Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

GAVIN was born to pioneering doctor Elma Sandford and British Army Major Harry Morgan, whom she had met while working in Baghdad.

No doubt these strong-willed parents influenced Gavin and his older sister Rosemary's upbringing.

The family moved to Sydney, where Gavin developed a love of the classic 1930s British and European motor cars and wrangled drives with the chauffeurs of family friends.

When his parents separated his mother moved both children to Adelaide and Gavin attended St Peter's College, influential in developing his life-long love of classical music and the arts. His first schoolboy jobs were in the family merchandising and engineering firm, AW Sandford and Co, where later he would be chairman.

Gavin was a keen Sea Scout and wanted to join the Navy when World War II broke out. He was able to join the Merchant Navy at 16, and was soon a navigator and then midshipman in RAN corvettes.

His fascination for cars is recorded in 1944, when he and some teenage mates on the HMAS Mildura, stationed briefly in Perth, bought a broken down 1926 Vauxhall 14/40 and coaxed it into life to get around town by gravity feeding petrol or any other suitably volatile substance they could find into the carburettor. In 1945, he was aboard the first ship to enter Hong Kong harbour, sweeping for mines after it fell to the allies.

After the war he mixed sundry day jobs with motor racing. As he rose through the corporate ranks in agricultural and mining equipment companies he also raced regularly and successfully at Bathurst, Broken Hill, Mt Druitt, Pt Wakefield and the Lobethal Collingrove Hill Climb.

 

He met and married his first wife, Catherine, and children Nicola, Jamie, Rory and Melanie followed.

He started restoring vintage cars with a 1910 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost in the 1950s, but his interests in heritage were much wider than that, and in 1962 he bought the derelict Drumminor 1856 sandstone manor and restored it to its original glory. It became a favourite Adelaide restaurant after he sold it in 1972. The restoration helped earn him a life membership of the National Trust.

Gavin was a pioneer of post-war motorcar restorations and was present at many milestones in the development of motor cars in Australia. He was a friend of Tom Kruse of Birdsville Track fame, and was on Lake Eyre assisting Donald Campbell to break the land speed record in 1964.

In 1972 he and some friends took over 1850s Birdwood Mill and rapidly expanded the museum and its collection. In 1976 the Dunstan Government stepped in to stop the dispersal of the collection by buying the museum. It became the National Motor Museum, with the biggest collections of motor cars and bikes in the Southern Hemisphere. Its iconic Australian motor cars include SA's 1897 Shearer Steam Car.

Gavin had run the museum as a weekend venture at first, while still SA manager of Moore Road Machinery. He became general manager of Horwood Bagshaw, and later established mining equipment manufacturer Liebherr's operations in Australia.

As he retired from company management he started his own business, Vintage Motor and Engineering in Stepney. It restored his own vehicles, his friends', and then attracted business worldwide as its reputation for precise, authentic and unadorned restorations grew.

VME was only closed in June last year when failing health would not allow Gavin to continue working.

His life-long commitment and efforts to Australian pioneering and motoring history and his services to the community were recognised in 2007 with a Medal of the Order of Australia.

Gavin mixed his pleasures by driving friends in his glorious 1920s Bean open top tourer up to the Barossa Music Festival.

Gavin's first wife Catherine died in 1985, and in 1994 Gavin married his present wife Jeanette Barritt.

He is survived by Jeanette and her son Mark, his children Nicola, Melanie, Jamie and Rory and 10 grandchildren.

Courtesy of The Advertiser
March 2, 2012