John 'Stonie' Stoneham a cartoonist for 'The News' in Adelaide and becomes living treasure of first love: motorsport
John “Stonie” Stoneham's decades of cartoons for AutoAction raised him to an Australian motorsport living treasure. His 2021 Classic Motor Cartoon Book was a crowning achievement.
Images courtesy John Stoneham
John “Stonie” Stoneham was political cartoonist at hometown Adelaide’s afternoon newspaper, The News, for eight years (1984-92) but he was always drawn back to his love of motoring and motor sport where his illustrations became an institution.
Stoneham was a self-taught artist from growing up in 1950s Adelaide, copying the characters created by Adelaide newspaper cartoonists such as Pat Oliphant and Norm Mitchell and caricaturist Lionel Coventry. His future calling in their field was reinforced when Stoneham left high school in 1963 and formed a rock band. Visiting drummer Roger Coventry’s house, Stoneham was inspired by seeing the studio of his father: caricaturist Lionel.
Stoneham bought his first car, a Mini, at 19 in 1966, anticipating his father’s prediction that he'd be called up for national service in the Vietnam War and would need a car to come home during leave. He wasn’t called up, so he joined the Mini Car Club and drew cartoons for its magazine.
As advertising manager for Adelaide's Mainstyle motor accessory stores, Stoneham produced comic adverts for the Sunday Mail. Moving to Melbourne in 1975, he set up a T- shirt print shop for motor clubs and motorsport merchandise. He also started cartooning for Australian Auto.
Going overseas in 1977, Stoneham’s first job was to send back cartoons from the Austrian and Dutch Grands Prix to Auto Action in Australia. A cartoon of Australian Alan Jones, who won the Austrian event, also went to London Motoring News who published it.
While standing at a London pub bar, Stoneham scored a job as editorial artist with R & R monthly magazine for the American air force in Britain. In London, Stoneham was introduced to a former president of the British Cartoonists Club who said his work was "OK" but “you'll never be a real cartoonist until you've done politics, son!" Stoneham was lured back to his home town (“I could smell a pie floater from the van across the road from the Adelaide Town Hall”) in 1978.
After persistently trying, Stoneham gained a position at The News in Adelaide in 1984 and spend eight lucky years cartooning in the Hawke-Keating, Bannon, Thatcher and Reagan eras. When South Australia premier John Bannon announced that Adelaide would host the last round of the 1985 Formula One world championship in Adelaide, Stoneham thought he’d “died and gone to Heaven!”
After The News closed in 1992, Stoneham moved to Melbourne that took over running the Grand Prix. He was commissioned by Melbourne Grand Prix Corporation to illustrate and create the F1 champion murals for 15 grandstands around Albert Park Lake. In 1998, Stonework worked on Dean Rainsford's Classic Adelaide Rally, and, in 1999, with Adelaide scoring the Clipsal 500 event, did the V8 walk of fame portraits. The Advertiser commissioned a poster each year to give away with the official programme sold at the track.
Four decades of cartoons for Auto Action also raised “Stonie” to a living treasure of Australian motorsport. Stoneham's 2021Classic Motor Cartoon Book was a crowning achievement. The book featured racing history celebrities from Louis Renault, Henry Ford and Enzo Ferrari to Kiichiro Toyoda and the role of cars in pop culture from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Grandma Duck, Noddy and Big Ears to Bonnie and Clyde, Thelma & Louise and The Italian Job.
