Murray Aunger's tech ability and bravado gets Adelaide Dort cars expedition to Darwin and back in 1922

Murray Aunger navigating a Dort vehicle through high water during the Samuel White expedition in 1922 that departed from Aunger 's car business in Adelaide (inset) to Darwin and back. 
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia

Murray Aunger embodied the adventurous spirit with technical flair of early 21st Century South Australian motoring. Son of a farmer from Narridy, near Clare, Aunger was apprenticed to consulting engineers G. E. Fulton & Co. at Kilkenny before joining Vivian Lewis’s cycle works that later worked with Tom O'Grady to build the first petrol-driven car in South Australia.

Riding Lewis bicycles, Aunger also was South Australia's one-mile champion in 1899 and in 1901 set the Australian record for 50 miles. As a driver and mechanic, Aunger was successful at the second attempt in 1908 with Henry Hampden Dutton to make the first crossing of Australia from Adelaide to Darwin in a car.

With speed-record attempts between Australia's capital cities receiving wide publicity, in 1909 Aunger accompanied Robert Barr Smith in his Napier to set a new time for the Adelaide-Melbourne journey. They held the record for only a few weeks but Aunger regained it in 1914, driving a Prince Henry Vauxhall with F. Bearsley. They reached more than 80mph on the Coorong pipeclay. They next broke the Adelaide-Broken Hill record in the same car.

After leaving Lewis Cycle Works in 1909, Aunger established Murray Aunger Ltd with franchises for several well-known cars.

In 1922, Adelaide naturalist Samuel White used three Dort cars supplied and serviced by Murray Aunger Ltd for an expedition to Darwin and back. Murray Aunger and brother Cyril were drivers and mechanics for the expedition. Also in the party was politician Thomas McCallum, who was assessing the route for a north-south railway. The round trip covered 8,800 kilometres in 10 weeks, overcoming sandhills, grass seeds choking the radiators and having the cars submerged at Newcastle Waters. 

In 1925, chief commissioner William Webb persuaded Aunger to become motor engineer with the South Australian Railways. This ended bitterly when some political circles targeted Aunger for what they saw as favourable treatment from Webb.