RallySport Magazine September 2016

the winch handle, another car would
appear into view, wanting to use the
same piece of road that you’d just
got stuck in. So you’d unhook the
Tirfor from the tree to let the other
car through, while your car slowly
slipped back into the hole you had just
extricated it from.
Naturally your driver couldn’t see
the funny side of all this – he’d
just sit there revving the motor,
roaring like a madman for you to hurry
up and hook the Tirfor up again, while
all the while sitting in his nice, warm,
dry, mud-free motorcar. And they used
to refer to navigators as just a bag of
spuds!
No, getting bogged wasn’t much fun,
and I was an expert at it. Let me give
you a couple of examples of the art of
bogging.
Minis were the world’s worst cars for
getting bogged in. They were so low to
the ground and their wheels so small
that they always suffered in muddy
conditions compared to other, bigger
cars.
If you were the first car through a
muddy section, there wasn’t too much
of a problem, but if cars had been
through before you and left deep
muddy ruts in the road, then, sure
as heck, the Mini would slide into the
wheel ruts and belly itself on the sump
guard. Towing was usually the only way
out.
The Cooper S was a popular rally car
in the 1960s, but it had a reputation for
being fastest on the road and the first
to be bogged.
There was one particular occasion
when we were out doing some roading
for a rally and we were following the
mapped road along the bottom of a
hill. Coming to a gate that obviously led
into private property (even though it
was the mapped road), we opened the
cocky’s gate and drove up past his hay
shed.
All of a sudden the farmer appeared
at the corner of the shed, wielding
a shotgun and yelling for us to stop.
Faced with what we quickly decided
looked like certain death from this
gun-toting Rambo, we roared further
into his property and out the back gate
at the other end, to the sound of shots
being fired into the air.
Now in full flight, our Mini was aimed
at a big greasy area with a water soak
running through it. Gunning the motor,
the Mini flew into the slop and sank to
the doorsills. We were stuck solid.
With darkness falling rapidly, we
decided to go for help, but there was no
way we were going back to ask Rambo
for help to get us out. Weighing up the
only other option (walking – there were
The Sydney Morning Herald
reports on a famous last-stage
bogging on the 1955 Redex Trial.
no mobile phones in those days), we
set off on our enforced eight-kilometre
walk to the nearest farmhouse to seek
assistance.
To cut a long story short, the farmer
jumped in his car and drove us back
to the bogged Mini. Hooking on a
towrope, the farmer’s car spun its
wheels and sank to the axles. Yep,
now there were two of us bogged. We
repeated that eight-kilometre walk back
to the farmhouse for the second time
that night. By then our wives had just
about added our names to the missing
persons’ list!
Of course there are all sorts of ways
of getting bogged – bogged in mud,
bogged in sand, bogged on a stump,
bogged in snow, but I’ve even been
bogged in a river.
It was that Mini again (what else) that
brought me undone in the middle of a
fast flowing river one morning.
On the wrong road (as usual), we
drove into the water thinking it would
be a nice shallow ford. However, the
further we got in, the deeper it became,
until the water was lapping almost up
to the door handles.
Well, you’d panic too. The only
way out was to reverse out, but then
disaster struck and the “wish I’d fixed
that before” scenario reared its head.
That was when I wished I’d stopped to
replace the two bolts that held the back
of the sump guard onto the car.
It was also when I also realised that
the back of the sump guard was acting
like a grader blade the more I tried to
reverse out. With front wheels spinning
and sand banking up under the sump
guard, all progress stopped in the
middle of the stream.
The only way out of our predicament
was to open the door and climb out
into knee-deep water. Of course, as we
got out, water flowed in through the
doors and we abandoned the Mini to
the sight of maps, route instructions,
small fish, yabbies, floor mats and other
assorted items floating around in a car
full of water.
Trials and rallies really were an
adventure in those days, and getting
bogged, just like dealing with gates
(of which there are hundreds of
varieties) were all just part of the fun.
One of these days we’ll do a story on
gates, another of those long-forgotten
obstacles that trials crews used to come
up against. Mallee gates, cocky’s gates,
locked gates, @#%& gates!
Now it’s a different age, a different
page, and the pace of life has shifted up
a gear or three. Ah, give me the good
old days!
SEPTEMBER 2016 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 61