, and allowed them to leave.

As he entered the car Jack Murray said: "This is a curl the mo job"³. Tonight Constable Carr refused to say what action police would take against Murray. – The Daily Telegraph, 15 Jul 1954, quoted in Phil Murray's Gelignite Jack Murray: An Aussie Larrikin Legend

After Meekatharra the road quickly improved, leaving this stage one of the easiest of the trial. A secret control 38km from Northam caught surprisingly few drivers – the reckless had long since been weeded out – and, knowing the worst was now behind them, the crews were in a generally positive mood. 

Almost as good as the cars are the vintage shots of Perth in the 1950s. Presumably a native could glean a lot from this footage.

That is, until it became clear someone had stuffed up. The official route map gave the distance from Northam to Perth as 61 miles (98km), which had to be covered at a steady 24mph (38.6km/h) to arrive on time. On reaching Perth however, the crews found that 98km only covered the distance to Perth's General Post Office, and there were another 10km between there and the control itself, set up at the Claremont Showground. The result was a mad dash through the crowded streets of Perth to make the rendezvous, although – for the first and perhaps only time – they were aided in this by Evil Knievels, who escorted crews through the CBD.

Even so, not a few cars checked in late and were handed penalties, which didn't sit right with either the teams or the officials. In an effort to sort it out, someone rang the ASCC office in Sydney and explained the situation (let's not think about how much that phone call would've cost...). Trial director Norman Pleasance advised that the Perth officials give the competitors an extra 15 minutes' grace and wiped out any penalties that had already been applied, to the relief of the affected drivers. But nobody thought of informing the rest of the field, meaning the 110km/h blasts through the heart of Perth continued until the very last car had checked in! Fortunately, the WA police were very understanding...

Perth to Madura
Two more contestants withdrew in Perth, leaving 144 of the original 246 cars still running. They set off on a day of torrential rain, but at last they were pointing their headlights eastward, beginning the long return journey to the finish line in Sydney. Even better, the road to Kalgoorlie was either paved or fairly reasonable dirt all the way, so the easy going allowed many drivers to bank up some time with a burst of speed and then pull over to do small bits of long-overdue maintenance.

Sadly, this leg was marred by two bad accidents, both likely brought on by drivers who'd had almost no sleep for two weeks. The first was Victorian David Doherty's Ford Zephyr (car #8), which ran into the back of a truck only 47km out of Perth. The car was virtually written off, and Doherty's crew (Harry Everett, Gordon Jolly, and himself) all suffered minor injuries that earned them hospital beds in Perth. The other involved South Australian grazier Arthur Shepherd, whose Peugeot (car #188) crashed into a ditch between Southern Cross and Kalgoorlie. Thankfully, this time the occupants escaped unharmed and were able to repair the badly-damaged front end and drive the car back to Southern Cross – whereupon they withdrew from the trial.

The miners of Kalgoorlie rolled out the red carpet for the trial, handing out free beer to the crews as they stopped to check in at the control point. From there they turned in a more southerly direction to intercept the Great Australian Bight, encountering a section of road that was dry, dusty and pot-holed (although the crews hardly even noticed, after what they'd already been through). At last they arrived in the greater metropolis of Madura, which was not so much a town as a roadhouse with ancillaries. It had an Indian name because it had been founded as a place to raise horses for the British Indian Army, and even though the local hotelier had brought in extra beds from Norseman (600km away), there was nowhere near enough accommodation for the mass of humanity that had now descended upon the place. Most crews shrugged and spent their six-hour break on the ground, too tired to waste any time acquiring a blanket – all except Jack Murray, of course, who spent some time goofing off with gelignite...

Bit of a story here. This image shows up everywhere, so Yours Truly got a bit of a shock when he opened Phil Murray's book and found the man on the right identified as Mr Keith Wilson, "a grazier from Gilgandra" – his hometown! So far, efforts to contact the family and learn more have failed, but if I find out more we'll be revisiting this image, nothing surer. (Source: Street Machine)

Madura to Adelaide
The road beyond Madura was that familiar bugbear of Australian drivers, the corrugated dirt road. In fact, the corrugations were among the worst to be found anywhere in Australia at this time, and were only made worse by the fact that the usual procedure for dealing with them – flooring it – wasn’t an option with the trial's average speeds to worry about. The resulting vibrations loosened every nut and bolt they could get their fingers into: windscreens rattled, fuel and brake lines leaked at the joins, electrical wires chafed through and interior trim began to loosen.

This merciless shaking was potentially the cause of the biggest incident of the entire trial – a fire that gutted the #246 Citroën of Arthur O'Shea at Koonalda, an hour after it had left the border town of Eucla and passed into South Australia. O'Shea, a Sydney motor engineer by trade, smelled something burning and belatedly realised the back of his car had caught fire. Waking co-driver Walter Wright, he made an emergency stop and both men leaped out just in the nick of time. A moment later the reserve petrol tank exploded and the whole car was consumed by flames. Unable to reach the extinguisher under the front seat, Wright and O'Shea were forced to fight the fire with sand. Help came from the Women's Weekly team, who helped shovel more sand into the car, but it was no use – the Citroën burned down to the axles and ended its days a blackened shell. The Grey Ghost reverted to its taxi origins as the Murrays gave Wright and O'Shea a lift to Adelaide.

It's hard to make out in a still image, but the bright object behind the windscreen is a tongue of flame. She was burned out alright.

After that, the rain that had soaked a stretch of road between Ceduna and Port Pirie (still shit) was an insult as much as injury. Only one car got bogged here and needed to be towed out, but the mud piled yet more strain on diffs, axles, gearboxes and clutches that were already at breaking point.

From Port Pirie to Adelaide was easy going, but upon reaching the South Australian capital competitors found the Perth mistake had been repeated – their route maps showed the distance to Adelaide's General Post Office, not to the control point at Morphettville Racecourse. There was another mad scramble through streets lined with spectators – even on a Sunday in the City of Churches, this was too good to miss – with the wiser crews stopping and asking locals for directions. There was another full and frank exchange of views with the officials, before they once again agreed to waive the penalties.

Adelaide to Melbourne
The departure from Adelaide degenerated into another confusing mess, after the ASCC asked contestants to cut their rest period short in order to close up gaps in the field – then changed their minds and put the start back to its original time. They tried to keep the drivers in the loop, but many of them turned up for the earlier start time anyway, bleary-eyed and badly in need of coffee, only to be told they'd have to hang around for more than an hour in the bitterly-cold pre-dawn darkness. Quite understandably they took this personally, and they only got more resentful later, when they were told their rest period in Melbourne would be reduced from twelve hours to six.

But karma's a bitch, and the officials lost some sleep of their own when they booked 141 cars leaving the Adelaide control. They phoned this information to the ASCC head office in Sydney, only to be told this was more cars than were currently in the trial! The miscount was the result of competitors who'd come in too late to be booked in at earlier controls, but were able to catch up in the meantime and get on the books in Adelaide, even though they were now officially out of the running. The resulting paperwork snarl made accurate estimates of the number of cars in the trial at any point virtually impossible, so treat all numbers as a best guess.

All that aside, there was little to trouble the cars on the excellent roads between Adelaide and Melbourne, and no secret controls either, so many crews stretched their legs all the way to arrive early and head straight to garages for much-needed maintenance before booking in at the control. The Murrays were kindly escorted in by the Victoria police, who were about as mellow as they had been in the Eureka Stockade days and were less concerned about speeding than they were about further errant sticks of gelignite. Despite their lead, the next-placed car was only eight points behind them: "I only had to sneeze and I could lose points," Jack remembered. 

I don't know for sure if that's St Patrick's in the centre of Melbourne, but it certainly looks like it could've been filmed on Macarthur Street.

Case in point, the scrutineers decided to give the cars a once-over while they were in Melbourne, which had dire consequences. David McKay, driving the #190 Austin A70, arrived in Melbourne equal 5th with only 22 points lost: the scrutineers then found he'd replaced his gearbox, which cost him 500 points and dropped him out of the running completely. The worst-affected however was a certain A. Holland in the #23 Holden, who was docked a whopping 3,000 points for replacing two chassis cross members, three shock absorbers, the differential, the radiator core, and various smaller parts.

After a too-brief six-hour rest, the competitors girded their loins for the final leg of their journey. For an ordinary motorist the run from Melbourne to Sydney would've been an endurance drive all by itself in those days, but now it was little more than an afterthought given what they'd already achieved. The route cards for this final section had deliberately been kept secret until now, with the big reveal being that the crews would head back to NSW via the Australian Alps. They would proceed through Orbost, then the old towns of Adaminaby (inundated 1956) and Talbingo (1968) at an average speed of 55km/h: this would be lifted to 60km/h for the run to Canberra, where a 30-minute rest period was scheduled. From there, they would head out to the coast via Macquarie Pass at 58km/h, and finally up the Princes Highway to Sydney at a mind-numbing 34km/h.

Weighing the hills against the generally-smooth roads ahead of them, many competitors chose to jettison some weight ahead of the final push. This included the Murrays, who tossed out everything except the standard roadside-repair toolkit. "I'm taking a gamble," Jack admitted to the papers. "If we strike any real trouble, we're gone a million."

Melbourne to Sydney
Only 127 cars left Melbourne, the first of them at 6:00pm on Monday, 19 July: it was due at Sydney Showground 25 hours later. Despite the good roads ahead, real trouble was not out of the question. Drivers fretted about snow and possible secret controls, but ultimately few cars lost points on this stage, mostly because any weakness had been ruthlessly purged long before.

What the drivers were most afraid of was snow, and it wasn't an unfounded fear. We won't repeat the nonsense about Australia getting more snow than Switzerland – that dates back to a single misunderstood line from a tourist doco dating to about this era, and it simply isn't true (no, not even by area). But it's equally untrue that we get no snow at all so, just to be clear, when the BoM forecast snow, this is what they were worried about:

Snowy Mountains Highway (not a clever name) near Kiandra, winter of 2014. (Own work.)

As you can see, that's hardly metres of white powder à la Europe, but it's still enough to cause trouble for motor vehicles (or would've been, had the snow plough not been hard at work that day). So of course, what did they get instead? The lightest snowfalls in living memory!

A light dusting and black ice still made the roads slippery, and the 130km section from Adaminaby to Tumut was muddy thanks to recent rain, but again, these people had already been through hell – the Murrays never even needed the special snow tyres they'd fitted in Melbourne. Indeed, in typical Team Murray style, the pair pulled over to burn some time building a snowman, and amused themselves by throwing snowballs at startled competitors passing by!

No, the only proper hazard (apart from the usual handful of creek crossings) was Talbingo Mountain. Again, I can report from personal experience that the descent from Inspiration Point to the Talbingo turnoff is no joke: it's steep, it's winding, and it will absolutely melt your brakes if you're careless. I've been down there in a modern, disk-braked Corolla and felt the adrenaline stir as the pedal got squishy. I can't imagine what it would be like in a vintage Ford with drums all-round, but the record shows the Grey Ghost's brakes did indeed give up the ghost. They left Gelignite Jack relying on engine alone as he coasted down at 80km/h, fighting his tight steering gear to keep the car from smashing into trees or falling off a cliff. Bill Murray remembered:

The very steep mountain road near Talbingo rivalled for toughness the Mt Isa section. The car's brakes failed on the mountains and we drove down at 40-50 miles an hour in second gear. Quite often we had close calls in keeping our points-free record. On the Talbingo section we had only minutes to spare.

The appropriately-named Superintendent Snowden of the NSW Police reported: "I drove over the Snowy Mountains road a few days ago. To travel faster than 25mph would be unsafe." Jack and Bill averaged 55mph (88km/h), including a "snowman stop"! The 3rd-placed driver, Duck Anderson, had an even wilder ride: his brakes failed completely and, after zooming down the mountain at 110km/h, he only saved the car by jamming it into second gear to get round a tight bend at the bottom.

Yet the only competitors to run out of luck on this stage were Ralph and Jim Wilson, who planted their #701 Volkswagen in a ditch near Yass and badly dented one side. The descent at Macquarie Pass also proved tricky for those who didn't know the road, but thankfully there were no mishaps, and from here on it was just a matter of touring to the finish on good, smooth, tarmac roads. As the cars threaded through Wollongong in the afternoon, people lined the streets and police had to form chains to hold back the crowd. By the time they got to Bulli Pass and the Princes Highway, double lines of parked cars and bystanders cheered and honked at the passing trial crews.

The finish line (Source: Street Machine)

The first car checked in dead on time at Sydney Showground, but later the ASCC officials decided there was no point keeping the 20,000-strong crowd waiting. Cars that arrived early were allowed to check in within a few minutes, so long as the sequence was maintained. So it didn't matter that they were actually due to finish at 9:56pm: around 9:25pm, as they approached Moore Park and Driver Avenue, the police peeled off to let the Grey Ghost enter Sydney Showground in solitary splendour. As Jack told Neil Bennetts in 1976:

Across the Nullarbor and practically back to Sydney, it was eventful but not like it had been: lots of bitumen, and got escorted everywhere, more or less nursed back to Sydney, and the police met us up at Moss Vale and said, "If you let one stick of jelly off, you'll be locked up. You follow us from here to Sydney Showground," and we followed the police, four of them – I think it was Ford too – and they went faster than we'd ever been. We were flat out keeping up with them. We got there about half an hour too early and we crossed into the Showground. We had a lot of luck, and that was it – and then we became more or less famous.

As they were both non-smokers and teetotallers – very unusual in those days! – Jack and Bill celebrated with a piece of cake baked by Mrs N. Hawke, wife of Alec Hawke, a fellow Bondi garage owner. It was decorated with the words "Gorilla Jack" and featured a model car. Their epic round-Australia odyssey was finished, and it had been done in the most Aussie style imaginable – with a cheeky grin, a liberal attitude toward explosives, and, err, a big V8 from Canada...

How It All Shook Out
The Murrays then survived a protest from Peter Antill, who pointed out that at some point they'd disconnected the Grey Ghost's shock absorbers, so it should no longer be considered standard. The ASCC dismissed the protest and upheld Gelignite Jack and Bill Murray (No Relation) as the winners of the 1954 Redex Round-Australia Trial (Over 2,500cc class), with an astonishing score of zero penalty points – none, nihil, zilch. 15,000 car-wrecking kilometres over eighteen days, and the Murrays hadn't checked in late even once. It might've taken a fair dose of luck, but only the most unconditional curmudgeon could say it was more arse than class. They had the tool for the job, and they'd done their homework: you might say, preparation had met opportunity.

A worthy 2nd place overall (and victory in the 1,100-1,500cc class) went to Bill Patterson in the #29 Peugeot 203, with 8 points lost. Behind in 3rd, and also winner of the 1,500-2,500cc class, was A.A. "Duck" Anderson in the #176 Holden, with 14 points lost. No cars in the under-1,100cc class finished, but the NSW Holden team took the team's prize, with 110 points lost between their three cars. The Victorian Holden team (of which Lex Davison and Stan Jones were a part) came in 2nd, with 112 points, while the Rootes Group (Victoria) team of Humber Super Snipes managed 3rd, with 127.

The pub debates over the event in the following months were many and comprehensive, mostly concerning the glaring loopholes in the rules – what if another car had finished with zero penalty points? Would the ASCC have called it a tie? Or, given the damage to the Grey Ghost, might they even have passed over the Murrays for the win? Nobody knew, but since that was the subject of all the chatter in the pubs, the people at Redex were fine with it. Sadly, the 1955 event ended up, in Jack's words, "more or less a schemozzle". The route was even longer – almost 17,000km thanks to extra jaunts to Tamworth (NSW), Carnarvon (WA) and Broken Hill (SA NSW) – but late in the event the route took competitors through a bog at Werong (near Wee Jasper, 12km south of Yass). Recent rains meant almost half the field found themselves bogged, a situation that lasted more than ten hours. When they were finally towed out, many of the crews elected to head straight home, not even bothering to book in at the final control in Sydney. All this meant the 30,000 people who'd paid to view the finish hardly even glimpsed a trial car, which rather took the shine off the event. After that, Redex declined to sponsor the 1956 trial, and although Ampol and Mobilgas picked up the torch for the rest of the 1950s and 60's, it was never really the same again. Only the Repco Trial of 1979 created headlines to match that 1954 event, but that is a story for another day. The last great round-Australia trial – sign of the times, the "PlayStation Rally Round Australia" – took place in 1998, and it was won by a Holden Jackaroo (the local name for the second-gen Isuzu Trooper). I know they were becoming the mean family car at the time, but still, I feel 4WD was rather against the spirit of the thing.

Source: Australian Rally History

So I suppose the big question is, should we bring them back? I say yes, but with an asterisk (and fair warning, you're going to hate me for this): it has to be for EVs only. I know, I know, I can hear you throwing things at your screen already, but hear me out. Electric vehicles are currently in a similar boat to the motor car of the 1950s – an expensive novelty, but getting cheaper, and with mass adoption both imminent and necessary. A big, splashy trial to test them to destruction and prove what they're really capable of might do wonders for uptake, especially if it motivates the right people to get off the couch and start putting in the necessary infrastructure. We might even get really sensible and mandate the use of hydrogen fuel cells instead of heavy, resource-hogging batteries – wouldn't that be something? At the very least, it would annoy everyone in the comment sections of all those Redex YouTube videos who think it's clever to type, "You can't do that with an electric car!"

Electric rally cars are already here, after all... (Source: Acciona)

Just promise me one thing. If we do this, we have to throw in some proper rally stages, both as fodder for the spectators and as a way to separate competitors who might otherwise be in danger of clean-sheeting the entire event. Because we have to make absolutely sure that no-one ever matches the achievement of Gelignite Jack and Bill Murray (No Relation), and finishes a lap of the Great Southern Land with a final scoresheet reading zero. Ever.

¹ Note to whom it may concern: Someone out there has the masters of House of Hancock. Release them. If Gina didn’t want us to see that show, I think it’s vitally important for us to see it.

² No, I don’t know why they weren’t penalised for that.

³ A slang expression meaning "excellent" or "really good".