Three legends of Australian rallying were inducted at the inaugural Australian Motor Sport Hall of Fame ceremony in Melbourne recently.
Five-time Australian Rally Champion Ross Dunkerton, three-time champion and highly versatile motorsport driver, Colin Bond, and the late, round-Australia specialist Gelignite Jack Murray joined 30 other greats honoured at the ceremony, an initiative of the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, on the eve of the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix.
Here’s an overview of the rallying winners.
Ross Dunkerton
Born in Fremantle, Ross Dunkerton is Australia’s high achiever when it comes to Australian rallying. He won the Asia-Pacific Championship in 1991 when 45, and again the following year when a full-time driver with Mitsubishi.
But long before this, in the heyday of Australian rallying, he won the Australian championship five times in nine years, including three years consecutively.
This was all in Datsuns, but while tying up his fourth championship in a Datsun, he squeezed into his schedule the highest mileage, least time-off-for-sleeping, 1979 Repco Reliability Trial in a Volvo, finishing fourth behind the three-car Holden Commodore team.
He won the Southern Cross Rally in 1980, beating the mighty works drivers from Ford, including Ari Vatanen.
Twice in the Repco, Ross’s humour was tried when one of his crew leapt from the car as Dunkerton bumped his way through a gate overtaking another competitor, but leaving his man behind.
This then required a return to pick up the stranded gate-opener. On another occasion the same victim spent nearly a kilometre hanging on grimly to the boot rack when a gate expected in a hundred metres or so was open.
Dunkerton has won over 100 rallies and is close to becoming the driver with the most rally wins anywhere.
He is a member of the Rally Hall of Fame and still competes regularly. He is Australia’s living rally treasure and rallying applauds him.
Jack Murray
‘Gelignite’ Jack Murray was one of the great characters of Australian motor sport. A Bondi garage proprietor and taxi owner, Murray used a six-year-old Ford, dubbed the Grey Ghost, to win the second REDeX Trial in 1954.
He raced a D-type Jaguar at Bathurst and was in the BMC works team in the first of the cross-world marathons, the 1968 London to Sydney. At the start in London, his Royal Highness, Prince Michael of Kent, was a little too close to Jack, who had a spare fire-cracker which quickly found its lit way into the pocket of the Prince’s Tweed sports coat!
This was soon after Jack had illegally water-skied up the Thames River, past the Houses of Parliament, before scarpering from the pursuing police.
After his REDeX trial win, Jack was keen to claim all the provisional prize money that was offered. At least two spark plug companies had provided provisional prize money and Jack’s V8 Ford had left and right hand side bonnets.
All of which went well until both companies ran their success ads in the newspapers the next day, both claiming victory!
Colin Bond
Colin Bond’s list of successes is enormous, far too many to list here. But what’s really impressive is that his rally pedigree is just as strong as his circuit racing record.
When asked what he thought of Australian rally drivers, the great Finnish driver, Rauno Aaltonen, said he had no doubt that Colin Bond would have been in the top six in the world if he went rallying in Europe.
Then there was a wet Saturday practice at Warwick Farm. Frank Matich let Colin have a go in one of his Formula 5000s.
It was a long time since Colin had driven a single seater and never one like this, but by the end of the session Colin was fastest, well ahead of the car’s owner.
His achievements include three New South Wales Hillclimb Championships, victory in the Bathurst 500 in 1969, Australian Rally Championships in 1971, 72 and 74, and the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1975.
As easily as most of us check the letterbox, Colin drove race and rally cars of widely different capabilities and technology, rarely making mistakes.
He was the mastermind behind Ford Australia’s rally success with the Escort RS1800 and the team won the ARC and many events.
- Chris Nixon / Dallas Dogger
SUBSCRIBE BELOW TO READ THE FULL STORY
