TRANS-AUSTRALIA
FIFTY YEARS AGO, ONE MAN DECIDED HE WOULD BE THE FIRST TO RUN ACROSS THE CONTINENT OF AUSTRALIA, A MIND-BOGGLING UNDERTAKING IN SOME OF THE PLANET’S LEAST FORGIVING CONDITIONS. THIS DIDN’T SIT WELL WITH ANOTHER MAN, AND SO BEGAN A MONUMENTAL PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTEST
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU SET OUT FOR A RUN AND FIND ANOTHER RUNNER HAS DECIDED TO RACE YOU? STICK TO YOUR PLAN AND YOUR PACE? TAKE UP THE CHALLENGE? CONFRONT THE OTHER RUNNER?
It’s a tricky one for even the recreational runner out for a five-miler, but the stakes are considerably higher when both participants are record-setting ultrarunners running across Australia – from Fremantle, just outside Perth in the south-west, to Sydney, 3,000 miles away on the east coast. Throw in a keen rivalry (at least on the part of one runner) and you have the recipe for something unique, marvellous and – frankly – a touch bizarre. Fifty years ago, in August 1973, that’s exactly what happened.
Tony Rafferty was 34 when he set out to become the first to run across his adoptive country. The Belfast-born distance specialist had already made headlines by, among other feats, running from Adelaide to Melbourne (465 miles in eight days) in 1972, and becoming the first man to run from Sydney to Melbourne (658 miles in 17 days) in January 1973. Garrulous and media-savvy, he knew that more was better. ‘It was a natural progression for me to attempt something greater – something that had never been done before,’ the 84-year-old tells Runner’s World.
And so, at 7.45am on 4 August 1973, Rafferty began running. A week later, one George Perdon began to chase him.
PERSONALITY CLASH
The man who was at the time, in Rafferty’s words, ‘probably the nation’s greatest long-distance runner’ was the antithesis of the loquacious Northern Irishman. Then 49, Perdon was an endurance-running legend: the former track and marathon runner from Rutherglen, Victoria, had already set records for 50, 80 and 100 miles. He ran 20 miles a day, every day, and loved a challenge, but something about Rafferty seemed to get under his skin. ‘I must have had the knack of drawing the media more than George did, because our personalities are very opposite,’ says Rafferty, reflecting on the reasons for Perdon’s apparent truculence. ‘I think that upset the people around him; that there was a great runner and I was getting a lot of publicity.’
Not that Perdon was averse to getting his message across in the media. A week before Rafferty set out, Perdon told The Age newspaper he would give his rival a week’s start: ‘Rafferty would be crazy not to accept my challenge to give him a week’s start and race him. All I would have to do is fall over and hurt myself and Rafferty would collect $5,000.’ (Sir Maurice
