I have a folder on my hard drive that just has scanned images of all the CRRC riders who I was able to photograph back in the day and this one is one of the best. It depicts Murray Ogilvie on the Honda Bol d’Or at the 1979 Castrol Six Hour race.
By this time, Murray was a seasoned campaigner, having started racing in the early part of the 70s riding, amongst other things, a Bultaco TSS! He raced a TZ350 in open races and was in great demand on the endurance racing scene due to his experience, his speed and, most of all, his ability to pace himself over longer distances.
Murray was member of Canberra Road Racing Club, our first A Grade rider and that’s probably the reason that I took so many photos of him. The previous year to this, he had shared a Yamaha XS1100 with Queensland star, Dave Robbins and the team was in 2nd place late in the race with the leaders in the pits when the rear tyre gave out and Murray crashed in Stop Corner. Despite this, he pushed the bike back to the pits and the team eventually finished 6th.
Murray didn’t have a ride for the 1979 event, well, not until the last minute, he didn’t. As one of the top riders who didn’t have a tie-up with a tyre manufacturer/distributor (the tyre was was well and truly hotting up) he was a free agent able to fit in at a moment’s notice.
The Dunlop-sponsored team had a strong line-up. American ace, Wes Cooley, who had ridden in the 1978 race and had impressed, was teamed with a rising star in the form of Glenn Macquarie. Glenn had ridden in 1978 as a first-timer and hadn’t troubled the scorers too much but he had been cutting swathes through the C Grade ranks since then and looked set for a big future. The fact that he was a rep for Dunlop tyres probably clinched the deal.
Sadly, Glenn was killed in a tragic road accident and the team drafted in Kiwi rider, Owen Hughes. For reasons that I haven’t been able to determine (the book doesn’t say so), Owen didn’t end up riding and so Murray stepped in as a late call-up.
Wes qualified 7th which was pretty respectable and the team had a pretty much trouble-free run to eventually score 6th place at the end of the six hours.
Despite the last-minute call-up, the team managed to put on a good show, even shoehorning Murray into a set of Dennis Neill’s Dunlop leathers so that the professionalism of the show was maintained. A couple of strips of duct tape over Dennis’s name should have done the job for the race but it didn’t and, by early race, the tape had peeled off and Murray finished the race that way.
Murray always raced as a true privateer, unsponsored pretty much except for the addition of Fletcher’s Fotographics which I was able to organise for him before the first road closure.
Indeed, he was able to make light of his racing efforts, the rear of the seat of his TZ always exhibiting the letters, WOFTAM. I’ll leave it to you to determine the meaning.
Murray finished racing in the early 1980s and put his efforts into establishing his business, an outdoor apparel and accessory shop in Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains of NSW. And it wasn’t just his love of the cool weather that enticed him from Canberra to the Snowies. It was, in fact, a passion that had pre-dated his motorcycle racing efforts. Murray was (and is) a passionate fly fisherman. He grew his business around that pastime and expanded it to teaching fly fishing both in the streams and lakes of the Snowies and across the ocean in New Zealand.
Today Murray’s business is still going, despite taking a huge financial hit during the COVID stupidity and he is much in demand in the fly fishing world as well. I always thought that there was a strange dichotomy between the frantic nature of motorcycle racing and the placid atmosphere of fly fishing but he maintains that the two pursuits complement each other so who am I to argue.
A few years ago at the Island Classic, I was amazed to see Murray’s name in the programme so I hustled down to his pit to say hello. It was so great to see him and to catch up. Murray was there with another CRRC stalwart, Neil Stuart who was campaigning a Yamaha TD3 race bike fitted with a Yamaha YZ250 4 cylinder road bike engine. It took some time to get it going right but it is now and it’s a proper little screamer.
Murray’s TZ was his 1979 model, refurbished for the occasion but he found that, if he was going to do it, he’d better do it right so he went on a strict diet, lost a HEAP of weight and fettled up a TZ Yamaha in a Nikko Bakker frame.
Road racing is addictive and, even if you go away, for an extended period of time, it has a way of dragging you back and it’s always good to go to an Historic meeting these days and see Murray and Neil there. What great memories they bring back.