5x Australian Rally Champion/ 2x Asia Pacific Champion
Born in Fremantle, Ross Dunkerton was a high achiever in Australian rallying.
He won the Asia-Pacific Championship in 1991 when 45 and again the following year when a full-time driver with Mitsubishi.
But long before this, in the heyday of Australian rallying, he won the Australian championship five times in nine years including three years consecutively.
This was all in Datsuns but while tying up his fourth championship in a Datsun, he squeezed into his schedule the highest mileage, least time-off-for-sleeping, 1979 Repco trial in a Volvo, finishing fourth behind the three-car Holden Commodore team.
He won the Southern Cross Rally in 1980.
Twice in the Repco, Ross’s humour was tried when one of his crew leapt from the car as Dunkerton bumped his way through a gate overtaking another competitor but leaving his man behind.
This then required a return to pick up the stranded gate-opener.
On another occasion the same victim spent nearly a kilometre hanging on grimly to the boot rack when a gate expected in a hundred metres or so was open.