University of Wollongong Research Online Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive) Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities 1-1-2011 The flip side: women in the Redex Around Australia Reliability Trials of the 1950s Georgine W. Clarsen University of Wollongong,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Clarsen, Georgine W., The flip side: women in the Redex Around Australia Reliability Trials of the 1950s 2011, 17-36. https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/1166 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library:
[email protected] The Flip Side: Women on the Redex Around Australia Reliability trials of the 1950s Georgine Clarsen In August 1953 almost 200 cars set off from the Sydney Showgrounds in what popular motoring histories have called the biggest, toughest, most ambitious, demanding, ‘no-holds-barred’ race, which ‘caught the public imagination’ and ‘fuelled the nation with excitement’.1 It was the first Redex Around Australia Reliability Trial and organisers claimed it would be more testing than the famous Monte Carlo Rally through Europe and was the longest and most challenging motoring event since the New York-to-Paris race of 1908.2 That 1953 field circuited the eastern half of the continent, travelling north via Brisbane, Mt Isa and Darwin, passing through Alice Springs to Adelaide and returning to the start point in Sydney via Melbourne. Two Redex trials followed, in 1954 and 1955, and each was longer and more demanding than the one before.