A blast from the past – participating in the 1970 Round Australia Ampol Trial
Clarke Ballard
The proposal by Rotary to set up a Satellite Club based on police members (which I thoroughly endorse) reminds me of an episode in my mis-spent youth, 1970 to be precise.
At that time I was deeply involved in car trials / rallying, both as a driver and as a navigator. I got a request from someone asking if I would navigate for him in the coming Round Australia Ampol Trial. I had never heard of him, which meant he was not a regular competitor, and I was not silly enough to team up with someone who could not drive competently. However, he seemed to have good sponsorship and I could otherwise not afford to compete in this prestigious event, so I talked to him. It turned out he was a fairly senior policeman, and was fully qualified by the police to drive its cars at insane speeds, so I presumed he could drive.
He also had arranged a lot of accommodation with police contacts along the way, which reduced the costs of competing.
His car was a Volkswagen 1500S – 1500 cc and the sporty model with twin carburettors. It developed about 65 HP from memory, which is not much. However, Volkswagens were competitive in those days on slow, gravelly and muddy roads because of their good traction. They were hopeless on fast roads because of their low power. The car was not new, but had been fitted with a brand-new (sponsor donated) Repco reconditioned ‘Gold Star’ motor and thoroughly mechanically overhauled, all by sponsors.
The event itself was Round Australia only because it started from every capital city and took all competitors by presumably similar distances and (boring) major and minor roads to a central point at Port Augusta. Our route from Melbourne included 300 km of dirt road and heaps of cattle grids along the Darling River between Burke and Wilcannia.
From Port Augusta there was a competitive stage of 24 hours or so to Alice Springs via some very interesting roads, tracks and dry river beds through the Flinders Ranges.
We lost no points to Port Augusta which was good, but so did heaps of others.
Between Port Augusta and Alice Springs, my driver was indeed pretty good, but insisted on fairly low tyre pressures, which are faster on loose gravel roads but prone to damage. OK, but the (donated) tyres were of low quality. We destroyed two of them, which were all we carried, and managed to change them without loss of time on transport sections. I kept suggesting higher tyre pressures with some success. That slowed us a bit but preserved the lousy tyres.
Perhaps more by good luck than good management we reached Alice Springs intact and won our class to that point. That put enough back into the kitty to buy us a full set of decent tyres and a heap left over for future contingencies. We were in good shape and well accommodated in Alice Springs by police contacts.
I should explain that the organisers recognized that cars would consume many tyres during the event, and provided ‘tyre trucks’ which carried all the spare tyres owned by each competitor, and available to them at each rest stop.
So, we set off from Alice Springs. At that time, Round Australia events tended to be very long; lots of 36-hour stretches with many transport (easy) sections and a few competitive sections thrown in on each stage. Quite dangerous in terms of fatigue, but that is how it was then (and still is for long distance events). However, one of us could sleep a bit on transport sections.
We went well for the first four days or so, which ended in Cooktown. We rapidly found out that the crucial maintenance need was to clean the VW’s air filter daily or twice daily, despite VW suggesting 6 monthly. The filter was always clogged by dust to the point of not working (never mind our lungs).
There was a welcome rest in Cooktown because, unlike the bitumen highway these days, there was then only one track in and out, a very rough and dusty one. So, all competitors had to rest for a full day to avoid on-coming rally traffic.
Off we went again. All good until we hit a dry river crossing too fast, and bent the right front wheel / suspension at 45 degrees. We pulled the bodywork off the mess and continued at reduced speed to the next overnight stay, which was far away in Townsville.
Our police contacts there were invaluable. The rules said we had four hours to service our car before it was locked away for 12 hours, supposedly forcing the crew to rest. Where would we get the parts to re-build and fit half a front suspension in four hours?
Our Townsville police friends were up to the task. They zoomed around the local wreckers with sirens blaring and collected the necessary parts in short order. We fitted them and bent the bodywork roughly back into shape with minutes to spare.
We were keen to sleep, but our hospitable hosts wanted to talk in the pub and hear all about the event. We could hardly refuse them so we started from Townsville very short of sleep.
The following stages were, from memory:
- Townsville to Brisbane via some interesting roads and tracks;
- Brisbane to Adelaide via competitive sections in NSW – cannot remember where;
- Adelaide to Melbourne via competitive sections in the Grampians and Mount Cole Forest;
- Melbourne to Albury via the Victorian high country;
- Albury to Cooma via the icy Omeo Highway to Bruthen.
We eventually learned that we were only 20 minutes or so slower on the long section from Mitta Mita to Bruthen than the fastest time (by a factory sponsored car). Then back north into NSW at Cooma via roads and tracks through Murrindal, Nimmitabel and Numeralla;
- Cooma to Canberra and then Bathurst, followed by a transport stage to the finish in Sydney.
The Melbourne to Bathurst stages were exhausting, with little rest.
We finished 49th outright out of 160 starters and 112 finishers. We would have done much better but for heaps of time lost between Cooktown and Townsville. Prize money from our class win from Port Augusta to Alice Springs was enough to rebuild and panel-beat the VW to a good standard and leave a fair bit in the kitty for future maintenance.
Over the following year we competed in the Victorian Police Rally Championship and won it.
Marriage and other priorities then tempered my enthusiasm for rallying, so the policeman, the VW and I parted company. As I said at the beginning, truly a blast from the past.