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Transcript

Rob Herridge - Part 1 · Rusty's Garage

0:02
A listener production.
0:14
I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
0:27
They say it's important to live a full life.
0:29
My guest today has done that, and even though he's just clocked 70 on the odometer, there's signs that he'll only ease off the throttle rather than coming off it completely.
0:39
Rob Herridge has titles and trophies in powerboating, barefoot water skiing, and he turned his attention to rally later than most, but succeeded at that too.
0:49
He was skilful with clag target shooting as a young bloke and is on target for more silverware now,
0:54
that there is less driving involved.
0:57
There's been some safari competition to satisfy the love of driving in post-ARC life and decades running the family business, Maximum Motorsport, prepping competition cars for clients, running some of them at events, building and modifying to cope with the rigours of rally and on occasion for a few just for pure enjoyment.
1:17
The common denominator is Subaru, and the relationship dates back decades, with STI enthusiasts turning to them right around the country for parts now.
1:27
For this one, I'm not in the studio, though, rather in their workshop.
1:31
Buy some cool cars with history that's important to Rob and his son, Dean.
1:36
I'm grateful to Dino, who I do some broadcasting with, for teeing up this episode.
1:41
You'll hear about Dean's career, too.
1:43
that's later and yes we will get him on the pod at some stage as always we begin with the foundation some early life yarns that will give you a sense of rob's makeup why he became such a good engineer with the kind of competitive drive that you tend to learn while you're young and he's done some commentary with his buddy ross dunkaton over the years too so he can talk buckle up enjoy the ride
2:10
Rob, welcome.
2:11
It is great to kind of tell a bit of your story.
2:13
And I love to start these things with a little bit of where you grew up and how you got started and so on.
2:18
And you were kind of wheat farming built in north of Perth, weren't you?
2:22
Well, east of Perth.
2:23
East of Perth, yeah.
2:24
East of Perth.
2:25
I grew up in a little place called Jannekerbine and no one knows much about Jannekerbine.
2:29
The genial giant Jack Clark who used to play a VFL football came from Jannekerbine.
2:35
But myself and Jack Clark, I shouldn't say that because Janikovine people are treasures, but a cyclone went through Janikovine years ago and did a million dollars worth of improvements.
2:47
It was a nice place.
2:48
It was a bit of a purple patch, a very good wheat and sheep area.
2:52
They had football and hockey and tennis, but we had a farm that had a lake on it, so I did a lot of water skiing as well.
2:59
Okay.
2:59
So were there, I mean, water skiing points to that, were there other kind of influences that have ultimately maybe led you to this motorsport path?
3:09
Were there dirt bikes?
3:10
Was it farm machinery and things?
3:12
How soon before you were mucking around with motorised things?
3:15
Oh, pretty soon because we had two farms and they were 20 kilometers apart.
3:20
And the pub was in the middle of those two farms, between those two farms.
3:25
And from the pub to our home farm was through my grandparents' farm.
3:29
My grandparents weren't alive and didn't own it at the time, but it was a bit of a track.
3:33
And I thought I was the world rally champion going to and from the pub, especially coming home from the pub.
3:38
It comes to the past that I was nowhere near the world rally champion because I had no idea how fast a rally driver drove.
3:43
But I did a lot of water skiing and that got me involved in boats, of course.
3:47
So we went from water skiing, competition, competition, barefooting, to racing boats, inshore powerboats, offshore powerboats.
3:55
But my father died when I was 19 and I already was racing motocross bikes.
4:00
He had no interest in motorsports, he was into football, and nearly everybody around me was into football, but I wasn't much good at football.
4:07
So I suppose I was looking for a bit of something else.
4:11
And on the farm, we had farm bikes, of course, and, but my uncle Bob, who accompanied me on some of the ARC events I did, he was into motorsport, but he was a Perth copper.
4:21
and he didn't have much money, but that's probably where I got the connection with a bit of motorsport.
4:25
Cool.
4:26
You've touched on a number of things that I want to come back to here individually, but first of all, is it true that you may have set fire to your cupboard as a kid?
4:35
Did this happen?
4:37
Well, I've got 12 grandchildren between my wife Debbie and myself, and a couple of them are little ratbags.
4:44
But I hope that they always grow out of that because according to my aunties and my sisters, I was a rat bag.
4:50
And I probably do way worse things than my kids, certainly way worse things than my kids did, way worse things than my grandkids did.
4:59
And yes, I didn't set fire to the wardrobe.
5:01
I lit a fire on top of the wardrobe.
5:03
That's an entirely different thing.
5:05
And I set fire to the paddock outside the house.
5:08
And when my parents came home from wherever they were, they found it's pretty hard to disguise the fact that the paddock's been on fire.
5:14
But fortunately, it was a little triangle in between where the vehicles drove, and I was able to put it out.
5:19
And I have no idea why I did that, but maybe it was just to see if I could put it out.
5:23
And fortunately, I could put both of them out.
5:26
The sporting stuff intrigues me because, if I'm right...
5:30
Your mum was quite a good hockey player.
5:32
Yes, she was.
5:32
And your dad, I think, administratively worked around the football team and so on too.
5:38
So do you think those sporting influences had an impact on you from perhaps a competitive make-up or a... You've done so many different pursuits.
5:50
You've rattled off the boating there before.
5:51
We know about your rallying.
5:52
You're quite good from a shooting standpoint these days and even when you were younger.
5:56
But did that influence you from a competitive sense?
5:59
Yes.
5:59
I think so.
6:00
My father was a very well-respected football administrator.
6:04
He was president of the Low Club.
6:05
Never played a game of football in his life, but he was the club president.
6:08
He was the association president.
6:11
The Premiership Shield was in the name of my grandfather.
6:14
And none of the brothers played, but they were all involved in sport.
6:18
And my mother was a very competitive sportswoman.
6:20
She was very good at hockey, represented the state in croquis.
6:25
And she was very good at darts.
6:28
And she didn't always win.
6:30
But if she didn't win, she would come back to the farm.
6:33
And we lived together on the farm, because as I said, my father died when I was only a teenager.
6:37
And she would say, Robert, you've got to spend a bit of time with me this week playing darts, because when I go back next week, I am going to win.
6:43
And I think that's sort of stuck with me, that if you first don't succeed, let's not just bail out.
6:51
Let's come up with a plan, and let's practice, and let's train harder.
6:54
and we'll go at it a bit harder.
6:56
So let's extend that a little bit, if we can, just around the shooting.
7:00
I mean, you do some...
7:00
I think it's a clay target shooting that you do now, and I think as a young fella, you were doing a bit of that.
7:05
And typically, as you are now, you're immersed in it, you know a lot about it, in the same way that you do with your motor racing.
7:12
Did you kind of get a little bit of a lesson in maybe almost sports psychology from your Uncle Roy because you came up against each other when you were battling for an event or a title?
7:22
Is that right?
7:22
Yes.
7:23
I don't know whether I've told this story many times and I'm actually now starting to doubt whether it was true, but it's close enough to be true.
7:31
He could line his house with sashes.
7:33
I've got a few state sashes that I hang up very proudly.
7:36
And depending on how big the event is, it depends on the colour of the sash.
7:41
Like a national sash is a certain colour, a state sash is a certain colour.
7:45
But I always remember we would go to dinner at Uncle Roy's place and he was only like my godfather sort of thing.
7:50
And he had more sashes than you could poke a stick at.
7:52
But he and I, in shooting, if you shoot, if it's a 50 target event and you shoot 50, well, you're probably not going to win outright, but you'll be in a shoot-off to decide the winner.
8:02
And I was in a shoot-off with my Uncle Roy and I was very proud of that because he was the sheriff and he was the champion and I was just the up-and-coming kid.
8:09
And as I went to shake his hand...
8:11
He, wishing good luck in the shoot off and we would decide the winner, he gave me the very abrupt get.
8:19
F'd.
8:20
F'd.
8:21
And it sort of, it has shocked me a little bit.
8:24
And while I was thinking about why would he say that?
8:27
And of course I missed one of the first few targets and he won and as we were walking off he gave me a bit of a pat on the back.
8:32
He said, sorry about that son, but shootin' shootin' and winnin's winnin' and that was that.
8:36
You learned a lesson.
8:38
I got a bit of a lesson, yeah.
8:40
You looked up to him though, didn't you?
8:41
Oh, absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
8:42
And he, his son Colin was my best mate growing up.
8:48
He stayed at our place, I stayed at their place.
8:51
And sadly he died at about 21 years of age in a car crash.
8:55
At a similar age,
8:58
that my father died.
8:59
So I think in one area in our life, he was probably short a son and I was probably short a father.
9:05
So when I started shooting, he was like a godfather to me.
9:09
And yeah, certainly look up to him, yeah, of course.
9:11
Come back to that, I mean, coping with that sort of stuff is,
9:15
A very difficult thing.
9:16
You have to probably grow up a little bit faster.
9:17
You've got a mum and sisters to think about and so on.
9:21
What sort of impact did your dad's passing at that?
9:23
What did you say?
9:23
I was 19, I think you were.
9:24
Yeah, I was 19.
9:25
And my father went from seemingly healthy to dead in a month.
9:30
And I'm not even really sure what he died of.
9:34
My wife remembers better than me.
9:35
She wasn't there, of course, but she's got a better memory than me.
9:40
But I was home on the farm looking after the livestock and looking after the farmer.
9:44
My mother was traveling forwards and backwards and forwards to the hospital, and then all of a sudden, just before he was due to come home, he had a fall and he died.
9:51
So that was a bit sad and I'm sure my mum and my sisters worried because the tearaway son that set fire to the wardrobe, and I wasn't setting fire to wardrobes at the time, but I was still a bit of a tearaway, long-haired lout and a little bit wild.
10:06
And as I said, the pub was between our two farms, so I suppose they had their concerns and...
10:12
But I think I got a bit of direction from my uncles, whether they were blood uncles or inherited uncles.
10:20
I mean, we had plenty of people.
10:21
My father was so well respected that the community, I think, made sure that I was on the straight and narrow.
10:28
And yeah, I suppose it could have went one of two ways.
10:31
It could have ended badly, but it probably, my sister say, saved my life.
10:37
But, you know, knuckled down and did what I had to do to look after the family to raise the family.
10:43
You talk about yourself in a joking way as a pretend engineer.
10:46
You're way better than that.
10:48
I'm not much better than that.
10:50
I reckon you are.
10:50
You undersell yourself.
10:52
It might be the hands-on learning that you've done, but you're very good.
10:56
I know that in all sorts of different ways when you...
10:59
apply that craft does that come from necessity from the farm learning to kind of weld and to I mean you when you farm you have to be adaptable you've got to fix things and is that kind of where it started well of course it is and we built a lot of a lot of buildings when we were my father we built everything we had to build everything because we had no money every bit of machinery we had was uh I think the youngest piece of machinery was 21 years old
11:23
And so my father would be fixing things and I'd be driving things and bussing them.
11:29
But he said a couple of things that I've always remembered about things.
11:33
He said, when you build something, it has to be a cross between what you know is true and what looks true.
11:39
So when someone says, well, it's got to be right, Rusty, because it's straight, but it doesn't look straight.
11:46
So it had to be a combination of halfway between the two.
11:49
So we would sometimes have to fudge roof lines and things to go, well, we know that's straight, but the rest of the building's not, so we need to alter that.
11:57
But he had a bit of an idea for inventing things, and he had a bit of an eye for what looked right.
12:04
And I think rally cars and the way you design things is a bit like boats.
12:09
If it looks right, it is right.
12:11
So quality workmanship was kind of instilled in you in a sense.
12:14
Yeah, I think so.
12:14
But thinking outside the square a little bit, when I started rallying, people had a preconceived idea of what worked and what didn't work, and that's what they stuck with.
12:23
And I bumped into scrutiniers that said, well, that won't work because I've been rallying for 15 years and we don't do it like that.
12:29
And I'm going, just because you've been rallying for 15 years doesn't mean you've been doing it right for 15 years, you've probably been doing it wrong for 15 years.
12:35
So I was fairly opinionated and throughout my rallying and indeed my life, people haven't died wondering what I was thinking.
12:41
So, and my mouth got me into a trouble a few times, but it also got me noticed a bit.
12:46
Let's talk more about that a little later.
12:48
Firstly, to wrap up the farming aspect, just let people know the kind of farming involved and then what happened when your dad passed because there was a bit of a split of the family farm.
12:57
You worked it for a while and so on, didn't you?
12:59
Yeah, worked it for a while.
13:00
We had two farms, as I said.
13:02
The one that we lived on was pretty rough and rocky and ironically, 20 kilometres away, the other farm was pretty sandy.
13:09
Okay.
13:09
And the sandy farm had three lakes on it, which is where the water skiing comes from.
13:12
But when my father bought the farm,
13:15
There was no water and I think it got a bit of a discount because they couldn't find water, but you wouldn't believe it in, I don't know how many years later, but maybe, well certainly before the Mecca earthquake, so it wasn't due to the Mecca earthquake, but the water just started to rise in the ground.
13:30
The water level rose to a point where three lakes formed and people used it for swimming and skiing.
13:35
And of course I was just a tear away son of the bloke that owned the lake.
13:38
So we didn't have much money for a boat, but we had plenty of people that had boats and being the son of the owner, you got to ski a bit.
13:46
But when he died, he left that property to my mother and my sisters, and I farmed it until the younger sister turned 21, and then I had the option of whether I bought it or what I did, and I made the decision to stay with the home farm that I inherited with my mother, and ultimately, I bought a slightly bigger farm up near Meckering.
14:03
Now, I don't know if it's that particular property with the lakes and so on on it, but Dean talks very fondly about the water skiing and it almost kind of became a purpose-built venue, didn't it, for select people to use?
14:16
Yeah, absolutely.
14:17
This is another thing my father...
14:19
It's probably still on the maps.
14:21
You probably still see it as Herodges Lake.
14:23
Herodges Lake, yeah.
14:24
And Herodges haven't owned it for 45, 50 years.
14:27
Okay.
14:28
It's either Herodges Lake or Nielsen's Lake, but it depends on the age of the map.
14:33
But he made that lake available for everybody, and he built big amenities, changed rooms, a big shed to be shaded under, reticulated lawns, brought in power, made toilets...
14:46
flushing toilets.
14:48
It was like a park.
14:49
A ski park.
14:51
Yeah, it was like a park.
14:52
And once a year we would have one event a year called a Lake Hanna.
14:56
We just threw a name on it where we'd raise money to do other things.
14:59
And it was just a big party, basically.
15:02
And I was just the layabout son that just made unuses of himself.
15:07
But when my father died, his mates were movers and shakers, and they helped him do those things.
15:13
And I didn't really have mates that were movers and shakers.
15:15
I had mates that were farm kids or, I wouldn't say that.
15:20
I didn't hang around with the wrong people, but they weren't the generation that made stuff happen.
15:25
They were the generation that kept things going, you know?
15:28
In talking about the skiing part, before we move on here, you can barefoot and beach darts were kind of an easy thing for you and all sorts, weren't they?
15:35
Yeah, I won two state championships barefooting, so it was certainly no problem for flying dock starts or one foot barefoot or rope on toe one foot or tumble turns or things like that.
15:47
I probably didn't have some of the technique that others had, but I had gritty determination because the two championships I won were what they're called Ironman championships, and that was basically who could barefoot the longest.
15:57
And not a very large lake, that's not that easy because after one lap you run into your own weight pretty quick.
16:04
And so then the lake starts to get a bit rougher and rougher and after three or four laps that you've got a bit of a job on your hands.
16:10
And I managed to win that but the West Australian Barefoot Association would come up to our lake to conduct that.
16:16
Wow.
16:16
So and we had a barefoot jump, we had a proper ski jump on the lake and a proper slalom course and we travelled the state a little bit when I was younger and my sister was younger.
16:26
And just competed in tournament skiing and tournament barefooting in later years.
16:29
Dean and I do some work together in broadcasting now, your son, and he says he can recall as a young fella you starting to instil in him the importance of precision around the driving.
16:47
you needed him to operate the boat in certain places on the lake, at certain revs, at certain times, in order for the barefooting to work for you.
16:56
And he knew, even back then, the importance of hitting those marks.
17:00
Of course.
17:01
As I say to people now, and people are still trying to ski, and people are still trying to do things, half of the skiing is in the driving.
17:08
A driver can make you look very bad or can make you look very good.
17:12
But...
17:14
His job was to make me look good and to show off I needed things to be right.
17:19
So you don't have someone just cheering away at 50 miles an hour, you're barefoot at basically 38 miles an hour.
17:25
And if you want to do one foot, you need to go 40 miles an hour.
17:29
But when you're doing, when it's, when the one foot session is finished and I want to do some tumble turns, you better come back to 37 miles an hour.
17:37
And so this was the type of thing.
17:38
And when you do the beach start or the flying dock start, you certainly need the timing right to get the boat going.
17:45
But do not go 38 miles an hour until I'm on my feet.
17:48
Yes.
17:48
Or nearly on my feet.
17:50
You've got to time all that.
17:51
Of course.
17:51
And...
17:53
I remember one particular occasion, my mate, that I used to do a lot of skiing with Terry, I was doing, in front of everybody, of course, because I'm a bit of a lair, the flying dock start, and the dock was, I don't know, three or four foot above the water.
18:03
And in actual fact, it was a shade house that my father had built, and the water had come up further up the land, and the shade house was now in the water.
18:14
So we now use it for something, we'll just sit on top of it.
18:17
Oh no, what do I do?
18:17
I'll do a flying dock start off the top of it.
18:20
So I do this and as I do this, my mate Terry, he guns the boat.
18:26
And he says, well, Robert lands, and he lands on his feet around the rope, and he'll sink, and then I've just got to accelerate up, and he'll be submerged.
18:35
But he eventually pops up, and on this particular occasion, the timing wasn't quite right, and I did submerge, but when he put the power down in the big 400 Chevy, my feet were back over my head, and I'm in a bit of a banana shape with the rope stuck in my groin here.
18:50
LAUGHTER
18:51
With the observer saying, Terry, you better... No, no, he always gets up.
18:57
Well, I wasn't coming up, and I was stuck in a bit of a folded position with the rope until I eventually just got it to go between my legs with a bit of bruising and fortunately kept some other things intact.
19:08
Kept the parts intact.
19:08
So the timing wasn't quite right on that occasion.
19:10
So show enough has its...
19:12
It has its drawbacks sometimes.
19:13
It has its drawbacks.
19:14
Just for the audience, quickly, what was the Ironman distance?
19:19
How long was that?
19:21
And when you talk about the flying start, not just the beach start, does it involve a run and a jump, or what does that involve?
19:26
Well, it does, because you can do a bit of a, it does require a bit of a run and a jump, because basically you have to be floating on top of the water, and you're not going to float at two miles an hour.
19:36
Yes.
19:36
Or you might float, but you're not going anywhere.
19:38
So you've got to find the amount of loops of the rope.
19:42
And you've got to sort of go, yep, the boat's idling out.
19:44
And at this point you go, go.
19:46
And as you're watching the rope unwind, you've got to start running and take two or three very quick steps and jump in the air just as the thing's taken up.
19:55
And you better be on your back and your feet better be somewhere near that direction.
20:00
When you get up to another bit more speed, you then stand up on your feet.
20:04
Awesome.
20:04
What was the Ironman distance that you got to?
20:06
Don't know.
20:06
Don't know.
20:07
It was because it was, and we didn't time it either.
20:10
We basically just, they might've timed it, but it was laps around the lake.
20:14
Lake, okay.
20:14
And some people could do one lap, but one lap wasn't going to cut it.
20:19
And I could do three and three quarter laps.
20:23
And I don't know why it's three and three quarter laps, but by the time you do the start and you stand up over there, you've lost a quarter of a lap.
20:30
So from the time you're on your feet, but you come around past the crowd, remember?
20:33
So that's one lap and there's another lap.
20:36
And it's always better to finish your barefoot run
20:39
letting go of the rope.
20:40
In front of the crowd.
20:41
In front of the crowd.
20:42
And preferably a bit more speed, once again, this is important, to enable you to whip yourself towards the crowd.
20:49
Yes.
20:49
And you ski on your feet and land, standing at the beach.
20:52
Yes.
20:53
That's what you gotta do.
20:54
Walk off in style.
20:54
Walk off in style, yeah.
20:56
And you gotta be a bit careful there.
20:57
But, and this is one of the problems, I, and you're pretty, you get worn out pretty quickly, cause it's, I forget how far it is.
21:05
Maybe it's, maybe it's 10 or 12 minutes, but that's a fair while.
21:09
maybe it's not quite that long but you only want to do enough to win and if i was the last skier i'd know exactly what that was and i think one of the first year was the last year so i just held on until until i won and but the next year i don't think it was the last skier so as i'm hanging hanging on i'm getting very tired and i'm thinking well what i've got to do and your legs are starting to tremble and you're starting your back starting to give
21:33
And I'm thinking, at what point do I just give this up?
21:37
And I think I gave it up at maybe four and a quarter laps or something, or I can't remember.
21:43
But I remember the very last skier went within about a half a lap of, with me watching him going round and round thinking, well, this is not looking so good, but fortunately he fell off.
21:52
And that brings me to another point.
21:54
I don't know how this happened one day, but here I am saying I could do three and three quarter laps.
21:59
That was sort of it.
22:01
And all the tricky stuff only happens in the first lap because you get a bit fatigued.
22:05
You can't do the tumble turns or the one foot or the one foot open toe when you're worn out.
22:10
You just don't want to stay on.
22:11
But one day at the same lake, the same size lake, because you go around the trees, there was a line of trees and we blasted out the trees to make the room.
22:21
One day,
22:22
I don't know what happened, but I got to three and three-quarter laps in front of the crowd and I thought, I'm feeling pretty good, I'll try and do another lap.
22:29
And I did another lap and I thought, that's four laps, I'm pretty puffed.
22:35
I'll make it five, that's the easy number.
22:38
And this is where it gets a bit bizarre.
22:40
So I got to five laps and then I'm thinking, well, I'm still holding up, okay, I'll go to six.
22:45
Six.
22:46
And I went to six laps and then, I don't know what happened, you're getting into something in your mind or something happens in your body.
22:52
And I think this happens at an Olympic level.
22:57
And eventually I struggled it out to 10 laps.
23:00
And I don't know why.
23:01
For all of my skiing, and when I was a young man and when I was fit and, but I don't know what, whether the speed was perfect or whether the water conditions were perfect.
23:09
Because it's not only the fatigue, it's the burning of your feet is the problem.
23:14
And if the water's too cold or too smooth, it burns your feet because the water pressure's in one place.
23:20
So whether there was enough ripple to spread the load.
23:24
And once I got to 10, I thought, well, I might as well
23:28
things just and i went to 11 laps and eventually i just let go and next time i went out there i had three and three quarter laps i was pretty stuffed and i've gone too hard and why did i ever how could you ever get to a point where so when you see some and i wasn't on drugs i've never had a drug in my life a little bit of alcohol but somehow in the middle of all that in the middle of when i was either the fittest or when my mindset was right i achieved something that was
23:56
my personal best by miles.
23:58
Miles.
23:59
And I've never been able to quite work that out.
24:01
But occasionally you get that in rallying.
24:03
Occasionally you get to a situation where everything is happening so well for you, you almost seem slightly removed from what's going on.
24:11
You just feel like you're almost sitting back looking at what's going on.
24:16
And you get to the end and it almost seemed effortless.
24:19
But other times you're just working your absolute arse off and you think, I just cannot get anywhere near where I need to be.
24:25
But other times it just happens.
24:26
A couple of things to take away from that, which I reckon will permeate a bit of this conversation.
24:30
Do what you need to win from a preparation standpoint.
24:33
And then obviously the mental aspect of the game.
24:36
Can we move on from the farming here?
24:38
Because you end up, I may not have the order of things right here.
24:41
I know you had a transport business for a while, but you ended up working for Massey Ferguson on the sales side, I think, didn't you?
24:47
And you saw that as a window of opportunity to move into the transport.
24:51
Is that right, the transport side of things?
24:53
No, I think, well, yes and no.
24:56
When the farming was struggling, and at one point I sold the farm that I still have, but the person who bought it got in very cheaply.
25:02
I wasn't necessarily in big debt, but I could just see that my son, Dean, wasn't going to become a farmer.
25:08
His mother didn't really want to be on the farm, and I could see he probably wasn't going to be.
25:12
So there was an opportunity to get out, so I got out.
25:15
and the person that bought the farm went broke, so I got it back.
25:17
I didn't necessarily want it back, but I got it back.
25:20
But I'd started to do a bit of contracting, and just with an eight-ton truck and carting sheep and livestock, because this is what you have on the farm, so I'll just supplement the income.
25:30
And so there I was selling tractors for Massey Ferguson, but I was also delivering the
25:37
the work and so I think the manager of the Massey Ferguson business got a bit tired of me making more money than him.
25:45
And the tractors weren't easy to sell because they weren't brilliant tractors at the time.
25:51
They still make Massey Ferguson equipment, they make good equipment.
25:54
No, the tractors were okay and they didn't have enough tractors.
25:56
I think that whatever they were trying to get me to sell, didn't want to sell and I couldn't get enough of what I could sell.
26:02
So eventually it got to the point where he said, I think you're...
26:06
Well, you might be worth your money, but I just can't put up with the fact that you're selling the gear and then you're transporting the gear.
26:14
And the transport was, in the end, I think a number of trucks and it was cattle, but all sorts of things, weren't you?
26:19
Yeah, there was, yeah.
26:19
Basically, I ended up with four or five trucks and four or five trailers and contractor drivers and it took a bit of managing, but it was probably the wrong size business, but it was a good lifestyle.
26:30
We lived on a property just outside Northern.
26:32
We had a 10-acre property where we ran the trucks from and...
26:35
And Dean was probably never going to be a truck driver either.
26:37
So eventually, and I was in the transport business, and it enabled me to get involved in the rally business because it turned over a bit of money and there was...
26:47
You know, you did deals with the suppliers, like I had a deal with Michelin Tyres for their rally tyres because I used Michelin Tyres on the truck and the local fuel distributor was happy enough to sponsor me because if I bought the fuel from him for the trucks, so you could leave us some sponsorship.
27:04
Awesome.
27:15
Rusty talks the international language of Raleigh.
27:18
He says he doesn't have a Kiwi accent but Hayden Padden might beg to differ.
27:22
Hayden made it all the way to the WRC and the fire still burns inside for that top flight competition.
27:29
26 maybe.
27:30
If something like that does happen, I would love to give it one more crack.
27:33
And I'd love to give it a crack with our own team, do it our way.
27:36
I definitely feel like there's unfinished business there, especially, you know, the guys, like the guys that are there now doing an amazing job, like driving those cars is no mean feat, but the commitment, the speed, everything.
27:47
But they're all guys that we used to compete with still.
27:49
It's still the same group of guys, and they're guys we backed that we could beat a few years ago.
27:53
So, yeah, for sure I'm not at that level now because I haven't been there, but I backed myself that I could get back to that level.
27:58
So, yeah.
28:00
You can find Hayden's episode in the Rusty's Garage Library.
28:04
It's sweet as.
28:05
Now back to the no BS convo with Rob Herridge, bro.
28:09
How did the first rally car come about?
28:13
Accidentally.
28:14
Was it deaths in 1600?
28:15
Am I right?
28:15
Yes, well like most people.
28:18
It happened accidentally.
28:19
I don't know how but I ended up with six or seven thousand dollars and I was going to buy another boat.
28:27
Maybe I sold one of the boats I had and I was going to buy another boat and I decided on what boat I was going to buy and it was advertised and I went around to the blokes places in Perth and remember this is before mobile phones and before
28:40
It was Sunday Times.
28:41
It wasn't marketable.
28:42
It was just you read things in the Sunday Times.
28:45
And I was in the country, and I happened to be Dean's mother, my first wife, her family lived in Perth, so I was probably down there.
28:51
I'll go and buy this boat.
28:52
I've got some money.
28:53
And this is for offshore powerboating at the time?
28:55
No, this is for inshore.
28:56
I'll finish with the offshore.
28:58
I hadn't started, I can't remember, but I was going to buy another boat.
29:01
And I got there, and he didn't want to sell it.
29:03
And I've gone, no, it's a bit disappointing.
29:05
I've got $6,000 or $7,000, which was a bit of money.
29:08
And then...
29:11
His mother just found, said, oh, that's bad luck.
29:13
And friends of ours were going on holidays and she said, well, let's go with them.
29:18
And I said, okay, well, I don't know about the money.
29:20
She said, well, I know we've got some money because we're gonna buy a boat.
29:24
Okay, we went on holidays and we spent $4,000 and I came back with $3,000.
29:30
And I was once again on the floor of the in-laws house and I'm looking under boat or I'm looking under bike.
29:38
I'll go and buy this motorbike because I was into motorbikes.
29:40
Well, I've got a few motorbikes, as you know.
29:42
And I went around the bloke's place, beautiful CVX 1000 Honda, $2,800.
29:47
I don't want to sell it.
29:50
And I think, what the hell?
29:54
But they want my money not good enough.
29:55
And so the same weekend, roof a rally car.
30:01
I'll go and I'll have a good rally car.
30:04
So I went around to this place, he couldn't start it up because it was 10 o'clock at night because by now, because I wasted time on a motorbike.
30:10
So I'm obviously going a bit stir crazy with money in my pocket.
30:13
And I didn't buy that one either, but I went the next day to buy, spent $2,000 on a Datsun 1600 that had no engine.
30:23
It was a rally car or a road car?
30:24
No, it was a rally car.
30:25
And I knew it was a rally car because it had mud on it.
30:28
And it had a long distance tank in it that it had done the Round Australia Rally.
30:33
It had handles on the boot, I think, didn't it, in case you got bogged?
30:35
No, I put the handle on the boot.
30:36
This is my preparation.
30:39
So I bought it home and of course Dean's mother was aghast that I should spend a couple of thousand dollars.
30:47
on this rally car.
30:47
It doesn't even have an engine, so I've sourced bits of engines in Northam.
30:52
How much did you know about rallying at Miss Duggan?
30:55
I knew nothing.
30:57
Nothing at all.
30:57
I've seen it on TV.
30:59
I was 14 years old, and I saw the 1968 London to Sydney rally on TV, and I thought, that's me.
31:06
But, of course, now I'm mid-20s.
31:08
I don't know.
31:09
Am I?
31:09
I forget.
31:10
1983.
31:10
So what am I?
31:11
Am I...
31:16
I know I'm nearly 30 so I was morning 54 so nearly 30 it didn't start rallying until I was nearly 30 and um so I'm building an engine at my mate's place in northern I'm running the transport business and he's got a local garage and I've he'll help me but only Saturday morning so I'm down at his place on the main road and as we're working on this engine I see these rally cars drive past that's a rally car I've got one of those
31:40
And another one drive past and I've been shot.
31:42
Next rally car that comes past here, this is the main street, I'm gonna run out and stop on.
31:46
So I did.
31:47
And I said, what are you doing?
31:48
Oh, I'm going on a rally.
31:50
Where are you going?
31:50
Well, I'm going to Southern Cross for a rally.
31:53
What do you have to do to get started?
31:55
Oh, well, like me, they just fob you off.
31:58
Well, you're doing a car club.
32:00
Okay, what are their names?
32:02
So during the week I travelled to Perth and I joined the Light Car Club and I went around to Wendy Cattell's place and I said, well, I need to be a member apparently and then you become a member of CAMS and you get a book
32:15
And I said, well, I'll intend to win some rallies.
32:17
And he went, yeah, right, sure.
32:19
I've heard that story a few times.
32:22
And so I went on, I found out where you had to go, and I went on a rally.
32:27
Crazy.
32:28
There is a funny story around the transport to one of your first rallies.
32:34
Well, it was the first rally.
32:35
Was it the very first rally, was it?
32:37
You thought you were kind of world champion.
32:39
You didn't.
32:39
Well, I've got a truck, all right?
32:43
So we put it on the truck.
32:45
And when I put it on the truck, it's got a loading ramp, and I just put it on the truck.
32:49
And I'd take the family.
32:50
I'd think maybe I had a caravan for our water skiing.
32:54
I can't quite remember.
32:55
Yeah, I think we did have a caravan.
32:56
So I got my mate to drive the truck.
32:58
So we arrive at the venue, and it's a place called Hoffman's Mill.
33:01
It's in the middle of nowhere.
33:02
So it's a crossroad like that in a bush.
33:04
But I've read in the supplementary regulations that the catering is going to be handled by the Hoffman's Hilton.
33:09
Now I know that's now just a joke, that it's a tent, you know?
33:13
But I was looking in the paper for the Hoffman's Hilton to maybe stay there.
33:18
And I've got to tell you, there's no hotel in Hoffman's Mill.
33:21
So I don't know this though.
33:24
So I've read nothing about, I've got the rule book, and the only thing I've read in the rule book, because I intend to win on car 50 out of 60, is that if you catch someone, they have to make every attempt to move over and if necessary, let you past.
33:37
That's the only thing I know.
33:39
So when we get there and everybody sees this truck roll up and it's everyone's camping there because there's nothing there.
33:45
And of course, nobody knows me.
33:47
I'm there's 70, 60, 70 cars in it.
33:50
And this truck rolls up and as I'm backing the car off on two very rickety bits of wood,
33:57
because I laid it on a ramp, didn't need the wood, but now one bit of wood is a lot stronger than the other.
34:02
So it's staying like this, and the other bits like a plate.
34:05
And it starts doing this, and it's only about that wide.
34:08
So everyone started to go, oh my God, look at this.
34:10
It's gonna tip off.
34:11
Yeah, and you wouldn't believe it.
34:13
Halfway down, the horn sticks on.
34:16
And I have no idea what it even go on.
34:18
So it's going...
34:21
So everybody who wasn't looking is now looking.
34:23
And the only thing that would turn it off is if you turned the steering wheel.
34:27
Because for whatever reason,
34:29
but the board's only this wide.
34:31
So to get it off, it's going beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, as I'm backing the bloody thing off.
34:37
And by now I've got everybody's attention and I eventually get it off and get ourselves sorted and everyone got on with their business.
34:44
And of course I'm now very nervous and we're starting our first rally and I pay no attention to the first 50 cars leaving because I'm due to leave whenever and it's nighttime.
34:56
And eventually it was our due time to start and they said, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go.
35:01
And I... Like a scalded cat.
35:03
..in the camping ground at the start.
35:08
The person with the flag jumping out of the way and me tearing down the 8km transport faster than anybody has ever gone because I don't know the difference between transport and competitive.
35:20
I passed the cars on the road, off the road, screaming at them because they wouldn't get out of the way.
35:27
Haven't you read the rules?
35:30
And by the time I get to the start of the first special stage, I'm puffing and panting and can't believe how terrible they are at not getting out of the way.
35:40
And then I've screamed past all the cars to a stop at the control point, them all just lined up
35:46
nicely to start the stage, but I've seen it on TV.
35:49
You come fly into the control at 100 miles an hour and the co-driver jumps out and gives them the card.
35:55
And that's what he did with everyone ducking for cover and the dust all settling around the place.
36:01
And when we puffing and panting inside the car.
36:03
Who is this bloke?
36:05
And when he come back, he said, how did we go?
36:07
And he says, we haven't started yet.
36:09
I go, really?
36:11
He said, apparently that's a transport stage.
36:13
He said, what's that?
36:13
And he said, we haven't started yet.
36:16
Right, so I composed myself and the first stage was eight kilometers long.
36:22
and I was better than a world champion, because you thought I was fast before.
36:26
I am now into it.
36:27
I couldn't believe that the road was a road to start with, because it's now just a track, and I've been practicing on the Shire roads around Northam, which are pretty big, and only got a corner every few kilometers.
36:39
But there was a lot of corners down there, I can tell you, and zigzagging between trees.
36:42
I thought we were lost half the time, but I got to the end thinking, well, I surely have got to have won that.
36:48
And then when he got, when he come back with the time, I said, how did we go?
36:52
Puffing and panting even more.
36:54
We got beaten by two minutes.
36:56
I've gone, that's got to be wrong.
36:57
There's no way that someone can beat his pipe two minutes.
37:00
And I said, right, well, we'll protest when we get to the end.
37:03
Well, we got beat by two minutes the next stage and the stage after.
37:07
Ironically, it was Ross Duncan that won the stage and the rally.
37:10
Was it?
37:11
And I would eventually become... Good friends with him.
37:13
Good friends and competitors.
37:15
He would drive for Mississi and I would drive for Subaru.
37:17
So in only, I don't know how many years, eight or nine years, I was driving against the bloke that was...
37:24
it's a bit bizarre, isn't it, that that should happen.
37:27
Awesome.
37:28
Tell me about the car.
37:29
What did you...
37:29
I mean, the great thing about Datsun 1600s, even now, is that a lot of parts are quite compatible.
37:36
You could put 240k gearboxes in and things like that.
37:38
What sort of engine did you have in it?
37:40
What sort of modifications was a green Rob Herridge making in his first attempt at rallying and rally cars?
37:46
Well, I was using yellow paint because my brother-in-law worked for the main roads and he could get yellow paint.
37:51
It's just become a trademark colour for you, hasn't it?
37:52
Yeah, it has.
37:53
That one happened accidentally.
37:56
But I could fabricate things and I could fix things.
38:00
But I didn't get a chance to modify much because I crashed on one weekend...
38:05
I crashed a few.
38:07
And then you'd buy another one for $200 the next weekend.
38:10
And then you'd spend the following weekend putting everything from one car into the other because it was all just bolt-in stuff.
38:15
Like you said, transfer it over.
38:17
And then you'd go out rallying.
38:18
I remember one rally I did the first year.
38:20
I had three different coloured doors on it.
38:22
They're trans doors.
38:23
I identify as yellow.
38:27
But eventually I ended up with a factory engine.
38:32
This was probably going into the second year.
38:37
After about three or four rallies, my co-drivers were just me mates, and they couldn't do it.
38:43
They were like me, they'd get motion sickness.
38:46
So after two rallies, my first co-driver, Sean, who ended up driving one of my trucks as well, and was a good mate, he said, no, not for me.
38:52
And the mechanic who helped me, I'll do a rally for you.
38:55
He did one rally or maybe two, no, not for me.
38:58
So I ended up with a bloke called John Pursehouse helping me.
39:01
And he was a driver.
39:02
He wanted to be a driver, but he didn't quite have the money at the time.
39:05
I'll do the co-driving for you.
39:06
Very first rally, I think we got fourth outright.
39:09
Wow.
39:10
And we went from nowhere to fourth outright.
39:13
And then we went to Kalgoorlie for a rally, which is pretty open country, as you imagine, and we got third outright.
39:19
And so I was hooked.
39:21
I'd come from grade four in those days.
39:23
It was grade four, grade three, grade two, grade one.
39:25
So I was winning grade four and grade three and grade two and grade one and outright.
39:29
And so I was hooked.
39:31
So over summer I put in better seats and a better trip master and hadn't got yet to the hot rod engines or anything.
39:39
Anyway, we went to start the next year and he said, well, no, you can't do the first event.
39:43
I've gone to this Makoto, well, why?
39:46
He said, well, I'm going to direct that rally
39:50
And we have to do one rally a year, we called a stand down event, and that's my stand down event, and I'm gonna direct it so you can't do it.
39:56
I go, well, I can do it, and I'm gonna do it.
39:59
And he said, well, you can't do it without me, you won't do any good.
40:02
And I'm going, really?
40:03
He go, well, why do you think you did well?
40:07
I went, well, I was thinking I could probably drive okay.
40:09
He goes, well, I think it's because I was doing the good co-driving thing.
40:13
And I'm going, well, you might think that.
40:17
So I found another co-driver and I showed John Pursehouse.
40:20
He's a mate of mine still, I must say.
40:23
Anyway, in the first stage of the first rally next year, I plunked it into a tree pretty hard, so he had the last laugh.
40:30
I think it might have been a fair bit to do with his co-driving as well.
40:33
Classic.
40:33
But eventually, when I was looking to make the engine go faster, I bought an engine off Bob Nicoli, and it was an ex-George Fury engine from out of one of the stanzas.
40:43
And he said, it's a $3,000 engine, but Rob, you can get 1200 for your engine.
40:48
You know, I'd already put levers on it and things.
40:51
Bob, why don't you give me 1200 for it and I'll give you 1800.
40:54
And he goes, okay, I'll do that, because he was on his way to England to make his mark.
40:58
Ultimately, it didn't work out that well for Bob, but he was at least going to give it a shot.
41:02
So I ended up with a proper dry-sumped factory engine, and now I need a proper gearbox, like you said.
41:09
So the proper gearbox was an option one gearbox.
41:13
It had the proper ratios, but it was drug money, it was $2,400.
41:18
But I couldn't see why you wouldn't have one because a 240k gearbox, which wasn't right, and then you changed the first three ratios to do all that was $1,200.
41:27
I'm thinking, why don't you just buy the proper gearbox for $2,400, which I did, so...
41:34
And of course the bloke I bought it off, Darryl Penley, he had a business called Automotive Tuning Centre and he was Mr Rally, Mr Rally Tuning.
41:40
And that's where you bought the stuff.
41:42
And he's gone, Rob, you're one of the few people of the board and he walked in and he just said, give me a gearbox.
41:47
So I did and I put that next to the factory engine and it went like a jet.
41:51
Jet, yeah.
41:52
It crashed pretty hard when it crashed.
41:54
Did it?
41:54
Because there was.
41:55
Were there some lessons in all that, like in the crashing side of it?
41:58
You know, I mean.
41:58
Yeah, try not to.
41:59
Yeah, of course.
42:02
There is a funny yarn around, I think it's John Makara, and you two might have had a bit of a rivalry thing going, and he couldn't fathom whether, or perhaps in his mind, he thought, your car's got to be quicker.
42:15
Well, he thinks that of everyone's car.
42:16
Does he?
42:17
Okay.
42:17
But in order to resolve this, he...
42:20
I'm paraphrasing here, but I think he has a conversation with you around...
42:25
right, come out to this property where I regularly run the cars, et cetera, I know the piece of road, I'm gonna drive your car, and you agree to this, which is pretty rare for most people.
42:36
Well, I don't agree to it automatically, but he was the man, he was fast, he was the bloke that could win.
42:42
He could probably win an ARC round, he never did, but he was probably fast enough at one point.
42:47
And the fact that he even showed some attention to me was flattering.
42:51
But he probably had more idea of the fact that I had a fast car, and he invited myself and another up-and-coming driver called Jeremy Groldy out to what they call Turkey Farm Road, which is up near the Lakes area.
43:02
And it's not that far from Northam, so easy for me.
43:05
And you shouldn't be there because it's not a controlled piece of bush.
43:09
It's just bush.
43:10
So I didn't worry John McCarley.
43:12
It didn't matter where you weren't supposed to be.
43:13
We were there.
43:14
And it was there at night.
43:15
Don't do this now kids, but that's how it was back then.
43:17
Yeah, do not do this at home.
43:19
And so we would fly around this track and maybe it was four kilometers.
43:23
It was pretty dangerous because there's trees and there's no control.
43:27
But this is what he did.
43:29
And he had some piece of rubbish, bloody RX2 that had to be pushed to sort of, and I went with him.
43:35
And I'm sitting in this car thinking, how dangerous is this car?
43:38
Like it's, this is practice car.
43:40
It's got no roll cage, it's got terrible seats.
43:42
And he drove like a madman and
43:46
And I had to time him, it was my job to time him.
43:48
Like everything he did, he timed.
43:50
Even if we went out to two, which we did at other times, he would have the time from the last rally in his pocket and lean over in the middle of the movie and say, yeah, the last rally, and that's the reason why.
43:59
And you go, what the hell?
44:01
So I had to time him, and as I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, this is looking pretty bad.
44:05
If the roof comes down, I'm trying to squeeze down like this.
44:08
trying to get below the door level, trying to sort of look over.
44:12
And I scared myself stupid while he was driving.
44:15
And then when we got to the deemed flying finish, I'd press the button and it was like four minutes, 16 or something.
44:21
And it was terrifying.
44:23
So eventually during that night, I don't think I could match that, but he would insist that he had to drive my car.
44:30
But I would say, right, well, I'm coming with you then.
44:32
Well, you're coming with me.
44:33
You've got to time me.
44:35
So off we went and I was just a gog.
44:37
I wondered he would drive my car so hard and I thought to myself, if I drove my car that hard, I would be that fast as well.
44:43
But I generally didn't have a lot of sympathy, I didn't think.
44:47
I'd never loaned him my girlfriend.
44:49
So we thrashed around there and I was thinking, oh, one more, only another kilometre to go and I was terrified the whole way.
44:56
And as we flashed across the finish line, I was sweating bullets.
44:59
And as first words of his mouth, what time do we do?
45:02
What time do we do?
45:03
And I looked at the clock.
45:05
and my hands were shaking and I hadn't pressed it.
45:08
Hadn't hit the stopwatch, hadn't you?
45:09
Hadn't hit the stopwatch.
45:10
And I've just, the smartest thing I've done in my entire life, in a flash of inspiration, I've gone, thinking, well, he'd want to do it again.
45:19
I've gone, what time do you think you did?
45:21
Oh, that would have been a 4.15.
45:23
I've gone, no, it was a 4.14.
45:24
Yes!
45:27
Didn't have to do another run.
45:29
That was me, I was done.
45:30
No more Turkey Farm Road.
45:32
No more going with John McCurry.
45:40
That's the end of part one of my pod with Rob Herridge.
45:42
The first of three stages in this one, if we were talking rallying.
45:46
Yep, it's one of the few feature eps in our library with three parts.
45:50
Jump back to the garage when you're ready and give the second and third instalments a listen.
45:55
How he would win his second Australian title.
45:58
before his first, when it was fought out in the courts, and why he never gave up on it.
46:04
Doing a promo shoot with the legendary Ari Vartanen in Rob's car, when Ari discovered that Rob had removed the handbrake.
46:11
Who needs a handbrake in rallying?
46:13
We'll talk about his son Dean's decision to pursue a career in the sport as well, that would ultimately see him become part of the Subaru family, and work beside the legendary Possum Bourne as well.
46:24
All that and more, here on Rusty's Garage.