The world’s first most rugged international motor reliability trial was held throughout East Africa on largely unmade roads in May 1953 to commemorate the coronation just a month later in the United Kingdom of the now late Queen Elizabeth ll.
I took part in this marathon 5,160 kms- long event, little knowing that it would help spawn Australia’s famous Redex reliability trial in 1954 which that year was faultlessly won by ‘Gelignite’ Jack Murray, a Sydney garage owner.
The East African event took us through some of the world’s most tortuous country in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika with roaming elephants, giraffes, lion, and buck providing us with instant and dangerous hurdles to avoid when travelling at speed along dust clouded stretches of unsurveyed roads, through deep African forests and bushlands, and across desolate country suitable only for cameleers and their mounts.
My role, with the assistance of a co-driver, was not to win what was known as the East African Coronation Safari. Instead, I was there to record this event in writing in my capacity as a journalist and foreign correspondent covering the African continent from Cairo in the north to Cape Town in the south.
Just a year earlier, I had happened to be with the Queen-in-waiting when I and others spent a day and early evening with her as a princess and with her husband, the late Prince Philip, at the now famous Treetops Hotel in Kenya during a royal tour of the country.
On this historic occasion, Elizabeth had climbed the stairs up into Treetops as a princess but, when she came down a handful of hours later, she was the Queen of the then British Realm as her father had passed away in his sleep at Buckingham Palace in London.
The Coronation Safari was stretched over 14 days with little time for the drivers to sleep as most rest periods had to be spent on refuelling, greasing, and repairing the competing vehicles after the heavy battering they had taken on roads often only one grade above that of a mule track.
Our journey took us from Nairobi City to within sight of the former snow-capped volcano of Mount Kilimanjaro, past the distant craggy Mountains of the Moon, the mighty tide-racked Lake Victoria, the long and deep Rift Valley, the Indian Ocean port of former German Dar es Salaam, the original Portuguese military fort at Mombasa and through a national park where lions had once killed railway workers sleeping at night on a stationery train parked at their isolated workplace.
As far as I know, ‘Gelignite’ Jack had reportedly travelled from Australia to either be an on-the-spot observer of the Safari or had taken a place as a driver in one of the cars entered in this first international motor reliability trial.
Whatever the situation, however, he had apparently returned to Australia and, with other rally drivers, had persuaded the motor sports authorities in Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin, Perth and Adelaide that Australia should use the East African motor trial as a model for motor endurance and develop a similar event here, connecting their cities.
This resulted in Australia developing the now well-known first Redex Reliability motor trial and rally held over 15,000 kms of road around Australia during 17 weary days. The old-time radio personality of Jack Davey was among the competing professional rally drivers and amateurs determined to “have a go.”
To mount the Australian version of East Africa’s initial Coronation Safari, local motor rally clubs combined and managed to have their event financed by the Redex company which manufactured an additive claimed to help extend the life of tired engines. By interesting comparison, the African rally was financed by the East African Standard newspaper in Nairobi and the Shell Oil Company for a total of A$2,000 which equates to a little under half a million dollars in today’s currency values.
The African rally in which I took part as a media observer was won by a Volkswagen ‘beetle’ driven by Alan Dix against 90 competing rally drivers. I believe that only about 39 per cent of the cars in the rally managed to finish the punishing course. The Australian version held a year later was won by ‘Gelignite Jack’ after a faultless run around Australia, connecting all the State capitals.
The vehicle I travelled in over the long and punishing 5,160 kms in East Africa was a 1950’s Vauxhall Velox . The only problem I fortunately encountered was a an overheating engine, largely due to African temperatures being very much in general higher than those in the northern hemisphere and the fact that the vehicle’s water pump was not strong enough for the hot conditions encountered on the road.
A majority of the cars driven by the 90 competitors were British vehicles. These included a Singer 9, a Jaguar Mark VII, a Morris Oxford, a Jowett Javelin, a Sunbeam Talbot, a Riley 2-51, an MG TD and a Humber Super Snipe Mark lV.
North American entries were a Plymouth Concord, a 1939 Mercury 8, a 1948 Plymouth De Luxe, a 1950’s Chevrolet, a 1947 DeSoto, a 1937 Terraplane, a Buick, a Nash and a handful of Fords.
The Australian motor industry — then still in full swing — was represented by a single Holden while the European entries were a Skoda, a Citroen 15, and a Porshe 356. I can only now presume that ‘Gelignite Jack’ had possibly driven the Australian entry, but I was not aware of this at the time so many years ago.
Four years after the running of the Coronation Safari, I again was involved in covering the 1956 Safari rally as a journalist and foreign correspondent. On this occasion, I travelled in a two-year-old German Borgward made by a manufacturer of refrigerators as an answer to Mercedes Benz luxury cars.
My co-driver and fellow navigator was the well-known photographer, Edward Fontaine-Geary, who collaborated with me in producing two special Safari newspaper editions under the title of Lion Safari News.
Interestingly, I met a keen motoring enthusiast some years later in Sydney who had a single copy of Lion Safari News in his possession as part of a collection of motoring history. Our production of this unique rally newspaper involved a pre-event issue with the full details of all the drivers and their vehicles, and a second edition printed on the night of the final day, carrying all the news of the winners and the varied experiences of the drivers through some of the wildest parts of Africa.
The general slogan of the original 1953 event was “go flat-out and as fast as you dare.” That indeed was what most of the drivers did but several managed to turn their vehicles upside down on stoney road surfaces, only to flip them back onto their wheels before continuing their gruelling dust and danger ridden ride.
Average speeds of over 100 kms an hour were recorded along certain treacherous stretches of the rally route between the usual check-in points. As I wrote in my diary at the time, the Coronation Safari was a salute to new royalty but was not one for the hardy — or foolhardy — drivers’ bank accounts !