CHAPTER 9
I was excited when Ford England asked me to take part in the London to Sydney Marathon Rally. I knew it was going to be a huge undertaking, although I wasn’t exactly sure what it would entail, but I said yes straight away. It was all the more exciting because I was going to represent Ireland and drive a Cortina Lotus that was assembled in Cork. I have fond memories of that car; the registration number was VPI 77 and it was cream with lime green stripes.
The London to Sydney Marathon ran from 24 November to 18 December 1968, with 243 men and 12 women entering the 10,000-mile competition. There were 98 cars with crews from 19 nations, some professional drivers in factory-backed cars and some private individuals. The idea originated when Sir Max Aitken, proprietor of the Daily Express, and two of his editorial executives came up with the idea over a business lunch in late 1967. The Daily Express put up a first prize of £10,000 ($24,000) and the Australian Sydney Telegraph awarded runner-up cash prizes. The Daily Express in London and the Australian Sydney Telegraph promoted the event, saying it was to be a spectacular feat of driving and human endurance. And they were right: this unique motorsport event captured the hearts and minds of millions of people all over the world, and I was part of it.
The route was carefully mapped out and the border controls organised by an eight-man team headed by Tommy Sopwith, a British businessman and former racing driver, and Jack Sears, popularly known as ‘Gentleman Jack’, who was a well-known figure in rallying. The route covered 7,000 miles, through 11 countries in as many days, before reaching the Australian outback and continuing a further 3,000 miles. I thought the Circuit of Ireland and the Monte Carlo Rally were big events but this was something else.
The only drawback was that I would have preferred to choose my co-driver/navigator. On any long trip you need to have someone you have confidence in, someone who knows your little foibles and who will be good company. Henry Taylor, Ford’s competition manager at that time, decided that Lucette Pointet should drive with me. She was an accomplished French rally driver and navigator who usually worked for Citroën, but there were communication problems from the start. I had never driven with Lucette before and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass me by just because I couldn’t choose my own navigator. Before we left, there was a big launch in Jurys Hotel in Dublin and we had smart white wool suits made for us by the British Wool Marketing Board. The whole outfit was totally impractical but it was just for publicity purposes. All the Ford team wore the same outfits.
Ford decided that the team should go to Gamecock Barracks, an army training camp in Yorkshire, to make sure we were in good physical health for the marathon rally. They were right to do this, of course, because it was obvious that the rally would make great physical and mental demands on us. I didn’t see it like that at the time and thought I was in top form and ready for everything. The men in charge put us through an army fitness course, where we had to jog, run, lift weights and do press-ups each morning and generally push ourselves to the limit of our endurance. I wasn’t very happy with all that, but I did it anyway and there were compensations. The army officers involved in the training were very friendly and put us through our paces with great enthusiasm, as well as providing good company and entertainment in the evening.
Detailed instructions were given on how to get out of the car if it should go into a lake, information I am glad to say that I never had to use. The serious part was having the route outlined to us: ferry from Dover to Calais, on to Paris and then into Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, across the Bosphorus and then into Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and finally, arriving in Bombay. I think it was only then that I realised this wasn’t going to be all fun and games, but I was up for it whatever happened.
We started from Crystal Palace Stadium in South London and my mum and dad and Aunt Lily came over to see me off. There were originally meant to be 100 cars in the rally, but in the end only 98 set off. We were car number 93 and so had to wait until 92 other cars were flagged away before we could take to the road. Eighty thousand people saw us leave the stadium and millions more lined the streets all the way to Dover, where the Maid of Kent was waiting to take us to Calais. During the crossing we were advised that we should not take the main road through Paris, as previously planned, because there would be no police escort. This was no handicap to me as I had plenty of experience driving through France, and in any case, didn’t I have a Frenchwoman sitting beside me?
Lucette and I should never have been teamed up. She was gentle and softly spoken, while I was my usual self, and driven. Her English wasn’t great, not that she spoke much; she just sat reading the road book and occasionally looked up to tell me to turn right or whatever. I don’t think she liked me any more than I did her. She did very little of the driving because it was a right-hand drive car, which she didn’t like. Some of the roads we went over were right-hand and some left-hand roads, which made it tricky at times.
Lucette was not enjoying the rally and she was either très fatigué or she wanted to manger. When we arrived in Milan, her mother, a very pleasant woman, was there to meet us with a bag containing a small knife and a huge garlic sausage for Lucette. I swear it was about 18 inches long and as thick as a milk bottle. As we drove through Italy, Yugoslavia and into Bulgaria, every time Lucette opened that bag to slice a piece of the sausage the smell was unbearable. I think we were somewhere in Turkey when I grabbed her sausage and threw it out of the window. I know it was unkind of me but I couldn’t stand it any more. In any case, it was the sausage ended any chance of an entente cordiale!
Up until Istanbul everything had been going fine, apart from the icy silence from the seat beside me, but after that things changed. We crossed the Bosphorus at dawn and it was just as if we had left one world and entered another. In reality, we had merely left Europe for Asia, but to me it was like leaving civilisation behind. The lorry drivers drove like madmen in Turkey and that drive to Sivas had to be taken at a slow pace to avoid a collision. It seemed as if everyone had come out to greet us and there were hundreds of men thronging the streets, with police trying to hold them back.
Ahead of us lay the 176 miles of unsurfaced mountain roads to Erzinican, the first really difficult part of the rally, and it was raining. The winding roads and wooden bridges made the going challenging, but finally there was a downhill straight run to Erzinican and a brief rest. The road to Tehran was generally good, but arriving there was a nightmare as the traffic was horrendous and little Vespa taxis sprang out from nowhere.
We had covered 3,600 miles in four days and passed through three time zones but still we were only halfway to Bombay. We drove on through the Iranian/Afghani border without any trouble and were now headed for Kabul. As we drove through the desert, the car was not running well; we were going slower and slower until finally the pistons packed up completely. As I may have already mentioned, I know very little about the workings of motor cars, I just like driving them, especially when they are in good working order. We had come to an abrupt stop in the middle of Afghanistan in the desert, and the heat was appalling. Lucette was muttering away in French but there was nothing I could do about it, the car just wouldn’t go.
As we sat there, hoping that one of the other cars would arrive to help us, camels and their riders appeared out of the sand dunes with the sun glaring behind them. Lucette became agitated, and I didn’t blame her, because the men, all dressed in white robes and turbans, advanced menacingly towards us, looking as if they had just come off the set of Lawrence of Arabia. The man who appeared to be the leader of the tribe climbed down from his camel and approached, waving his hand for me to get out of the car. I stood there in front of him, and when he spoke I feared the heat had got to me because his English was perfect and he sounded as if he had been educated in Cambridge. I tried to explain the situation and he listened patiently, but his comrades were not so civilised as their English-speaking leader. They began pointing to the boot of the car. I opened it, but all it contained were some small cans of oil, which they must have thought were Coca-Cola or something because one of them whipped off the top and began drinking it before spitting it out in disgust.
Lucette by this time was crouched in the car in tears. The men were pulling at my watch and bracelet and touching my blonde hair, which was no doubt a novelty to them. I smiled and tried to remain calm, all the while thinking that this wasn’t going to end well, when out of nowhere I heard a car approaching. I can still recall the relief of seeing that car racing along the road towards us. The Ford Cortina was driven by two British army officers, Lieutenant Martin Proudlock and Captain David Harrison, and, unlike ours, this car had all four pistons running. When I turned to look, I was amazed to see the camels and men had vanished as quickly as they had appeared. I met David at an event recently and I asked him, did he fire a gun to frighten the men away, but he said he had no gun; they must have seen the car in the distance and decided to leave. I might have thought I had been hallucinating, if it wasn’t for the camel droppings all around and Lucette whimpering.
Martin and David said they would tow us; they could hardly leave us all alone in the desert, but they knew it would slow them down. It was beginning to get dark as the tow rope was attached to our car and the temperature was dropping rapidly. It was freezing in the car because no engine meant no heating and so we swapped seats as we went along so that no one would have to endure long stretches in the cold. To add to our troubles, the rope snapped several times and got shorter and shorter as it was retied. The men remained calm and never seemed to lose their patience although they were probably raging inside. Towing could put you out of the competition, but we took a chance and trundled on. I knew we might be out of the event at this stage, but luck and Stuart Turner were on my side.
We got into Kabul hours late, at about 3 a.m. At the checkpoint, Stuart Turner, a gorgeous man who I was absolutely mad about, waved us in and stamped our time card. He was competition manager for the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and the stage end official. I met him recently at a dinner and when I told him that I had always wanted to drive for him, he said, ‘Why didn’t you ask?’ But I would never have had the courage to do that as a young woman. After all, he was at that time one of the most influential and accomplished managers in the business.
As we were so late, the hotel had let out our room to Afghan tribesmen, who were in the city for a cattle fair the next day. The room was meant for two people but there were about 10 of them sleeping there and the smell was dreadful. We decided to sleep in the lobby, where the fleas hopped around us for the rest of the night.
The company plane had flown in to Kabul with journalists, champagne and caviar, but no pistons. We had some makeshift repairs done in Kabul, but because the pistons had failed to arrive we were still struggling. We opted to take an alternative route from Kabul to Sarobi to avoid the Lataband Pass, but this was not allowed – we could have been disqualified as we were approaching from the wrong direction. Instead, we turned back and the only thing to do was to carry on to the border crossing at Torkham, which meant we had ahead of us the Khyber Pass, connecting Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Lucette was insisting we give up, but I refused. I knew as well as she did that the damaged pistons might not survive the steep inclines of the Khyber Pass, so I took my father’s advice from long ago: ‘If a car won’t go forward, it’ll go in reverse.’ So that’s exactly what I did. I turned the car around and drove the 33 miles of steep, winding roads in reverse. Rod Waller, the Australian cartoonist I mentioned before, sent me the most wonderful cartoon illustrating that drive over the Khyber Pass. He must be a fan of mine!
Once through the Pass, we descended towards Peshawar, where there were crowds of onlookers pushing themselves forward as well as chaotic traffic. Young boys were throwing rocks or trying to grab windscreen wipers as we drove to the Indian border. The border crossing was handled well despite the tensions between the two countries. Both the Indian and the Pakistani officials were so enthusiastic about the rally that they put their differences aside and the crossing only took a matter of minutes.
Safely into India, we set off on the 280-mile run to New Delhi. The road before us was a narrow strip of tarmac. Livestock, ox carts, bicycles and thousands of people appeared at every village. They were friendly, but it was very hard to avoid running into them as they leapt out into the road, waving and shouting in their hysterical excitement. As we approached Indore, we were reduced to a crawling speed to avoid running into the crowd.
(Waller)
The Cortina Lotus chugged into Bombay on 2 December, still with only three pistons, and I was happy and relieved that we had made it. We checked in and the car was immediately put into parc fermé. This literally means ‘closed park’ and is the secure area where the cars went for repair. Tired and exhausted, and as much in need of a rest as the car was, we made our way to the hotel that Ford had booked for us. The hotel manager took one look at us and said we couldn’t possibly stay there. ‘It’s not safe for women,’ he said. ‘You must go to the Sun-n-Sand Hotel.’ This was a hotel on the beach and I later learned that it is where crews from the airlines stayed on their stopovers. I didn’t know if Ford was going to be happy to pay for that, but the manager of the hotel insisted we couldn’t stay there. He wouldn’t even let us go out into the street to get a taxi and made us wait inside until he found a driver who he decided would deliver us safely to the hotel.
The Sun-n-Sand Hotel was luxurious and we stayed there for a few days awaiting our fate and attending cocktail parties in downtown Bombay. I was concerned because we were the 72nd car and there were only supposed to be 70 cars allowed on to the liner to ferry us to Fremantle. But I needn’t have worried because Stuart Turner made sure we got on to the SS Chusan: he knew how hard I had worked to get there and he wasn’t going to leave me behind. Before we left Bombay the cars were drained of petrol, steam cleaned and then loaded into the hold of the 24,000-ton ocean liner, by crane. The next time I would see the Cortina was in Fremantle, Australia. It was one of the last runs for that P&O liner, and it showed. It was a nine-day voyage with one stop at Colombo on the island of Ceylon, or Sri Lanka as it is now.
By the time we got on that ship on 4 December my relationship with Lucette hadn’t improved and we were hardly speaking. I put my bag in my cabin and went into the bar with the boys, who I knew well, having been rallying and racing with most of them in the past. We were having a great time but I was worried about Lucette, who had disappeared. Bad as our relationship was, I didn’t want to ignore her altogether, so I went to find her.
The cabin I had been assigned was a First Class one, and when I arrived my case was sitting outside the door. I knocked a few times and all I heard was Lucette shouting, ‘Allez-vous-en!’ My French is not good, but I knew this meant ‘Go away’. I did go away, to find the purser, and he confirmed that the cabin was mine; he came down with me to rectify the situation. Lucette was in the cabin with her boyfriend, who was driving for the Citroën team, and she told me I could use his cabin down in the bowels of the ship. Furious, I told her it was my drive, my sponsorship, and that they should leave. I never saw either of them for the rest of the voyage; it’s easy to avoid people on a big liner like the SS Chusan.
When we anchored in the harbour at Colombo, a flotilla of boats came to greet us and members of the local motoring club showed us the sights. That night, a dinner was served in the Mount Lavinia Hotel overlooking the ocean and a dancing display was organised, especially for us. The warmth of our reception and the hospitality shown were amazing. It was a pleasant interlude before the boredom that would set in on the rest of the journey.
As we entered the Bay of Bengal, the sea was rough and choppy. It was so bad that the water in the swimming pool on the top deck splashed over the side, saturating a man from one of the big London newspapers as he sat typing; the pool was drained after that. There was so much turbulence that a lot of the crews were sick and confined to their cabins. We were nine days on the ship and the PR people weren’t happy when Paddy Hopkirk told a BBC television crew that the sea journey was the best advertisement for air travel he could imagine.
We arrived in Fremantle on 13 December and spent our time checking maps and making sure the car was ready for the next stage of the marathon. From there, we drove 20 miles in convoy to Perth, escorted by the police, with a stern warning about Australian speed limits. We arrived at Gloucester Park horse race track at 11 p.m. and there were no spectators to watch us do a lap of honour: horses, their owners and spectators were long gone. The next morning, spectators did turn up to see the cars lined up around the race track and watch them leave at three-minute intervals. We had three days to complete the 3,000 miles to Sydney and the Cortina was running on two cylinders. There were no proper roads, just bush country, with the possibility of kangaroos jumping out at you. We had a kangaroo bar on the front of the car but if one of those hit us, roo bar or not, we could be off the road.
After leaving Perth we travelled 340 miles to Youanmi, once a gold mining town, but now there was nothing but a signpost, which we could barely see through the dust. On then for a further 200-odd miles to Marvel Loch, another mining town but this time with a few inhabitants and houses, before reaching Lake King. Ahead of us were 900 miles of outback across the Nullabor Plain, with unpaved roads, barely visible tracks and more bull dust. It was a treeless wilderness and difficult to see where the road began and the bush ended. The Cortina was trudging along but getting there, despite the fact that now, as well as the pistons, we had suspension problems.
On the way from Mingary to Menindee, we arrived at a place appropriately named Broken Hill, an isolated mining town. It wasn’t a hill so much as a mound, but we were stuck and couldn’t move. Some of the other cars were going so fast that they were able to fly over, but we couldn’t get up speed and needed a push. There were plenty of people around willing to help us, but RAC Steward Jack Kemsley was looking after this stage. ‘Please, Jack,’ I said, ‘just let them push me over the hill.’ ‘No, no, you’ll have to wait until all the cars come through. It’s too dangerous,’ was his response.
I was livid. Some cars had broken down along the way, we had made up quite a bit of time despite our mechanical problems and we were in with a chance of the Coupe des Dames, but Jack would not budge. Eventually we got going again, and with the wilderness behind us and a flat road ahead I was feeling confident we could finish in time.
Dawn on the last day was breaking as we drove into the Australian Alps and crossed the mountain ranges from Edi up and over Mount Buffalo to Brookside and around Mount Feathertop across Snowy Mountains to Numeralla in New South Wales. The long winding mountain roads with extremely deep inclines were a nightmare and my arms were aching with all the gear changes I had to make to get us through them. It was only 36 miles from Numeralla to the next stage at Hindmarsh Station, but just 14 miles of that was asphalt and the rest very rough gravel. The end was in sight and I was exhausted. We were back on a tarmac road and Warwick Farm was only 80 miles away. I was aware that dire warnings had been issued by the NSW police about speed limits being infringed but I just put my foot down and disregarded all the signs; it was my only hope.
The inevitable happened. I heard a siren, saw flashing lights and a police car pulled up in front of us. The policeman put on his hat and walked menacingly towards our car. I couldn’t help it, I broke down and the tears were running down my face – after all my hard work, this was going to be the end. The police officer approached the car and looked at me. ‘Are you the Irish girl?’ he said. I could only nod my head. ‘You’ve had a lot of trouble, haven’t you?’ I sniffed my agreement. There had been a lot of coverage of the event on the Australian media and that policeman had obviously been watching my progress. ‘My grandmother was from Cork.’ Thank God for those Irish ancestors, I thought. ‘Don’t you worry, put on your hazard lights and just follow me.’ ‘I might not be able to stay with you if you go up a hill,’ I replied. ‘It’s OK, it’s on the flat to Warwick Farm. I’m out of my district, but I won’t let you down.’
He put the lights on the top of his car and with the siren blaring we followed, dodging in and out and keeping close to our police escort. He brought us the 30 miles to Warwick Farm and left us there, and I was so sorry I didn’t ever get a chance to say goodbye and thank him. We were so late that the first cars had gone and most of the press too. Fifty-six of the 98 cars finished and we were 48th; only for those pistons and Jack Kemsley, we would have done much better but it was an achievement to finish at all. I left the car in the car park underneath the hotel for the Ford managers to take care of. The Cortina Lotus, VPI 77, is still alive and living in England somewhere. I never saw Lucette leave; she didn’t even say goodbye, she just seemed to disappear.
I boarded the plane in Sydney bound for London, from where I would fly home to Dublin. Not long after take-off, one of the Ford administrators handed me a bundle of telegrams and letters. Why he had to wait until we were on the plane to do that, I’ll never know. I was overwhelmed as I sat there reading them, knowing that we very nearly didn’t make it. After suffering the Afghan tribesmen in the desert, fleas in Kabul, faulty pistons, turbulent seas, Mademoiselle Lucette and dusty excuses for roads, the telegrams and letters of congratulations were a godsend. One of the letters was from Joe Hardy, who was the owner of Searsons Bar in Upper Baggot Street, Dublin, telling me that he was throwing a party for me on 21 December. What a wonderful evening that was! I was surrounded by family, friends and well-wishers and champagne corks were popping all night. That party was the best ending I could have wished for after the 230 hours of driving from London to Sydney.
The London to Sydney had been the greatest driving event of my life so far and I wondered if my next big adventure could possibly surpass it. I didn’t know what to expect when I undertook the longest rally ever to take place – the 1970 Daily Mirror World Cup Rally from London to Mexico.