The New South Wales Rally Championship is the state’s premier series of events.
Some of the following history was derived from words written by Dave Johnson.
In 1960 NSW conducted the first State Drivers and Navigators Trials Championship in Australia. The events that made up the series in 1960 were run by the Goulburn Auto Club (Goulburn 600), Canberra Sporting Car Club, and the Australian Sporting Car Club (Antill Trial and Southern Mountains Trial 1000 Miles). All events were run at night, normally from about midday to midday and covering around 500 miles unless run over a long weekend. Map reading and navigation were an integral part of every event.
As maps improved the first events were run which were fully route charted. The Goulburn Auto Club was to break new ground at the time to run a ‘drivers’ event by running the first fully route charted state championship event in 1965. This was a long time before anyone else in Australia thought of adopting this concept. Manufacturer support was easier to acquire with only the driver, the car and the road to contend with and this was soon to become the norm for almost all events outside club level.
Unfortunately the population of NSW was increasing in a post-war surge and car trials started to attract the attention of Councils, the Shires Association and then the Police. This came to a head in late 1968 with the Police threatening to close down car trials. All car trials in NSW were suspended in 1969 and the records reflect this with no NSW Championship winners appearing on the honour board for that year. An agreement was negotiated with the Shires Association which satisfied the Police and things returned to a workable level, for a number of years at least.
More to come!