Marion Bell

Mabel Marion Bell (née Chaffey; 1891–1982) was a New Zealand-born motorist, businesswoman, and the first woman to encircle Australia by car.

Early and personal life Marion Bell was born on 18 November 1891 in Okaihau, Northland, New Zealand. Her parents were Ernest Chaffey and Marion Williams.

Bell grew up in a remote part of New Zealand and thus became an experienced bush woman, horse rider, and later mechanic. On one day when she was only ten years old, she took one of her father's racehorses and visited her grandmother (almost 600 km away) without telling anyone. She managed to cover 430 km before the horse tired, but found shelter in a Maori hut and rode to safety the next day.

Bell was also very entrepreneurial. After she moved to Australia, she ran a furrier's business in Sydney and later a charabanc business in Fremantle. By 1929, she bought out the Fremantle Taxi Service with her second husband and significantly reformed the business, hiring ambulance officers with first aid training. Bell remarried in Melbourne later that year to Thomas Henry ‘Norman’ Bell.

Motor tour around Australia In 1925, when ‘round’ car journeys became a national obsession, Bell announced she would be completing a motor tour of Australia. On 14 October 1925 in an Oldsmobile Six, sponsored by Vulcan Oil Company, Fremantle, she set off from the Fremantle Town Hall with her 11-year-old daughter and travelled over 19,000 kilometres in five months. They stopped at small settlements and cattle stations along the northwestern coast of Australia and then continued through the top end before the wet season made driving impossible. She received a large reception and celebration on her return, complete with cinematographers, welcoming speeches, and a crowded press conference.

While Bell's decision to bring her daughter along was criticised, Marion Bell Jr was a respectable companion. She recorded speedometer readings, filled the radiator, ensured enough air was in the tires, and opened hundreds of gates blocking their route. There were murmurs that it was mainly good luck and the kindness of men that brought Bell and her daughter through their journey safely. Most notable was Bell's dispute with Joshua Warner, the second man to complete the same route around the country, where both drivers asserted the other was incompetent to make the journey and had not made it all the way without help. Warner claimed that he was forced to provide Bell with fuel from his own stocks and was delayed due to continuously digging her car out of bogs. Bell strongly disputed this version of events and insisted that it was she who had assisted him to get his car through and loan him oil, not the other way around. The controversy played out in local newspapers, national motoring magazines, and the tabloids. Bell maintained her side of the story and continued to defend herself.

Later life After her motor tour, Bell continued to run a motor garage, taxi business, and ambulance service in Perth until well after World War II. She had painted in large letters across the garage display window: ‘Marion Bell: The First Woman to Drive Around Australia’.

Marion Bell died on 3 December 1982. Her ashes were scattered at the Karrakatta Cemetery in Perth.