Gwen Cooke

As the saying goes, behind every good man is a good…. Digby Cooke’s better half Gwen is a case in point. She is a true motoring enthusiast and has been her whole life. Her story is almost as fascinating as that of her racing husband.

“I rst caught sight of Digby at his workshop when I was still at school,” reminisces Gwen Cooke today. “It was when Ash Marshall was there. I used to watch him prepare cars. I was always into cars. We went off and married different people (sadly Gwen was widowed a few years later.) In the mid-1960s I was working in public relations doing fashion promotions for the likes of David Jones, Bankstown Square and others. I got to know Alec Mildren and his staff and assisted in promoting Alfa Romeos, Porsches and Maseratis. Alec said that Digby was the only one who would insure the cars. 1968 was the year that he became an insurance broker.

“I had a series of sporty cars from a Fiat 1500 Mk3 to an Alfa 1750 GTV and even a Porsche 911 2.7. I remember a time that John French borrowed the Alfa after a party at my place and drove on to an airstrip to catch a plane home to Queensland! I was a loyal customer of Digby’s for about 12 years. By the 1980s it was cheaper to be with him than pay all the insurance policies…”

It says a lot about Gwen’s enthusiasm for all things motoring that Digby believes that if they had connected earlier in life he may well have prolonged his racing career beyond his enforced retirement, due to family pressure, in 1972.