Author Description

Which sport saw the first Australians compete behind the Iron Curtain? In the 1950s, which profession allowed a welder from Prahran and a toolmaker from Belfield to earn 15 times their regular weekly wage? Travel with the young men criss-crossing a still rebuilding Europe, racing for a living -- some on the road with their mates, others with their new brides. Cure an electrical problem with your teeth and mend a broken gear linkage with fencing wire. Cross the mine fields into East Germany, where one wrong move could put you in a gulag. Experience the highs, lows and scary hospitals -- stories even the men who lived them reckon people would not believe. The product of eight years' research and writing, this book goes far deeper than the typical who won what and when. It puts you on the grid at long forgotten public-road circuits like St Wendel and Hedemora; in the van trundling across Europe in high summer and behind the Iron Curtain on the oil-stained roads of Brno.