Names

Eddie Perkins Collection

IDs

NMM 14

Offline Only

Descriptions

The Eddie Perkins Collection represents the prizes that were won by Eddie Perkins during his motor racing days of the 1950s and 1960s, especially the Around Australia Reliability Trials. It includes an extensive collection of silverware and some ephemera, as well as the suit Perkins wore and the dress worn by his wife at the presentation ceremony for his 1956 Reliability Trials win.

The Reliability Trials of the 1950s and 1960s were important national events and received wide-spread media coverage. They took the focus of the nation to many small outback and regional towns, helping to shape people's understanding of the bush in the years after the Second World War. Well-known Around Australia Rally drivers include Possum Kipling and Gelignite Jack Murray (famous for throwing explosives from his car window). The Eddie Perkins Collection provides an example of the type of prize awarded in this era - full of intricate mainly domestic silverware. [np] Eddie Perkins (1920-2006) won the 1956 Trial in a Volkswagen Beetle with his brother Lance as co-driver, helping to put this European car on the Australian map. He was the patriarch of this well-known motorsport family: his son Larry won multiple Bathurst 1000 races, and grandson Jack is a well-known V8 Supercar driver.

A National Motor Museum collection. Access to collection items held in Museum Stores is by appointment only.

Subjects

Awards; Eddie Perkins; Motorcars; Reliability Trials

Driving; Racing Cars; Road vehicles

Eddie Perkins; National Motor Museum, South Australia

Outback; Racing Cars; Silverware

Trophies

Coverage Spatial

Cowangie; Victoria

Coverage Temporal

1950

1969

Related Collections

Dates

2012-05-30 23:40

2011-03-04 14:02