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Automobiles and Australian Modernisation: The Redex Around-Australia Trials of the 1950s

2010; Routledge; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1031461x.2010.493948

1940-5049

Georgine Clarsen,

Australian History and Society

Abstract In the first half of the 1950s, automobiles came to the forefront of national attention in three Redex Around-Australia Reliability trials, which sent hundreds of cars from Sydney to race around the continent in expressions of barely-controlled automotive fervour. As multi-dimensional events that incapsulated individual and national aspirations, the Redex trials provide an evocative framework for exploring some competing versions of Australian modernisation in those post-war years. For all their affirmations of national maturity, however, the trials perpetuated colonial orientations to 'hostile' landscapes and continued to envisage Aboriginal people as inherently outside of the modern present. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Hal Moloney and Hugh King for their assistance with this research and for making their files available to me. Notes 1Some of the key studies are Judith Brett, Robert Menzies' Forgotten People (Sydney: Macmillan, 1992); Nicholas Brown, Governing Prosperity: Social Change and Social Analysis in Australia in the 1950s (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995); John Murphy and Judith Smart, eds, The Forgotten Fifties: Aspects of Australian Society and Culture in the 1950s (Parkville, Melbourne University Press, 1997); John Murphy, Imagining the Fifties: Private Sentiment and Political Culture in Menzies Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2000); Julie T. Wells, Mickey Dewar and Susan Parry, eds, Modern Frontier: Aspects of the 1950s in Australia's Northern Territory (Darwin: Charles Darwin University Press, 2005). 2'Australia's Motor Vehicle Fleet Since the 1920s', ABS Yearbook Australia, 2001; John Knott, '"The Conquering Car": Technology, Symbolism and the Motorisation of Australia before World War II', Australian Historical Studies 31, no. 114 (2000): 1–26. 3Richard White, 'The Retreat from Adventure: Popular Travel Writing in the 1950s', Australian Historical Studies 28, no. 109 (1997): 90–105; Peter Bishop, 'Driving Around: The Unsettling of Australia', Studies in Travel Writing 2 (Spring 1998): 144–62; Georgine Clarsen, '"Tracing the Outline of Nation": Circling Australia by Car', Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 13, no. 3 (1999): 359–69; Laina Hall, 'The "Zest of Adventure" in Australian Overland Narratives, 1920–2000', Journal of Tourism and Social Change 4, no. 2 (2006): 85–95; National Motor Museum, Off the Beaten Track: A Journey Across the Nation (Adelaide: History Trust of South Australia, 2008). 4William Hatfield, Australia Through the Windscreen (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1937); C. Price Conigrave, Around Australia in a Pontiac (Unpublished manuscript, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1936). 5'Use of Urban Public Transport in Australia', ABS Yearbook Australia 2005; Graeme Davison, Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Hearts and Conquered Our Cities (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003), 21ff; Richard White, On Holidays: A History of Getting Away in Australia (Sydney: Pluto Press, 2005). 6For accounts of the trials as motor sports events, see Bill Tuckey and Thomas B. Floyd, Twenty-five Years of Around Australia Trials: From Redex to Repco (Sydney: Gregory's Publishing, 1979), 33–80; Bill Tuckey, The Wynns History of Famous Australian Car Trials (Sydney: Golden Press, 1989), 18–48; also the enthusiasts' website: http://www.uniquecarsandparts.com.au/redex_trials_the_legend.htm. 7 Australian Motor Sports, October 1953, 20–24; Redex Around Australia Trial Annual, 1954 (Rockdale: Scientific Magazine Publishing Co., 1954), 1; Harry Cape, Five Times Round (Buderim, Qld: H. Cape, 1979). 8 Daily Telegraph, 16 July 1954, 3 and 31 August 1953; Pix, 24 September 1955, 26. Numerous newspaper reports can be found on the dates surrounding each trial: 30 August–12 September 1953; 3 July–20 July 1954; and 21 August–11 September 1955. 9 Sun, 5 September 1953. 10Amanda McLeod, Abundance: Buying and Selling in Postwar Australia (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2007); Murphy, 5–6. 11For a detailed description of the rules, see Redex Around Australia Trial Annual, 1955 (Rockdale: Scientific Magazine Publishing Co., 1955), 3–16. 12'Marathon Trials' in Pedr Davis (ed.) The Macquarie Dictionary of Motoring (Sydney: The Macquarie Library, 1986), 289–92. 13 Daily Telegraph, 19 September 1953, 19; Wheels, October 1953, 378–90. 14 Australian Motor Sports, August 1954, 76–80; Wheels, September 1954, 24–33; For moving image of Murray's win, see Australian Screen, http://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/1954-redex-trial/clip3/. 15 Australian Motor Sports, October 1955, 353–363; Wheels, September 1955, 34–7 and November 1955, 35–41; Pix, 24 September 1955. 16 Daily Telegraph, 12 September 1955, 1. 17'What Went Wrong with the Redex?', Modern Motor, November 1955, 14–26; Daily Telegraph, 8 September 1955. 18Mark Rolfe, 'Faraway Fordism: The Americanization of Australia and New Zealand During the 1950s and 1960s', New Zealand Journal of History 33, no. 1 (1999), 65–91. 19James Flink, The Automobile Age (Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 1993), 43ff. 20P. J. Rimmer, 'Politicians, Public Servants and Petitioners: Aspects of Transport in Australia, 1851–1901', in Australian Space Australian Time, eds, J. M. Powell and M. Williams (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1975), 182–225. 21For debates on the Australian Settlement see the special edition of Australian Journal of Political Science 39, no. 1 (March 2004). 22Robert Conlon and John Perkins, Wheels and Deals: The Automotive Industry in Twentieth-Century Australia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 115 ff; Peter Stubbs, The Australian Motor Industry: A Study in Protection and Growth (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1972), 21ff; Division of Industrial Development, A Brief Review of the Australian Motor Vehicle Industry (Melbourne: Department of National Development, 1952). 23Laurence Hartnett, Big Wheels and Little Wheels (Melbourne: Landsdown Press, 1964), 66; Don Loffler, She's a Beauty: The Story of the First Holdens (Kent Town: Wakefield Press, 1998), 71ff; John Wright, Heart of the Lion: The Fifty Year History of Australia's Holden (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998), xi–xvi; Don Loffler, Me and My Holden (Kent Town: Wakefield Press, 2008), Chapter 12. 24Mick Taussig, 'An Australian Hero', History Workshop Journal 24 (1987): 111–33; 115. 25 Daily Telegraph, 16 September 1953, 19; Pix, 10 September 1955 and 24 September 1955; Redex Annual, 1955, 44; Wright, 85; Lofler (1998), 137, 138 and 144. 26 Redex Annual, 1955, 64. 27A. W. Standfield, Diary of Spacemaster No. 1, unpublished manuscript, copy in author's possession. 28Evan Green, Journeys with Gelignite Jack (Adelaide: Rigby, 1966), 1–3. 29Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Your 1955 Redex Trial Route Map, Series A1336/1, National Archives of Australia, Canberra. 30'Report on the 1954 Trial', Shennen Publishing and Publicity Company, copy in author's possession. 31 Redex Annual, 1954, 2. 32Letters from Hall to contestants, copies in author's possession. For a compilation of the newsreel footage see, Redex Around Australia Car Trials (ScreenSound Australia, Canberra, 1999). 33Robert Dixon, Prosthetic Gods: Travel, Representation and Colonial Governance (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2001), 68. 34Bernard Harte, When Radio was the Cat's Whiskers (Dural: Rosenberg, 2002), 117–8; Redex Annual, 1955, 51. 35Sandfield, Diary. 36Christophe Campos, 'Beating the Bounds: The Tour De France and National Identity', International Journal of the History of Sport 20, no. 2 (2003): 149–74. 37'Trial by Torture', Pix, 20 August 1955; See clip of 1954 trial at Australian Screen 'Not for Sunday Drivers', http://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/1954-redex-trial/clip2/. 38'Roar of Redex Cars Came Up Like Thunder in Outback', Daily Telegraph, 17 September 1953, 34 and Daily Telegraph, 12 July and 15 July 1954; Ross Gibson, Seven Versions of an Australian Badland (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2002). 39Adriane Rummey, 'Oltre Nature – Landscape, Technology and Australian Films', On the Beach 13 (1988): 46–53. 40See film clip on Australian Screen, 'Up the East Coast', http://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/1954-redex-trial/clip1/. 41 Redex Annual, 1955, 41. 42 Redex Annual, 1955, 47. 43Quoted in Noel Sanders, 'The Hot Rock in the Cold War: Uranium in the 1950s', in Australia's First Cold War, 1945–1959. vol. 2 eds, Ann Curthoys and John Merritt (St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1984), 155–69. 44Alice Crawte, Atomic Australia: 1944–1990 (Kensington: University of NSW Press, 1992), 64ff. 45'Mount Isa Talks Only of Uranium', Sydney Morning Herald, 31 July 1954. 46 Daily Telegraph, 11 September 1953; Lorna Arnold and Mark Smith, Britain, Australia and the Bomb: The Nuclear Tests and their Aftermath (New York: Palgrave, 2006). 47 Australian Motor Sports, October 1955, 353; Daily Telegraph, 30 August 1955, 5 September 1955 and 20 September 1955; London Times, 25 August 1955; Redex Annual, 1955, 38. 48Judith Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John Howard (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 120–125; Brown, 102–3. 49Georgine Clarsen, Eat My Dust: Early Women Motorists (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); for a discussion of changing notions of modern masculinity, see Christopher Forth, Masculinity in the Modern West: Gender, Civilization and the Body (New York: Plagrave Macmillan, 2008). 50 Daily Telegraph, 5 September 1953 and 24 August 1955; Sun, 24 August 1955, 1; Sydney Morning Herald, 24 August 1955 and 29 August 1955. 51 Daily Telegraph, 29 August 1953; Wheels, October 1953, 378–90; Tuckey, 24. 52 Sunday Mail (Adelaide), 9 December 1979, 22–3. 53 Australian Women's Weekly, 31 August 1955, 35; Redex Annual, 1955, 37. 54 Australian Women's Weekly, 24 July 1954, 20. 55 Sydney Morning Herald, 24 July 1954, 7; Conway also received sponsorship from the Hills Hoist company and Berger Paints, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 September 1953. 56 Australian Women's Weekly, 16 September 1953, 23. 57 Australian Women's Weekly, 26 August 1953, 29. 58 Australian Women's Weekly, 23 September 1953, 20–1; Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 1953; Age, 14 September 1953; Daily Telegraph, 10 September 1953, 2; Daily Mirror, 3 July 1954, 1; and 14 September 1953. 59 Sydney Truth, 20 September 1953, 46. 60 Daily Telegraph, 13 and 14 September 1953; Daily Mirror, 14 September 1953. 61The story was republished in Daily Telegraph, 15 August 1954, 5. 62 Daily Telegraph, 23 July 1954, 17. 63 Modern Motor, September 1954. 64 Daily Telegraph, 30 August 1953. 65 Truth, 20 September 1953, 47. 66 Daily Telegraph, 9 July 1954 and Clyde Batteries advertisement Daily Telegraph, 17 September 1953. 67 Sunday Herald, 6 September 1953; see also Jack Davey column 'Black is White' in Sunday Sun, 6 September 1953. 68Victoria Haskins, 'The Smoking Buggy' in National Motor Museum of Australia, Off the Beaten Track: A Journey Across the Nation (Adelaide: National Motor Museum, 2008), 73–81; Brisbane Courier, 9 December 1925; Malcolm Ellis, the Long Lead: Across Australia by Motor Car (London: T. F. Unwin, 1927), facing page 200. 69Chris Healy, Forgetting Aborigines. Sydney: University of NSW Press, 2008. 70Richard Broome and Corinne Manning, A Man of all Tribes: The Life of Alick Jackomos (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2006), 118; Peggy Brock, Outback Ghettos: Aborigines, Institutionalisation and Survival (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 164–5; Frank Clune, Land of Australia: Roaming in a Holden (Melbourne: The Hawthorn Press, 1953), 247. 71Dixon, 11.