IT is 1954 and June Murray, mother of three, is in the back blocks of NSW, competing against more than 100 men in a motorcycle trial.
By that year she had developed a substantial public profile as a motorcycle rider; in club events, in trials and just for fun.
‘‘I just liked competing,’’ the 85-year-old great-grandmother from Arcadia Vale said.
‘‘If they’d said I couldn’t do something I would show I could.’’
That same year, 1954, the American Women’s International Motorcyclist Association named June Murray the organisation’s Most Outstanding Woman Motorcyclist.
Murray’s trophy for that award – a robed woman with wings – was recently sent away by her daughter Cynthia Atkin to be restored to its glittering glory.
Murray remembers those days with relish and Atkin, who has an extensive collection of photos and newspaper clippings of her mother’s riding career, said reliving the thrill had been good for her mother’s morale and spirit.
Murray grew up in northern NSW, around Lismore, and remembers always wanting a motorcycle.
Married at 17, she not only gained a new husband, she got access to his powerful machines.
He raced at Bathurst, where Murray used to score his laps.
The arrival of children didn’t stop her love affair with two wheels.
She and her family moved to Sydney because the youngest of her three girls needed medical treatment not available in the country.
‘‘When I got the kids to bed at night I would ride from the Collaroy Plateau to the Hawkesbury [River] and back,’’ Murray said.
Atkin remembers being picked up from school by her motorcyclist mother, something that embarrassed her because it ‘‘wasn’t normal’’.
In 1954, when Murray was 29, a friend said: ‘I hear you are riding in the Redex trial.’
Murray said the thought of competing had not crossed her mind but once the idea was planted she felt she could not back out.
The 1954 Redex Motorcycle Reliability Trial attracted more than 100 riders and was conducted over 2500miles [4023kilometres] through NSW, Victoria and South Australia.
The Sydney dealer for the British Matchless, A.P. North, gave Murray a 350cc motorcycle to ride in the event.
‘‘Berlei donated a pair of step-ins [women’s underpants] and a bra,’’ she recalled.
‘‘My husband made my map holder.
‘‘The jewellers Angus and Coote donated a watch.’’
She thinks her brother supplied her leather clothing and panniers.
Murray was one of only two women in the event. The other female rider was Joyce Aylmer, riding a lighter Jawa.
Looking back, Murray said her greatest fear was becoming lost in the maze of tracks in the Broken Hill area in the north west of NSW.
Cynthia Atkin, who was 11 in 1954, and her two sisters were at Parramatta Park to see their mother return safely from what was a gruelling event. A photo of Murray’s three daughters giving her a congratulatory kiss received international coverage and may have won her that 1954 trophy, Atkin said.
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