Simon Brown, my Alpine Rally Organising History - the Alpine Rally Vibe

 

Simon Brown, my Alpine Rally Organising History

The Australian Alpine Rally is the second oldest motorsport car rally in the world after the Monte Carlo Rally, and is in the top 10 oldest motorsport events in the world, having first been run in 1921 by the RACV and then known as the Alpine 1000 Mile Trial.

In December this year the Historic Rally Association is conducting the 100^th running of this classic Motorsport event. Now known as The Alpine Rally of East Gippsland it is running on December 2 – 5 this year and is based in Lakes Entrance in East Gippsland Victoria.

This document outlines my experiences with the Alpine Rally as Official, Admin Officer, Director and then Promotor between 1984 and 1992.  It also touches on the events around the end of my role as Director and Promoter in 1993 and details how the current day Alpine Rally has evolved into one of the greatest and highly regarded Motorsport events in Australia, if not the world

I first attended the Alpine Rally in 1973, and then competed from 1975 to 1982 and then again from 2000 until 2007 with six different drivers in eight different Nissan/Datsun rally cars for eight finishes from 13 starts.

Since 2007 I have attended just about every event until today as either Service Crew or Set Up Official

So, the Alpine Rally has been part of my life for 48 years.

 

Simon Brown, my Alpine Rally Organising History 

I was first dragged in on the organising side of the Alpine Rally in 1984 as Spectator Control with Peter Finger who worked with me at Datspares at the time, having last competed in 1982 with George Fury in the Jamie Drummond built Datsun 120Y which was designed to be an Escort beater.

 

Following the change of date from November to April and skipping 1985, from 1986 to 1989 I moved into a part time Admin role at the Light Car Club of Australia office with Margaret Hardy and Stuart Lister.  This included compiled a lot of Official documents like the Final Regs & Guide to Competitors and co-coordinating the Spectator Guides with Mike Welsh and the printers. On the events, I handled Spectator Control and Set Up with then LCCA Chef Eric Etterich.

In 1988; on a weekend stop over on my way to Japan for work, I went to the Rally of Malaysia, FIA Asia Pacific Championship round, look at drumming up some international interest for the 1989 BP Visco 2000 International Rally.  At this stage the LCCA, with the Alpine Rally Chairmanship of Bob Watson, was forging greater ties with BP.

For 1989 I also took on the role of Editor for the Auto Action lift out Spectator Guide.

 Note: And I see that the first Auto Action lift out was 1984 featuring the fantastic Enka Fill Alpine Rally centre spread

and poster – probably the best ever poster, although I personally like the 91 poster which  I put a lot of input in too.  

 I don't think there was a Auto Action lift out in 85 to 88, rather the colour magazine style guides.

 For 1990 & 1991 I moved up into the Directors’ role and brought in some new team members, especially Ron Harper as Road Director, who had a special knowledge of the area being a Ross Runnalls apprentice and was living locally in Myrtleford.  Gordon Douglas was another local who provided me and the Alpine Rally great support.

Ron Harper surveys an Ovens Tank  with one of the
Ford Motor Company Laser TX3 4WDS
loaned for Survey and Zero Cars
for the 1990 BP Alpine Rally

  An aim of mine and Ron's was to use the best, often faster, roads that we could access in the plantations. 

From my memory at the time, it was thought by some competitors that too many slower and rougher roads were being used. We also introduced as many shire roads as we could and used some town stages like the Wodonga Stock Route and others in the Albury city area to gain more spectator access and hopefully more local Albury Wodonga support.

1990 BP Alpine Rally winners George Fury & Ross Runnalls

 

1990 BP Alpine Rally winners George Fury & Ross Runnalls

Starting with Bob Watson; and then especially 1990 & 91 Alpine Rally Chairman James McCullys' work, we strengthen ties with the Albury Council and local commerce sectors which lead to contacts at the Albury – Wodonga Development Corporation. 

1991 BP Alpine Rally winners Murray Coote & Coral Taylor

1991 BP Alpine Rally winners Murray Coote & Coral Taylor

 

Also, local commercial contacts came on board especially The Carlton Hotel - Albury and David Kilmartin and his Promotions Manager, Sue Kneebone, who was from a well-known NE Victorian family.  I remarked that there is a Kneebone Lane down Everton way to which 

Sue replied we are the Kneebones of Everton!

At this time, we managed to involve more local rally people, especially the Albury & Wodonga District Car Club and people like Eric Pietela, Ian Douglas and David West who were very helpful with manpower, local contacts and local logistics.  Phil Rogers from Captec Motorsport in Wodonga was also of great assistance, especially to me personally in the events that were to follow in 1992 & 93 with his fantastic network of Rally competitors and organisers.

For 1992 we were faced first with the departure of BP as sponsor for the Alpine, as well as the ARC and then in February, the collapse of the LCCA, leaving me and my team to pick up the pieces !

I took on the management of the Event as Director and Promoter, with the financial responsibility of the event taken over by my and Katrine Gibbons Brown’s own company (I still have the cheque book!).  The LCCA paid all CAMS fees and the CAMS Permit was still in the LCCA name, and it is officially regarded as the last event organised by the LCCA.

So, with no major sponsor and no LCCA and the event only about 4 weeks away “A Challenge Awaits” to coin an Alpine slogan of a more recent era!

Local support and sponsorship had already been canvased by myself and event Chairman James McCully, and we found, with the help of our Albury Car Club colleagues, a local dynamo in the guise of David Bent who ran NEP Petroleum, the regional Shell fuel distributor. 

About a month before the event David stepped up as the event’s major sponsor for 1992 with the event becoming the NEP Shell Alpine Rally in Albury-Wodonga on the Murray.  David was a tremendous support to the rally with local commercial and logistics contacts in the region.  He even organised a CAT bulldozer on the Saturday when set ups crews found some Forestry maintenance work had blocked a spectator access road in the Stanley Plantation for the Sunday!  As part of the sponsorship package, NEP supplied discount fuel cards for both competitors and officials to use at his tankers which he had stationed at all Service Points around the event as well as the NEP depot in Wodonga.  Alatalo Homes, a long-term sponsor of Eric Pietela’s also provided local sponsorship.

The event naturally took on a heavy Albury-Wodonga focus and with the support of the Albury Tourism Council the Alpine Rally also became the closing event of the Ford Albury-Wodonga Festival of Sport.  To quote the Border Mail report at the time, “Organisers of the Ford Albury-Wodonga Festival of Sport convinced event director Simon Brown and the LCCA to include the Alpine as the finale to the inaugural six-week festival …. becoming (the Festival) the first round of the 1992 ARC.  Everyone agreed.”

 Melbourne and LCCA member support came from Nelanc Insurance Brokers, Ford Australia,  Toshiba and Steve Youngs’s Melbourne Motorsport Centre.  So, the event was back on track with a – reasonably stable - financial position.

 Planning for the road side of things had almost been completed with my new local Road Directors, Shane Davies and Gary Gourlay, and with the running reduced to two days and fully based out of Albury, the event returned to a schedule that looked something like the Bright based events of the 70s and 80s.  The change was brought about to assist local accommodation services, who contributed to the event as a sponsor via the Alpine Rally Trust with a small percentage of all accommodation booking money coming back to the Rally, and no longer having to promote the event to a larger city audience to meet the expectations of our previous sponsor,  BP. 

The last time the event started in Albury before this was in 1975 with one of the Frank Kilfoyle organised Kleber Alpine Rallies.

 

 

As a side light the 1975 Alpine Rally was my first as a competitor, sitting beside Roger Bonhomme, having first seen an Alpine Rally in 1972 & 73 (the Golden Alpine) taking photos with my brother Chris and doing controls in 1974 with David and Fran Lambie.  This 1975 Alpine Rally was also the first for the great Alpine champions of the era, Geoff Portman and Ross Runnalls in a shabby looking FB Holden. It was also Stuart Listers’, Steve Hollowoods’ and Graham Wallis' first Alpine experience.

Notably, 1975 was also the last to run “Over the Top” of Mount Hotham Omeo and it is good to see Omeo return to the Alpine Rally schedule this year with the 100^th Anniversary.

 

 

A planned Spectator Point for the 100th Alpine Rally near Omeo - What a view!

 With this enlarged Albury – Wodonga emphasis, Special Stages were planned in the central city area, with the start & first Special Stage in Noriel Park just one km from the city centre. Other local Stages were run in the Bandiana Army Camp and then great spectator spot along the Wodonga Stock Route just off the Hume Freeway.  Gordon Douglas provided a lot of help here with earthmoving and muscle filling holes and grading some roads for these Stages.

On Saturday afternoon the event visited the traditional Alpine home of the Bright Sports Ground for the Division Break and a blast around the legendary dirt circuit, albeit in its now abridged layout with the recent construction of some tennis courts on part of the old track.  I have a memory that there was a clash of dates with the Bright Football Club playing at home and the dust clouds became an issue! 

The night division back to Albury I described as the “alpine loop” via Mitta Mitta and Tallangatta offering a real contrast to the intense plantation areas of Myrtleford and Bright with the benefit of minimising potential dust issues with the more open terrain with this event being run in late March after a long hot summer.  A run back to Albury via the most direct route via Stanley Mt Pilot and Chiltern forests would have nullified the competition with the almost certain dust in the tight forest roads of the area.

The Sunday running was around the Beechworth and Stanley areas incorporating the famous Hillsborough Road Spectator area first used by Ian Richards in 1978.

\The Spectator Guide was offered to the regional newspaper, the Border Mail, who did a full lift-out Guide published in the lead up edition.

So after a troubled gestation, the 1992 Shell NEP Alpine Rally in Albury – Wodonga on the Murray was set to run – almost.

Then another significant change was thrown at the organisers - at extremely short notice - with CAMS (ARComm) introducing the European style A-A Timing system for the 1992 Australian Rally Championship. Note that the Alpine Rally was the first round of the 1992 ARC to be run at the end of March.  These changes were introduced to all the ARC organisers sometime in February.

I remember that this introduction was somewhat troubled, to say the least.

With some study, I found that to use this timing system properly required a very different event layout on the ground than what we had been planning. To use A-A Timing as it was designed, all Special Stages should be followed by a – in many cases – a long Transport section.  With the time allowed for the section, from one Special Stage Start to the next, including the joining transport – now called - Liaison section.  The 1992 Alpine Rally schedule was designed, like probably most since the Bruce Ford era of the late 60s, to use one forestry plantation area at a time, with several Special Stages joined by short transport sections.  This allowed both a very tight schedule for the organisers and officials, with all the set up in one Forest, say Ovens just out of Myrtleford, being done in one go. I believe this also suited our competitors as they could get stuck into a particular Plantation feel; VIBE, if you like, as they were often so different to the one just up the road in Mount Pilot for example. 

And there was very little time sitting around at the side of the road, waiting for the time allowed for the A – A Schedule to catch up with their pace, rather than more competition!

With the maybe 6 weeks notice we had to meet this A-A schedule we just had to make it fit with what we already had – with a fair bit of rejigging.

Another change was the totally new A-A Timing Road Signs (you know all those pretty, multicoloured clocks that we are now all very familiar with – right up to FIA World Rally Championship level).  The Control and Competitor Cards were also totally different with these being supplied by CAMS, but only in week before the event ! 

Now, nearly 30 years later, these signs and cards are standard and well understood. In March 1992 they offered plenty of stress and confusion for the Officials and Competitors, and Scorers too I'm sure !  I also recall that we had to do all the briefing documents for our officials, from scratch, in the week before the event.  I think Ken Cusack and Margaret Hardy spent many hours on this task during that lead-up week.

In retrospect, I am left to wonder how much this introduction was used as another reason for the 1993 decision by CAMS to downgrade the Alpine Rally to the lower grade ARC round with the introduction of the short lived ARC co-efficient system for that year!

\On the Media side we continued with the excellent services of Steve Jonas who issued at least a dozen Media Releases to his extensive media contacts during the event.  These produced significant regional and Melbourne media coverage in Radio, Print and Television. We also provided a 5 minute broadcast quality feature, produced by Huntingdale Secondary College Television Production department, who had three crews on the event. This tight, scripted piece was aired on the popular Channel 9 Sunday Sports show during April that year.

A highly successful media campaign, produced for a faction of the budget the Alpine Rally had in the great BP days !

The event received a strong 62 car field featuring the Australian debut of Possum Bourne/Roger Freeth in the Group A, WRC spec, Prodrive Subaru Liberty in the newly formed Team Subaru alongside event winner, Robert Herridge/Mark Nelson in the sister Group N Liberty, This was also the debut of the official Team Subaru rally team, having moved up from a Dealer team in the 1991 season.  Team Subaru was the brain child of rally fan Nick Senior, then Subaru Promotions Manager, who was on his way to Subaru Australia head honco.  Neal Bates/Roger Horsley lead the Toyota Team, supported by leading Australian motoring journalist, Paul Gover/Jon Thompson in a second Celica GT4.  Wayne Bell/Dave Boddy ran the factory team Hyundai Lantra for the 2nd year in the Australian Rally Championship.

This Hyundai Lantra debut the year before in the 1991 BP Alpine Rally was, I am told by Hyundai Team insiders was the first International motorsport event the Hyundai Motor Company entered with Wayne Bell being put in charge of the development of the then new Lantra model into a rally car.  This led in just a few years to Hyundai's involvement in the World Rally Championship with the Wayne Bell developed Lantra Group 2 car.  How that finished, I am told, is another interesting story, and Wayne Bell is still regarded as a motorsport legend in Korea and by the current Hyundai World Rally Championship people.

These factory and heavily sponsored teams lead to even more film crews on the event with each Subaru and Toyota and the ARC co-ordinator having crews onsite which made Media Film Crew Organisers Stuart and Helen Lister already looking after the three crews of our own from Huntingdale Secondary College.

Murray Coote/Coral Taylor led the strong privateer entry in his ex-Factory Mazda 323 4WD, along with George Kahler/Jim Maude and a fleet of then “state of the art” Mitsubishi VR4 4WDs.

The event ran with very few problems.  On a competition side both Possum Bourne and Neal Bates retired with mechanical issues after Bourne lead easily in the Group A Liberty.  Murray Coote then retired in the night division which left Robert Herridge/Mark Nelson to come home in front of leading Victorian crews Graham Alexander/David Stewart in a Mitsubishi Galant VR4 and Peter Fyfe/Gerry Bashford in a Nissan Pulsar GTiR.

  In the results summary, I wrapped up the event as follows:

        Following the withdrawal of last year's series and event sponsor, (and the demise of the         organising Club!) all commercial sense said that with a lack of a suitable replacements,             we should have pulled out months ago – but I am pleased to say that the Alpine Rally            organising committee hung on and went against the tide.

        Why? … we just had that feeling … that Alpine Rally feeling.  And other people had that         Alpine Rally feeling too, especially the rally and commercial communities of Albury-               Wodonga.  They all said the Alpine Rally will run, … it just simply has that effect on you.”

However, some controlling parties in Australia Motor Sport had other ideas, clearly not having any understanding of  “that Alpine Rally Feeling” and just had already made, in my retrospective opinion, other plans for the Australian Rally Championship for the next year and beyond.  Those plans did not include the Alpine Rally at a top level.

One person who had once participated at a high level in an Alpine Rally in the 1970s was on his way to – with a very well managed political campaign – higher international motor sport places.  That person engaged other parties to achieve his higher aims which included, what I can only describe as a Hatchet Job on the 1992 Alpine Rally with the Official CAMS Event Observers report being less than complementary and negative in the extreme.  The report that was in stunning contrast to the Victorian Rally Panel Observer, Bill Bennett’s own report on the event.

For this event CAMS (ARComm), as normal, appointed an official CAMS Event Observer, the same as for all ARC rounds at the time.  For the 1992 event CAMS appointed Mike Bell, a well-known rally competitor and organiser from the central coast of NSW, having run the successful Dunlop 2GO Rally out of Gosford as an ARC round in the mid 1980s.

 To say that his report was negative, is an understatement. He was critical of things from the time we gave him his keys to his suite at Headquarters in The Carlton Hotel Albury.

 

This report – which I still have a copy of – was in simple terms – scathing - and the negativity was clearly demonstrated with his last entry being words to the effect of:

He even put the Control Clock board at the final control upside down.

 Can I draw your attention that this sign was at the end of the last Liaison section in the car park of The Carlton Hotel Albury, not a Special Stage. Hardly a safety issue!  Albury.

This report was also in stunning contrast to the Victorian Rally Panel Observer, Bill Bennett, own report on the event who witnessed the same happenings !

 For 1993 CAMS and ARComm introduced the co-efficent system for the Australian Rally championship, a European styled – FIA – system that came with three levels of event.  The top co-efficent 20 (?) event was reserved for Rally Australia; the WRC event in Perth.  ARC events were awarded either co-efficent 10 events or the lower level co-efficent 5 events.  CAMS in their wisdom at the time gave the co-effficent 10 status to the yet unrun - untried - Healesville Stages (later to become Rally of Melbourne), mainly on the basis that it fitted their grand plan of capital city based events.  I believe the same person who pushed through the 1992 ARC decisions to downgrade the Alpine Rally was pushing his own agenda (even though, I believe, he wasn’t on the ARCcom committee at the time) on the newly formed committee that had been put in charge of Australian rallying at this time.

The Alpine Rally was offered a co-efficent 5 event, about which I was none too pleased.  Having heard about plans for a Melbourne based event and rather than playing politics I got on with running the best Alpine Rally I could put together with the reduced budgets of the, Light Car Club of Australia soured, BP sponsorship era.  It now is obvious to me, having spoken to many competitors and organisers of the era, that plans had been afoot for some time, maybe even as far back as 1986, to uproot the Alpine Rally from the Australian Rally Championship calendar.  And the 1992 event and its subsequent Observers Report barbs and nails was just part of this campaign.  It certainly felt like that and the Alpine Rally and I had a lot of knives in our backs. 

Interestingly in this regard I have recently heard that ARCcom felt at the time that the Alpine Rally organisers were not willing to “move” the Alpine Rally to Melbourne to fit their capital city based ARC events plan.  At no stage during this period was I contacted by ARCcom to canvas the idea of a Melbourne base and it should be noted that the 1990 and 1991 BP Alpine Rallies (as well as the 1989 event) that I organised either started or finished in Melbourne!

At the time, the Alpine Rally committee did not take this downgrading lying down with myself, Alpine Rally chairman Bob Watson and my brother Chris making a detailed representation to CAMS to look at redressing the decision.  Our proposal detailed the significant support the Alpine Rally had in the Albury-Wodonga area, both from the Government and commercial sectors.  In particular, we had the support of Albury – Wodonga Tourism and their new (1993 was to be the second edition) of the Ford Festival of Sport, as well as the continued enthusiastic sponsorship of David Bent from NEP, no change was forthcoming.

In brief, the Alpine Rally (and the Australian Rally Championship) would be a integral part of the Ford Festival of Sport, which was to include, among other things a Australian One Day Cricket match and AFL football match.  The Festival was going to receive significant Local and National media exposure and had a large promotions budget

 CAMS and ARCcom could not see the – obvious – benefits to Australian rallying this offered and please note, the Albury Wodonga region is about the 10th largest population centre in Australia.  Rather they continued with their, in my opinion, blinkered plans to support a yet untried Healesville Stages that was to be run on the urban fringes of Melbourne; an event whose Promoters had presented glowing plans of a great rally, but had, from my research at the time, very little commercial backing or media exposure plans.

I can also note that recent ARC events in Victoria have been held in much smaller regional areas, with the Rally Victoria in late 90s and 2000s based in the Warragul area, the Eureka Rally in 2017 in Ballarat and this year the Gippsland Rally to be based out of Tralagon.  What a difference a couple of decades make to motorsports authorities thinking!

 I had told some CAMS Officials of the era, including Victoria State Council Chairman, Peter Bready, that if “they” did what I was hearing rumours about then I would walk away.  They did and I did.

 Since then, my name has never appeared on any CAMS official document (other than a few recent HRA Touring events) for a motorsport event, I have never held a CAMS Officials Licence (I must be one of the longest running CAMS Trainee Officials!) since that day which is now nearly 30 years ago. 

 This was a decision not made in spite, just that I made myself a promise that day and I intend to keep it.

 So, I “sold” all the Alpine Rally Intellectual property I had to the Albury Wodonga & District Car Club, who had supported me so well with the Alpine Rally over the previous few years, and moved on, at great financial and personal expense at the time.

 This Intellectual property included the “Alpine Rally” Victorian Business Name and the original Alpine Rally Honour boards, which I had been given in the midst of the LCCA bankruptcy in February 1992, partly as settlement of money owed for work done on the Alpine Rally before the LCCA bankruptcy.

 As an aside, I was one of the last people in the LCCA club rooms at that time and those there saw a lot of “stuff” disappearing as the lights were turned out. I grabbed as much LCCA Rally History and paperwork as I could, much of which I still have.  After I left only Margaret Hardy was left to deal with the liquidators and some creditors, I believe.

 For 1993 and 1994 the Albury Wodonga & District Car Club teamed up with the North Eastern Car Club to run the lower co-efficent 5 ARC round Alpine Rallies with the continued support of David Bent from NEP Petroleum.

CAMS ARCcom insisted that the organisers appoint an experienced “Clerk of Course” with, I believe, the only recommendation being Mike Bell.  The event was actually organised and run by the crew from Albury and Wangaratta, who had, of course, supported and offered great assistance to the Alpine Rally for many – many years, with the main role being performed by Noel Cutler.  Those two rallies were based in Albury and whilst using many familiar roads and plantations, I don’t believe they ventured into Bright.

 I now observe that the co-efficient system lasted two short years and CAMS offered many Car Clubs and hardworking officials around Australia a Golden Pot to Australian Rally Championship status events, only to pull the rug or pot from under them two years later.

 For me to see CAMS and ARCcom directing the Albury Wodonga & District Car Club to use Mike Bell as Clerk of Course was just another sign of the total lack of respect for what I and the many other Alpine Rally organisers had done, as I could not forget that Mike Bell had been so integral to the downgrading of the Alpine Rally with the 1992 event CAMS observers report. 

 This got me thinking of earlier occasions I had experienced Mike Bell's rally organising work in the decade before this with the ARC 2GO Dunlop Rallies in Gosford of 1982 – 83 where Spectator Access and Safety precautions were an obvious secondary concern.

Spectators crowd the road in a dangerous manner at the 1982 Dunlop 2GO Rally
An  ARC Round that year  - no Spectator Marshals or controlled area in sight.  

 

 This was in stark contrast to what I saw and helped develop with the Alpine Rallies of this era as we introduced new spectator access and safety measures which not only made for safe viewing but made available many more spectacular locations, such as the Hillsborough Road complex in Stanley.  These spectator access measures were hatched by Frank Kilfoyle and Ian Richards in the 1977 & 78 Repco Alpine Rallies with the introduction of things like the Merriang-Running Creek Spectator Complex that had spectators driving through the centre of the plantation on the main forestry access roads, while the competitors dropped in here and there to please the thousands of patrons from around Australia.  See pics of the era and the 77 & 78 Spectator Guide maps.  I see the great rally map maker of the era, Noel Kelly's hand and pen all over these diagrams, who Ian Richards would have co-oped into the role.

  This spectator access is just another example of the VIBE the Alpine Rally gained over this period, from the late 1960s when then Alpine director, Bruce Ford and his team found the Merriang Plantation for the Alpine Rally in 1969 and included route charted sections in this plantation south of Myrtleford.   The instructions include some references to now famous roads such as: Halletts Rd, North Rd, Minko's Rd followed by a blast North up the main Slaughter Yard Rd to a TL at Joe Cooks Rd which I recall takes you up to the very high western boundary of this huge plantation.  What a sight this must have been for the entrants in the 1969 Alpine Rally in only the second year of the Australian Rally Championship.

 From here the vista to view to the East is of huge verdant green pine trees looking over to the rugged slopes of Mount Buffalo then to the Bright valleys which featured the bubbling Ovens River which continue on towards Smoko and Harrietville, with Mount Hotham as a dramatic backdrop.

 I only hope it was a crystal-clear NE Victorian blue sky that greeted them that day in late November just as many of us lucky rally competitors and organisers enjoyed for the next two decades, as we wandered thru this rally wonderland.  Can the band please strike up The Who and “I can see for Miles and Miles and Miles”, made famous for us rally people as the background music for Rally Movie  “At Harrogate it Started” all about the 1979 RAC Rally.  A further advantage to us Aussies was that we were not freezing our butts off as they took in the grand vista!

  This was the basis for the glorious Alpine era of the Bright based events all the way through the 1970s & 1980s run by the Light Car Club of Australia, and which continued up until 1992, although we had to modify it a bit along the way to meet the expectations of our sponsor BP with the Melbourne starts and/or finishes in the 1989 to 1991 period.

 This was also done previously to meet the great sponsorship of Kleber for the 1975 & 76 Alpine Rallies with events starting in Albury and then the Channel O start in Nunawading in 1976.  Then the Melbourne starts at Government House and Bourke Streets Mall for the 1977 & 1978 Repco Alpine Rallies.

 

 I believe all the Directors of this era just developed Bruce Fords' model further - Frank Kilfoyle, Ian Richards, Geoff Schmidt, Ian Pearson, Mike Prendergast, Stuart (& Helen) Lister and Steve Hollowood with their teams of key officials. Then I was given the reins for the next few years.

 One thing is common with all these events from the late 1960s thru to 1992.  We were all heading to the picturesque North East Victorian valleys that were packed full of those verdant green pine trees – most years - and the mazes of forestry tracks that we were made available to us for the next two decades before the Hancocks “lock out” began in the mid 1990s, and we found our base in Bright and never ventured too far away.

 I just happened to be the lucky last of the era to continue to organise an Alpine Rally with Dangdongadale Dust injected in my veins -  that gave us THAT ALPINE VIBE.

 Today, the Alpine Rally is a bigger event than any one Australian Rally Championship round. 

 So maybe being given the flick from the Australian Rally Championship in 1993, after being a round most years since the introduction of the Australian Championship in 1968, was just a turning point for the future.

 See you all in Lakes Entrance for the 100^th Anniversary Alpine Rally, it will be just the start of a new century for the second oldest motorsport event in the world.

 Simon Brown July 16^th 2021