This very radical Mark 7 was built and raced by Dick Murphy in Western Australia. Occasionally he would venture over to SA to have a crack at what could be offered at Mallala. These 3 photos were taken at Mallala in the 60s. My understanding is that this car is now a road car and still living happily in the west. I'd love to be updated on it. Maybe all the WA racing legends were called Dick. I immediately think of an old colleague, Dick Ward, who built very quick sports sedans and operated a motorsport shop (the best place to buy rod-ends and chrome-moly in Australia). To me his most memorable race car was a tiny little Fiat Abarth with rotary power that well and truly mixed it with the big bangers of the time.
Those old days at Mallala were good for Bolwell people (pre Nagari) and it is where I met such people as Doug Seath, Rick Clough, Chris Wall, Ron McPherson, John Szabo etc. etc. etc. (there wasn't a Bolwell club in South Australia until 1972. We were such show-offs because we could get a better view of races by standing on our roofs, something Holden owners wouldn't do. I recall Ken Stratton had the strongest roof, I think he had glassed in an extra layer, and there wasn't any worry about scratching it - he drove that Mk.7 for years and years in its undercoat as did Grant Deckert with his.
Those old days at Mallala were good for Bolwell people (pre Nagari) and it is where I met such people as Doug Seath, Rick Clough, Chris Wall, Ron McPherson, John Szabo etc. etc. etc. (there wasn't a Bolwell club in South Australia until 1972. We were such show-offs because we could get a better view of races by standing on our roofs, something Holden owners wouldn't do. I recall Ken Stratton had the strongest roof, I think he had glassed in an extra layer, and there wasn't any worry about scratching it - he drove that Mk.7 for years and years in its undercoat as did Grant Deckert with his.
Just looking at those photos made me think of the Stobie Poles at Mallala - you can see them quite plainly. Stobie Poles were (and still are) unique to SA and were made by joining steel girders (like railway line) with long bolts with concrete in between and were invented by a Mr. Stobie. That's how our electricity and telephone poles have been for as long as I can remember. Not the sort of thing you would want to run into. Anyway, there was at least one at the very edge of the track. The one that I am thinking of was at Clubhouse Corner, on the outside edge as you came out of the corner after the esses. Rob Butcher once drifted wide on that corner in his Mk.7, hit the Stobie and the whole front exploded into bits. There were no available moulds back then and Rob did his repairs by glassing all the bits back together. This same corner also caught out Scott Baxendale and Richard Gac in their Nagaris but the Stobie Pole had long gone by then.
ReplyDeleteI believe this was September/October 1970, Dik and crew drove over to the eastern states to compete at a few venues.
ReplyDeleteI believe this is about the right time as dad regaled the story of making a decision to travel over the westgate bridge or the other way that he was familiar with, he didn't take the westgate bridge route, luckily, the bridge collapsed at about the time they would have been travelling over it.