I retired from competitive rallying at the ripe young age of 25. I have no regrets about that. I married soon after the Repco Round Australia in 1979 and soon after I completed my PhD studies and took up full-time employment at the University of Melbourne. With a house to pay off and much less time available, neither the hours nor the dollars added up to an active rally program. Admittedly I had run my Datsun 1600 on the “smell of an oily rag” but competition was becoming more expensive and I would have been dissatisfied continuing to try to compete on such a shoestring budget. I had actually sold my Datsun 1600 at the end of 1978, as I had dedicated 1979, at least until August, to preparing for and competing in the Repco Round Australia, in which I had an “all expenses paid” drive with Wes Nalder.
I only competed in two events after the Repco. The first was the Ye Olde BP Rally which was directed by the late Peter Haas in late 1979. This was a throwback to the BP Rallies of yesteryear (the last real BP Rally was in 1973) and apart from covering a wide swathe of territory in western Victoria, incorporated quite difficult navigation based entirely upon the Broadbents maps (301 and 320) with no army survey or other maps permitted to be carried or used. Wes decided to give the Celica another run after its unsuccessful campaign in the Southern Cross in the hands of Jean-Paul Luc. For old times’ sake, Wes decided to invite my brother Noel to form a three man crew, the crew that was originally going to compete in the Round Australia before Noel took up the offer to ride with Brock. So it was a fun weekend, with nothing serious to compete for other than personal satisfaction.
The event wandered all over the map, taking in Mount Disappointment before getting serious up around Heathcote, then across through Dunnolly and eventually down past Mount Cole to a breakfast break at Ararat. The day was a run generally northwards to near Birchip before returning to Horsham for the overnight stop. In true BP Rally style, the sections were long and meandering but invariably with some difficult vias or a sting in the tail. Noel and I shared the navigating, Wes and I shared the driving, and I don’t think I was in the back all that much. My photographic memory for maps allowed me to negotiate the intricacies of the Heathcote and Dunnolly forests with relative ease, but we became unstuck on a via at Tarnagulla where I became convinced that the correct interpretation of the road on the Broadbents map was not the main road in from the east but a smaller track. We lost about half our event score there and I argued with Peter Haas about it at Horsham, with some support from Robin Sharpley who also agreed with my interpretation. C’est la vie, we were in second place at Horsham anyway, a safe distance behind Portman and Runnalls.
The Sunday daylight run went south from Horsham through the Grampians, then across to the areas south of Ballarat finishing with a tricky section through the Whipstick Scrub south-west of Ballan, before the social finish at the Myrniong Hotel. We thought we might be in with a chance when we arrived at the end of the first section in the Grampians first on the road, having not seen Portman and Runnalls along the way, but they had only gone looking for a trick and lost a couple of minutes. We otherwise had a clean run and held our second place.
My last event was the 1980 Experts Trial with David Jones, as described here. It was an unfortunate end to my rally competing with a retirement due to my car sickness. I had always been a bit prone to car sickness, and had even been car sick a few times with David Bond in 1973, but it was rarely a big deal. I was never car sick with David in the Lancer, nor with Kilf and I never recall being car sick with Dicko. But once I started driving I became more prone to car sickness with some drivers, particularly those with an aggressive style like my own. An example was with my friend Garry Spence, for whom I navigated in the intense Goldfields Rally in 1976, retiring at the mid-event break with intense car sickness. The same happened with David Jones in that Experts and it became clear to me that I could not continue to compete as a navigator, both because I did not want to let down the driver and because it was bad for my health (and certainly not enjoyable). Interestingly, as the years have gone by, I have become even more prone to car sickness (and sea sickness), which is perhaps associated with my diagnosis of Ménière's disease. Although I continued to be involved in car rallying through the early 1980s, through course checking and membership of the National Rally Committee, I would never return to competing, and eventually other interests took me away from rallying altogether.
