The two Marys

There is an old, perhaps these-days politically incorrect, saying that behind every good man is a good woman. That is certainly true in the case of Winton and the Benalla Auto Club Ladies Auxiliary, as Barry Stilo points out:

“It was about 20 or 30 people, basically all of them connected to a driver of some sort – wives, mothers, aunties, etc, and they formed the Ladies Auxiliary.

“My wife was part of it; they used to make the sandwiches at home to take to the track, before they had catering facilities.

“They actually supported the club, because they made more money out of the catering side than we did out of the racetrack! In the beginning things were tight, but they poured a lot of money back into the track, and because of that we were able to make continual improvements. So the Ladies Auxiliary was very important to the circuit’s ongoing viability.

“There were lots of people involved in it over the years, but Mary Stafford and Mary Ronke, Mick Ronke’s mother, were there from the start and right up until they died. Everyone knew them as ‘the two Marys’’.”