Murray Williams Sidecar supremo
Even at 82 years of age, Murray Williams shows no sign of slowing down. When I called to talk to him at his home in Adelaide, the ute was in the driveway, loaded with two BSAs (his ‘Black Star’ and his ‘Iron Star’) ready for an early get away the next morning to Macnamara Park, Mount Gambier, four hours away.
‘Just a ride day where I can test out a few things’ he explained. ‘I’m getting ready for Sellicks and I need a bit more speed’. The Sellicks he referred to is the next instalment of the Sellicks Beach revivals, scheduled for early 2021. Preparation, as always, is everything, not withstanding another couple of birthdays in the interim.
Murray Williams is an institution in his home state, with countless awards as testament to a career that has netted him no fewer than eleven Australian Sidecar Championships, and although the majority of these have been in scrambles/motocross, he has competed with distinction in road racing, short circuit/dirt track, and speedway. And that’s just motorcycles; he has enjoyed a glittering career as a speedway car driver as well.
The story starts back in July 1937 when he was born in Adelaide, and at an early age was apprenticed as a fitter and turner. In search of more bountiful employment, he journeyed to remote Woomera in 1958, having acquired an ancient sidevalve BSA, with a sidecar box as daily transport. “Working at Woomera (500km north of Adelaide), we had Sundays off and just used to chase Kangaroos and so on, then one day the Woomera Motor Cycle Club had a scramble,” Murray says with remarkable clarity.” So I took the box off the old
BSA and had a go. All the stars like Graeme Burford were there from Adelaide, but they nearly died in the heat. I didn’t get anywhere but a friend in the RAAF had a 1945 500 BSA in a rigid frame with girder forks, so I bought that and fitted telescopic forks. I still have that bike – I rode it at Sellicks last year. When I came back (to Adelaide) from Woomera I joined the Velocette Club where I met Milton Lewis. I rode the BSA in scrambles and then in 1961 when Mallala opened I thought I’d try
road racing. I bought a 350 Manx Norton from Bill Horsman – he said he needed the money so he could buy an engagement ring! The motor was out of the bike and I already had an Empire Star BSA with a hot 350 motor, so with help from Dave Basham I put the BSA engine in the Manx frame.”
Murray’s road racing exploits did not go entirely to plan. He also acquired a Matchless 500 twin which was heavily fettled, including the fitting of a BMW twin leading shoe front brake. At a practice day at Mallala he rode the Matchless, while Basham took over the 350 BSA/Norton, but Murray crashed heavily when the front brake stay collapsed under braking. “The front end locked, smashed the fork leg, and chucked me over the bars, and Dave, who was right behind, had to take to the escape road to avoid running over me. By the time I stopped sliding I began to think that maybe I was better suited to sidecars.” How right he was.
He soon got hold of a genuine Watsonian racing sidecar, converted the BSA to a 500 and went sidecar racing, with Milton Appleyard as his first passenger. With little road racing to be had, the pair entered for the 1962 Australian Short Circuit Championships, which were being held at nearby Victor Harbor. The meeting had drawn a class entry, with top solo riders from NSW like Jim Airey, Gordon Gausco and Kevin Cass, while veteran sidecar ace George Murphy came from Victoria with a pair of outfits. Murphy duly won both sidecar classes but Murray and Milton managed a third place in the 500cc class – not bad for dirt track rookies. Murray says he learned a lot from that meeting, and it showed on the following weekend when he and Milton contested the South Australian Short Circuit titles, winning both classes.
By 1964 Herb Castle was in the chair and more state titles were rolling in – from scrambles, Short Circuit and at the one mile speedway at Port Pirie – but it was time to venture further afield so the duo packed the truck and headed to Wollongong, NSW for the 1967 Australian Scrambles Championship at the new circuit at Mount Kembla. They came home with the 500cc Sidecar title, but it should have been a ‘double’, as Murray explains. “We won the two 500 races and the first leg of the Unlimited on the Bonneville, but then a television crew asked for a cameraman to be taken slowly around the circuit so they could get some footage. So he got in the sidecar on the Bonnie and I rode fairly slowly around the track, but the bike had a total loss ignition system and this drained the battery, so that when we went to go out for the second leg of the Unlimited, it wouldn’t run properly, and Ken Adams won.”
Still, Murray and Herb had their first national title, and better things were in store for 1968. The Australian Scrambles Championships were allocated to Western Australia and held at Collie, which proved to be a happy hunting ground for the pair, taking both 500cc and Unlimited events. However on the weekend prior to Collie, Murray and Herb decided to have a crack at the Australian TT which was being held on a ‘round the houses’ circuit at Albany. With just a change of tyres on the 500cc speedway Jawaengined scrambles outfit, they bagged third place in the Unlimited Sidecar TT against the proper road racing outfits. Back home, the Australian Short Circuit Championships took place at St Kilda, and it was another double win – 1968 had been quite a year, with Murray and Herb taking four Australian titles in consecutive weekends.
A change of passenger for 1969 saw Mick Trevena, and Reg Courtney briefly take the chair, soon followed by Des Rettig, brother of Lynette, who happens to be Mrs Murray Williams. However after taking out the 1971 Australian Unlimited Championship at their home track of Clarendon in the Adelaide hills, Des sadly lost his life in a road accident while riding home from work. The tragedy hit the family hard, and Murray admits he contemplated retiring from racing, but was given a pep talk by Wayne Kearvell. “Wayne was a big, brash bloke and he gave me a talking to, and even said that he would jump in the chair if I wanted. Well, that got me going again and Wayne turned out to be a fantastic passenger. He wouldn’t put up with any nonsense and being such a big strong bloke was a definite help in those situations. One of the first events we did together was the 1972 Australian Scramble Championships at Ray Owen’s
track at Wallan, Victoria. I went across there one month before the event to have a good look at the place, and I am glad I did because I noticed that the late afternoon sun was right in your eyes on the main straight. One month later the sun would be even lower so I bought two pairs of ski goggles with the orange lenses and kept them wrapped up until we were actually about to ride out onto the line, and handed a pair to Wayne. He said, ‘what do I need these for’ and I told him to throw away his old goggles, which were scratched anyway, and wear these. He reluctantly put them on – he never wore gloves either – and they worked a treat – the others could hardly see heading into the sun.”
The sun wasn’t the only problem Murray had to contend with, because he learned well before the meeting that several of his Victorian rivals were planning to protest should he win the Junior Sidecar class, which by this stage had risen from 500cc to 650cc. “The problem was that the XS650 Yamaha engine in our outfit was actually 653cc, and even though it was only 3cc over, they were still going to protest. So I spoke to Alan Wallis’ son Rex and he worked out if I reduced the bore size by 13 thou on each cylinder it would bring it back to 648.3cc. So I took a week of my holidays from work, pulled the motor out and had the pistons ground down by Repco and put in new sleeves. Then while it was apart I had Peter Sparkes measure it and I put it back together in front of him, with the head and barrel drilled so he could wire them and attach the lead seals with the ACU stamp in them. Peter wrote a letter on ACU letterhead confirming all this and
off we went. At Wallan the Yamaha was making 46 horsepower at 8,000 rpm and with a medium/close ratio 5-speed gearbox it was quick. But Steve Smith and John Delima got each side of us on the grid ready to give us the ‘Victorian Crunch’, so big Wayne sat on the back like a pillion passenger and held them off. We won both 650 and Unlimited but then Reg Bennett from the Victorian ACU came up to us and said, ‘Sorry Murray but you won’t be keeping the 650 trophy because your engine is oversize’.
The buggers had protested just like they said, and they were all there looking over Bennett’s shoulder. So I said, ‘You’d better have a look at this’, and gave him the letter and showed where the engine had been sealed. He turned and said ‘Sorry boys, but it’s legal!’ – you should have seen his face”.
The following year Murray and Wayne made the trip to Mulbring, in the NSW Hunter Valley, for the 1973 Australian Scramble Championships, taking with them their faithful outfit that was now powered by the TX750 Yamaha engine that had originally been raced (and crashed) by Bill Horsman in the 1972 Castrol Six Hour Race at Amaroo Park. For some reason, the organisers kept the sidecar races until very late in the programme, running first the Junior 650cc class followed by the Unlimited. The lap featured a huge bog that churned up into a cloying mass of mud and became increasingly treacherous, but typically, Murray found the quickest way through and ran away with the Unlimited Championship.
Despite the hectic racing schedule, Murray continued to ply his trade, working for Newton McLaren (electrical engineers) as a fitter/welder, building sub stations, driving a mobile crane, fitting pumps to the Mannum-Adelaide pipeline and the Morgan-Whyalla pumping station, and the Mount Gambier power station. He and long-serving passenger Wayne Kearvell also continued to chase major events, and in 1974 made the trip to Manjimup in Western Australian for the Australian Motocross titles. “I had been using a TX750 Yamaha engine that Pitmans gave me, but for WA I took that out and put in a brand new stock standard TX650 engine. By then you had to use mufflers and I couldn’t get it to rev until Wayne drilled out the ends of the mufflers and it would then go to 8,000. At Manjimup, Darryl Bergmeir on his Yamaha/Wasp won the Junior title, then switched to a Norton/Wasp for the Unlimited. The starts were hand-on-head, where you stayed in neutral until they dropped the flag, then put it into gear. I had a tacho and just held the revs at 3,000 and got a reasonable start, but Bergmeir didn’t pull the clutch in and just banged it into gear. He took off but the gearbox was broken and he was out. We had to
contend with Phil Franklin on a Suzuki ‘waterbottle’ but we eventually got passed him and won.”
That was the tenth national title for Murray, and would remain at that figure for 37 years, until he bagged the Pre-1968 Sidecar title at the 2011 Australian Vintage MX Championships held at Crystal Brook, South Australia, with Tom Lang in the sidecar. There were 18 South Australian titles as well (one gained on a solo), gathered from 1962 to 1997, plus an incredible ten-straight victories in the annual Hec Henderson Sidecar Derby – a half hour event that preceded the one-hour Laurie Boulter Memorial Trophy for solos (where Murray often rode his CZ solo). Much of the success was achieved with Wayne Kearvell, who occupied the chair from 1972 and was still there more than four decades later. Not surprisingly, the Murray Williams Cup has been a keenly contested Sidecar event since 2014. That year, Murray was inducted into the Motorcycling SA Hall of Fame. Although Murray will always be synonymous with Sidecar Racing, he was also a dab hand on four wheels and plied the South Australian Speedway tracks from 1972 to 1986. The car experience began in an FJ Holden around the banked bitumen oval at Adelaide International Raceway, and continued with open wheelers – Super Modifieds and Speedcars – at Rowley Park, Speedway Park, and many country circuits. The Speedcars included a Repco Holden owned by Phil O’Shea which was highly successful until the engine was replaced with a supercharged Renault unit. Then came a V4 Chevy II, followed by the popular Volkswagen set up. In 1982 and 1983 Murray was top point scorer on the South Australian country circuits.
During this time he kept his hand in with a reduced schedule of sidecar racing, and took up the cudgels as team manager when his own son Darren began Sidecar Motocross racing. Initially riding an air-cooled Honda CR480 outfit and later a watercooled CR500, Darren went on to take out two Australian Sidecar MX Championships himself. These days, Murray is as busy as ever in his delightfully cluttered home workshop, and has no intention of hanging up his helmet just yet. There are still more trophies to be won.