Latest / Rusty's Garage / Bruce Garland (part 1)

Transcript

Bruce Garland (part 1) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:10
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:31
  Today I'm at Sydney Dragway where the North Shore Sporting Car Club is gearing up for another evening rally sprint.
• 0:38
  These events have become very popular in recent years with a wide array of modern and classics in the car park, ready to race the clock on the tarmac under lights.
• 0:49
  Helping to set up the course is a driver with a wealth of experience, both locally and internationally.
• 0:55
  He is the epitome of the Aussie battler, and if it wasn't for his distinctive Mark I escort, you might know Bruce Garland was in the house.
• 1:05
  Well, his infectious cheeky laugh would be another giveaway.
• 1:08
  The escort, as you'll hear, has some cool mods.
• 1:11
  The body is covered in a mural painted by a well-known graffiti artist with a massive following.
• 1:17
  The colour scheme...
• 1:18
  is as loud as the engine, I can promise you.
• 1:20
  Garland has ticked some very impressive boxes in a career that spans more than 40 years.
• 1:26
  Multiple winner of the Australasian Safari, round Australia trial winner, and he's conquered Dakar in a car prepped by a small band of loyal engineers and friends from Sydney.
• 1:37
  He was pretty hands-on in the build too.
• 1:40
  From rallying to close friendships with some of the greats.
• 1:43
  We talk about Brock and back-breaking
• 1:47
  The obsession, and I promise you it's an obsession, began with some paddock bashing in Queensland as a young fella.
• 1:53
  MUSIC
• 2:02
  12 or 13, we used to go out the back of the Gold Coast where we lived at Palm Beach and people used to dump their cars and take the battery out of them.
• 2:10
  So we'd find an old battery and get them in there and push start them.
• 2:14
  They had no brakes and they were rusted to the shithouse.
• 2:18
  We launched them a fair bit and we did weird things.
• 2:20
  If we'd do it now, you'd probably get arrested or the docks would come and take you.
• 2:24
  But we used to take the boot off and...
• 2:26
  tow it behind the car in long grass and you're hitting stumps and rocks and fj bonnets were the best uh they've got a lot of fc's and fb holdens that's what we used to use a fair bit of them and they um they're all collector's items now but
• 2:43
  Yeah, he used to launch the things into trees and, I don't know, no-one ever got hurt, which I suppose had no brakes.
• 2:50
  And if you stalled it and when the battery was knackered, you'd get absolutely abused by all the other boys because it went with a full carload.
• 2:57
  And some of them that weren't in the group, they'd come and pay and then we'd use their money to buy the fuel.
• 3:02
  And it was a jerry... We used Dad's mower can to go and get the fuel.
• 3:05
  It was 40 cents for a gallon of fuel.
• 3:09
  And he used to...
• 3:10
  Your kids would come that had money.
• 3:12
  We didn't have any money.
• 3:13
  And they'd go, yeah, you've got to give us 20 cents for a ride.
• 3:17
  Went into the field.
• 3:18
  And then we'd drive around and hit things.
• 3:20
  And, yeah, it was a great fun.
• 3:23
  It was good, especially when it rained.
• 3:24
  It was really hilarious.
• 3:25
  But, yeah, we went through a few of those things.
• 3:27
  And then, yeah, I was pretty lucky with that.
• 3:30
  And then I got an apprenticeship when I was in grade 10, after grade 10, yeah.
• 3:36
  So I think you told me your dad was in sort of show business and things like that.
• 3:40
  Is that right?
• 3:40
  And so motorsport wasn't necessarily in the family.
• 3:43
  What was the moment where you saw something, maybe you spectated somewhere and went, how good is this?
• 3:50
  Yeah, I can remember it exactly.
• 3:52
  My dad was – he ran the sound and music part of the –
• 3:58
  playroom on the Gold Coast, which was probably the biggest night club in Queensland at the time, and other venues.
• 4:06
  And he was riding electronics and music and that sort of stuff, and I really wasn't.
• 4:12
  But then I got an apprenticeship, and one of the blokes I was apprenticed to in the workshop, he was a rally driver.
• 4:19
  His name's Dennis Brown, and he had an XU1, and he took me for a Lutwitch.
• 4:25
  rally which was around the australian rally championship and it was in the car park they had like a stage in the car park and i just couldn't believe these cars are going sideways and tearing rubber off and the coppers are standing there just watching them and didn't even book them so that's the best thing to do let's hang on and do your rally driver
• 4:46
  So that's how it started.
• 4:47
  I got the bug there.
• 4:48
  And, yeah, we're still good mates, Dennis.
• 4:51
  I got him at John Wodd running the workshop on Mad Max.
• 4:55
  So we still talk to each other.
• 4:56
  There's a bit of competition between us still now.
• 4:58
  Look, we're fast-forwarding here because there's a lot of ground to cover in your life and time and your career.
• 5:04
  Mad Max.
• 5:05
  People, their ears will have pricked up hearing about that.
• 5:07
  What did you do for the film?
• 5:10
  I did a couple of jobs.
• 5:12
  Originally, they were going to film it out at...
• 5:16
  Broken Hill up in the Monday, Monday Plain.
• 5:19
  But it wouldn't stop raining for two years.
• 5:20
  They even looked at using defoliant to make it look like a desert again.
• 5:26
  So they had to pick the whole lot up and take it in Anibia.
• 5:29
  The problem with that is all the cars that they'd slapped together, and there was nearly 100 cars.
• 5:34
  It was amazing cars and bikes.
• 5:37
  Well, they're having trouble with the cars overheating in the sand over there.
• 5:41
  And I'd met the head to the stunts, and he rang me one day, and I was at the strippers down at the pub.
• 5:48
  And the line wasn't good, and I had a few beers, and I go, we've got all these problems.
• 5:53
  I said, mate, hang on, the music's going, the strip, hang on, go outside.
• 5:57
  Anyway, he was in Nunez.
• 5:58
  I didn't even know where the hell that was.
• 6:01
  And I had to go and look it up when I went home.
• 6:04
  I said, he's coming back on Monday.
• 6:05
  So anyway, there was a whole list of problems they were having with the fuel and overheating because I'd done all the Dakar stuff and they knew that I'd done a lot of that.
• 6:13
  that work in that sort of environment.
• 6:17
  So, and they're having trouble in the workshop.
• 6:19
  And so they flew me over.
• 6:21
  I had two weeks, we're getting ready for, started the year to get ready for Dakar.
• 6:25
  And I had two weeks, we were waiting for a budget and some parts.
• 6:29
  And so I said, look, I can give you two weeks to come and help sort out.
• 6:32
  So I went over, helped them,
• 6:35
  They were pretty close, but they just needed a couple of different things with fans and electric water pumps and stuff like that and changing to avgas instead of local fuel and fuel.
• 6:46
  And I forgot on my truck, I thought they were blowing engines up and doing all sorts of things.
• 6:50
  And then I also had an offer for a drive, so I went over and drove one of the cars, or a couple of the cars in the stunt.
• 6:57
  But you see me for about, the car I see in for about .1 of a second.
• 7:03
  Were you all dressed up, made up?
• 7:05
  Oh, yeah, but it was crazy.
• 7:07
  I got to get head shaved, my arms are shaved, and make-up every day, and then drive the car, and then I got...
• 7:15
  They got paid in crazy amount of money per day, and then I got...
• 7:22
  involved when you're next to the stunt so I didn't they had the young dude proper stunt drivers to do the crashes and I think look they got a bonus if they did a proper big crash I think they got five grand or something extra on top of their pay and the pay was was sensational and then after the first week I did the one scene there was I was right next to a crash and I had to avoid this car rolling over and it was pretty straightforward but
• 7:46
  I got $700 extra.
• 7:47
  And I'm like, what's that for?
• 7:50
  Danger money.
• 7:50
  They said, that's for danger money.
• 7:52
  I go, what danger?
• 7:54
  What fucking danger?
• 7:56
  I go, if I got paid every time I did something dangerous in a rally, I'd be a multi-millionaire.
• 8:03
  I wouldn't believe it.
• 8:04
  Every time we did something dangerous, more dangerous than normal, I got extra money.
• 8:10
  It was crazy, but it was a really good experience and lovely people working on that movie.
• 8:15
  It was really talented people, and it was a joy.
• 8:19
  It was long.
• 8:20
  We did long days and a lot of sitting around, and seven days a week some of us shooting, you know, and it was...
• 8:28
  I think they were spending half a million dollars a day on the shoot.
• 8:30
  And I got there, I left on day 125 or something, to get ready to go to Dakar.
• 8:38
  So it was when the car was getting shipped to England to get on the boat to go to...
• 8:43
  Peru and then I was over there for about six or seven weeks.
• 8:47
  It was a really good experience.
• 8:50
  Amazing.
• 8:51
  One of many great driving experiences that you've had during your career.
• 8:55
  In a competitive sense, you've had wonderfully long...
• 8:58
  relationships with some of the well-known Japanese brands as well.
• 9:01
  But we probably should start with your first car was actually, and it's sad to think that they're gone now, the first car was a Holden, is that right?
• 9:07
  Yeah, it was a HD Holden Premier.
• 9:10
  And it was my pride and joy, and I didn't know money.
• 9:12
  I was an apprentice mechanic.
• 9:14
  And I did a lot, everything.
• 9:17
  I changed car, the engines and all that sort of stuff that you do when that age...
• 9:21
  And then I got into rallying and that's all I had.
• 9:24
  So it was my daily driver and we took it in a rally.
• 9:27
  And the first stage we did was just north of Mackay.
• 9:31
  And I went over the grid and it landed that hard that the engine broke, mounts broke and the engine fell over in the engine bay.
• 9:37
  got stuck on full throttle, the shocks broke on the back, and we rolled into the control.
• 9:42
  Not literally, we just fell into the control, and we still got fastest time or something else.
• 9:49
  But then the thing wouldn't get.
• 9:50
  We spent more time off the road than on it after that.
• 9:53
  It was in the middle of a cyclone hit that night, and it was an all-night rally back then.
• 9:57
  And then I got an escort, so that's when I got a proper car after that.
• 10:01
  You have one here today as we're recording this.
• 10:04
  We're getting ready for a rally sprint at Eastern Creek.
• 10:08
  It's a Mark 1, and it's worth talking about because it's very unique, Bruce, isn't it?
• 10:14
  I mean, for a starter, tell listeners about the engine in it and the paint scheme.
• 10:19
  Yeah.
• 10:19
  Okay, so it started off as a project that was going to be a cheap car to just muck around, and it got out of control, and then I was doing a bit of rehab after my heart operation, and then I was to finish the body off.
• 10:36
  So I had a Honda S2000 engine gearbox, but I blew it up here a year and a half ago.
• 10:41
  I dropped a vowel at nine grand, and then I...
• 10:46
  So I went to, I wanted more torque, so now it's got a K24 with a six-speed sequential out of one of the old Ford supercar gearboxes, Hilux Devers.
• 10:57
  So it's got all the gear on the thing, and it's got the latest Helltech computer and dash in it, and it's gone way beyond, but there's a lot of joy in driving.
• 11:21
  It's a fun car and the paint job on it has been done by my nephew.
• 11:25
  His tag name is Soffles and he's got a bit of a carrie.
• 11:31
  He got my sister to bail him out of jail a few times because he got caught painting things that he shouldn't have been but now he paints buildings and
• 11:38
  So he's a proper graffiti artist.
• 11:41
  And he's taken elements of what you wanted and told a story on this Mark I Escort, hasn't he?
• 11:46
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:47
  I said, look, I want this car, when you look at a Mark I, and especially with the big, I've got the big steel arches on it.
• 11:52
  I said, that looks like a chick lying down.
• 11:54
  So can you just, I want a chick lying down.
• 11:57
  And then I want these colours.
• 12:00
  And then he just...
• 12:02
  And he's freaking away with a spray can.
• 12:04
  And two, 12-hour night, we started it, starts at about lunchtime.
• 12:07
  We went to about midnight.
• 12:09
  And I was with him the whole time pretty much.
• 12:11
  And, yeah, it was pretty amazing to watch him work.
• 12:14
  And he's, he had it in his head from when he started it.
• 12:17
  Just put some shadow lines here and there.
• 12:20
  And then he's just, it was just, it was very unbelievable to watch.
• 12:24
  He's very talented.
• 12:25
  He does amazing paintings and very, very...
• 12:30
  What are we talking in horsepower terms now?
• 12:34
  I think at the flywheel, it's probably got about 250 horsepower.
• 12:38
  It's got 190 horsepower at the wheels and 550 newton metres of torque.
• 12:43
  So it weighs 950 kilos.
• 12:47
  So that power to weight ratio is pretty awesome.
• 12:50
  And I've got the weight really well balanced in the car.
• 12:53
  So when we sit in it, it's probably got more weight on the rear than the front.
• 12:58
  And the Haltech dash has a nice little message when it's time to shift.
• 13:01
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:02
  When you hit the rev limiter, just before you hit the rev limiter, a big sign flashes up on the bottom of the dash that says, Tane's gear, you fucking idiot.
• 13:13
  Yeah, so...
• 13:15
  Anyway, I told the boys, and then they put it in.
• 13:17
  I didn't even know they could do that, but they just typed it in, and I just go, holy shit, that's great.
• 13:22
  But the problem is you've got to be in the car when it's a rev-limiter to see it.
• 13:25
  Love it.
• 13:26
  So you're working as a mechanic.
• 13:28
  The motorsport bug bites from a competitive sense, but you would also...
• 13:33
  work around it in your job role, wouldn't you?
• 13:35
  I mean, you'd get to meet legends, like, in the Australian scene, from Greg Carr to Colin Bond and the international scene, Bjorn Valdegard, Ari Vartanen and more.
• 13:46
  Yeah, yeah, that was pretty spectacular.
• 13:49
  Yeah, and then you'd meet Brockie around Australia and Brockie was doing some rallies back then.
• 13:54
  And then later on, when I had my own team, Brockie ended up coming and driving for us.
• 13:59
  That was a bit...
• 14:00
  That was a bit surreal.
• 14:01
  You know, for a couple of years there we did quite a few events together, different cars obviously, but yeah, it was quite an amazing journey.
• 14:10
  I worked with Kevi Bartlett for a while and they, because with those people, they're teaching you the right way to do things, you know.
• 14:19
  Yes, Bondi was a really, really good teacher.
• 14:21
  He took a lot of good technique and just driving technique, but also how you build the car and how you make a dollar go 10 miles far further than it should.
• 14:32
  You know, so it's easy.
• 14:34
  If you've got heaps of money...
• 14:36
  And heaps of time, everything's easy.
• 14:37
  But what's the thing people don't realise with motorsport is it's always a battle with time and money.
• 14:43
  You either haven't got any money and plenty of time or you've got no time and plenty of money.
• 14:48
  So it's always an issue of what can you do in a certain time frame with what you've got.
• 14:53
  And they were really good teachers at those things.
• 14:57
  I work with Bob Riley at Rally Art as a Mitsubishi as well so there's a lot of connections Dickie Johnson drove one of my escorts once at the TGA so over the life there's been and still say g'day to them and I meet them at Leeburn Sprints every year it's a great feeling you know
• 15:17
  One name we didn't rattle off there was the late Doug Stewart, who's passed away in recent years.
• 15:22
  He's been, at one point, a boss of the Confederation of Australian Motorsport and very significantly with Mitsubishi and Rally Art in this country.
• 15:29
  And you co-drove with him, didn't you?
• 15:31
  And you knew him for a long time.
• 15:33
  Yeah, he was a great bloke, Dougie.
• 15:35
  He was very fair.
• 15:36
  He was hard, but fair.
• 15:37
  And we did the Condo 750, which was like a test for the safari.
• 15:42
  I still remember, we won it twice.
• 15:44
  And we used to go all day in into the night.
• 15:46
  And they were pretty grueling two-day events.
• 15:49
  But on the long stages, you'd go, son, light us up a durry, will you?
• 15:53
  So you'd shut the tree, you'd turn and, yeah, a gate coming up and then you'd get a durry going and pass it over and you'd be having a durry.
• 16:00
  And he was fairly hauling.
• 16:01
  He was still a quick car.
• 16:03
  I mean, the technology now has leaped ahead in brakes and suspension and tyres, but in that day it was as quick as hell, you know, and he was driving it.
• 16:13
  He was 60 at the time and, yeah, he was punting it hard.
• 16:17
  But, yeah, and sitting next to those, you sit next to somebody,
• 16:22
  something.
• 16:23
  I don't know.
• 16:23
  I sat the first time I remember, sat next to Greg Carr and I thought I was a reasonably good rally driver.
• 16:29
  I was absolutely nowhere.
• 16:31
  You just think he's coming down the straight at Castrol, down in testing.
• 16:37
  Canberra, yeah.
• 16:38
  And you just go, he's going to break now.
• 16:41
  And then when you see Jesus, that's when you break.
• 16:43
  Well, he went way past that.
• 16:46
  And I just go, are you kidding?
• 16:48
  And he just, just about on the, just stabbed on it.
• 16:50
  And the thing's banging and clanging and sideways.
• 16:53
  And you just go, wow.
• 16:54
  And that sitting next to him and seeing how you do it, I picked up just so much from being able to do that, you know.
• 17:03
  We've talked a little bit here about your Mark 1 Escort now, but that probably would have been a Mark 2 or something back then, and they were a magic car, weren't they, in full flight?
• 17:11
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was when Greg and Colin were driving the BDR, they were the cutting edge of rallying back in the late 70s, early 80s, up against the Datsuns, but the Escort was winning everything in the world, I mean, they were lovely to drive.
• 17:26
  Yeah, but they needed quite a lot of loving to keep them going.
• 17:30
  But they were a bit highly strung.
• 17:32
  But, jeez, the noise they made, you take them for a drive.
• 17:36
  We used to take it for a drive sometimes after the rally and they were going to rebuild the engine anyway, so we couldn't do it too much debris.
• 17:43
  We took it around the block to dry it out one day and I come out and I couldn't even stand up.
• 17:46
  My legs, I pulled the trigger and went all the way to 9.8, a couple of gear changes and we got back to the workshop.
• 17:52
  And they were like, holy Jesus!
• 17:55
  That is unbelievable.
• 17:57
  So, yeah, look, it's... Yeah, I just remembered that.
• 18:01
  But anyway, there's a lot of history there.
• 18:04
  The point we should probably wrap up on Doug too is that, sadly, when he passed, there was a number of special cars around his place and you have either acquired some of those back or made sure they've gone to good homes, haven't you?
• 18:18
  Yeah, that's right.
• 18:19
  One of his sons rang me and he had a property up at Hill End and they said, oh, look, there's your old car, your old Fink car, which was our old safari car that I used to share with Rod Jones because we were in the race but we were the backup mechanic so we had all the...
• 18:34
  tools and the spare heads and turbos and alternators everything in the back and but we had the same engine as they did so we went pretty hard but we we didn't have any good brakes because it weighed so much more but anyway that car was still up there and it um they'd been using it on the farm it had like a
• 18:49
  a foot of bird shit all over it.
• 18:51
  And I said, oh, anyway, so we did a bit of a deal.
• 18:55
  And then I said, what do you do with the other cars?
• 18:57
  And Doug had just drive a car, because that was Doug.
• 19:00
  And then it had stopped where it stood there for 30 years.
• 19:04
  I got them all out there because the property was going anyway and if I didn't take them, they might have gone to scrap.
• 19:10
  So I took all the... We rescued some that were down ravines and, yeah, so it was great, you know.
• 19:16
  We got them going and they're all... One of them, they've all got jobs now.
• 19:20
  People are restoring them and whatever.
• 19:32
  They say that by 2035, all new cars will be electric, so there is still plenty of years ahead to rev it to the limiter.
• 19:40
  I mean, that's what 13B rotaries are for, right?
• 19:45
  Did you get your licence first go?
• 19:48
  I did, actually.
• 19:48
  I think it was the day after I was 17.
• 19:51
  Back in the day, yes, you had to go up with your bursar certificate and I couldn't get there the moment for her birthday.
• 19:56
  It was the next day, so I didn't have it long.
• 19:59
  You didn't have it long?
• 20:01
  Tell me that story.
• 20:03
  Oh, I think it was Tom Fruilery speeding and doing burnouts or wheelies or something.
• 20:09
  That's when I realised that rallying was the, don't do that on the road.
• 20:14
  You still enjoy your circle work and fun things now, and that might happen on the property or whatever, but clearly that's a great message for people.
• 20:19
  Road's not a racetrack.
• 20:21
  Great place to come and do it, to learn car skills like that or bikes if you're into it.
• 20:25
  Go and do it on a racetrack or at a venue like we are now for a rally sprint.
• 20:29
  Yeah, or in the paddocks where there's no other people around, you know.
• 20:34
  That's the best thing is actually the paddocks when we're little to getting car control and everything.
• 20:39
  But, yeah, we're doing just late teens being stupid.
• 20:45
  But I mean, as soon as I lost, I just, and then when you haven't got a licence for three months, you ain't got to walk everywhere.
• 20:51
  You go, I'm not going to do that again.
• 20:52
  So, yeah, that was the same sort of time when I'd started doing railing because I got hooked on the railing and then I went,
• 20:58
  I just do it.
• 20:59
  Once you do that, you don't need to do that other shit, you know.
• 21:02
  What was the moment for you where you thought, you know, clearly when you're younger, people get obsessed by it.
• 21:08
  It might be football.
• 21:09
  It might be whatever.
• 21:10
  For us, it's motor racing and cars and bikes.
• 21:13
  What was the moment where you thought, I want to make driving or professional motorsport my occupation?
• 21:20
  You were working around it in a mechanic sense.
• 21:23
  You were working around good teams and cars and things.
• 21:26
  But what was the light bulb moment for you where you thought, I can do this?
• 21:30
  Yeah, I think it just sort of crept up over a few years.
• 21:33
  I think being around it, we didn't have the resources.
• 21:36
  And there was, we came, you know, we struggled as a family.
• 21:40
  You know, we didn't have any money and, you know, there was, so I came up, there was five, you know, there was five of us in the family.
• 21:50
  So it was, we'd come, we were struggling to get food when we were little, you know.
• 21:54
  So everything I had to do, I had to do myself and try and – because I wasn't going to get any – we didn't have the ability.
• 22:02
  I'm sure we had the financial mum to give help, but I did everything.
• 22:06
  And then that teaches you a lot too.
• 22:09
  If you can't afford it, then you don't do it.
• 22:11
  And you've got to work hard to get it.
• 22:13
  And then I think with meet and get Dougie when the safari started coming along and then that was a professional team, you know, and actually –
• 22:21
  We got paid $1,000 or something to drive, where normally you're just pouring money out of your pocket.
• 22:27
  And I went, this is pretty good, I reckon.
• 22:29
  This would be good to do this all the time.
• 22:31
  But it wasn't all the time.
• 22:33
  So it was a cross between working on the cars and then getting to drive them.
• 22:39
  And I always had a dream.
• 22:41
  I thought, look, I think I've got enough cars.
• 22:44
  in me to speed, if I can control it, to be successful.
• 22:52
  And then it just took a while, it just took a long time for everything to fall into place, to be at the right place at the right time, and it's just people you meet.
• 23:01
  I met a, I did a rally for Mitsubishi in
• 23:05
  Silk Road Rally in China in 1988.
• 23:08
  Started in Tenement Square.
• 23:09
  It was six months before the tanks were there and everything.
• 23:14
  And I met some Japanese that were running Isuzu marketing.
• 23:20
  And then I said, oh, you need to come out to the safari.
• 23:22
  And then they came out and we helped them with that.
• 23:24
  And then that's how I got a drive.
• 23:26
  So it's sort of having good relationships with people and then building on them when you can and helping
• 23:35
  And that's how I got the drives started with Isuzu.
• 23:39
  You're a gregarious character.
• 23:40
  People get a sense of that from the podcast chat.
• 23:43
  Those relationships,
• 23:45
  Did you have to work at that or just sort of seem to come easy with you because of the nature of the person you are?
• 23:50
  I think it's just the nature and there's, when you're in that environment, those rallying environment and outback environment, nothing's perfect.
• 24:02
  You know, you've got to make things that go, you've got to adapt, you know, all different things get thrown at you all the time and you've got to be able to respond to it positive.
• 24:13
  And I think that's probably the biggest thing.
• 24:14
  When things get hard and people are tired, that's when some of their true characters come out.
• 24:20
  So if you're still enjoying it and happy when everything's going wrong, I think that's the positive.
• 24:27
  And that's probably the reason I kept getting the strives and everything for that.
• 24:34
  I've only ever known you to have a laugh, right?
• 24:37
  Do you have those moments where you boil over, where you crack it?
• 24:42
  Oh, yeah, yeah, look, especially in the preparation, you know, when you know something, so it's like this.
• 24:50
  If you blindly go, I'm going to drive across the Simpson Desert.
• 24:54
  I've never done it before.
• 24:56
  So the whole thing you learn as you go.
• 24:59
  But once you've been across the Simpson Desert and that broke and that fell off and did that and it got bogged and you don't want to do it that way again.
• 25:06
  So when you know how it should be done to make it easy to go across the desert,
• 25:11
  That then you have to, so then you're trying to bring a whole team together to build a car to do that job.
• 25:17
  You've got to push them outside.
• 25:19
  You've got to make them go hard.
• 25:21
  And sometimes you've got to crack it because sometimes you have to be a bit of a dictator, unfortunately, because you know, if you don't do it to the level that needs to be prepared at, it's going to fail anyway.
• 25:33
  Yeah.
• 25:33
  So if you just ignore, you know, that's not good enough and you still go, that's to me, that's stupid.
• 25:41
  The endurance element of the game, Safari, Fink, Dakar, which we'll get to, what was so... you gravitated to that.
• 25:52
  What did you like about that so much?
• 25:55
  I think...
• 25:57
  The remoteness?
• 25:58
  Yeah, yeah, the remote...
• 25:58
  When you're in the desert, deserts, remote places are beautiful places.
• 26:03
  Some people get scared, but I like that you go to the desert in the middle of Dubai and there's just nothing around, or you can see sand dunes everywhere.
• 26:14
  And it can be a bit daunting, but it's really a strange place.
• 26:18
  You know, if you don't do something right, you're going to die.
• 26:22
  really quickly.
• 26:23
  You know, if you don't take enough water and don't tell anyone, you know, things can go wrong very quickly.
• 26:29
  You have to respect it.
• 26:30
  And if you respect it, you'll love it.
• 26:32
  If you don't respect it, it'll bite you on the arse big time.
• 26:34
  So it's just that remoteness.
• 26:37
  And then being, it's the freedom.
• 26:38
  It's like driving a magic.
• 26:39
  When you're in the car and you're going really fast on someone you've never seen before on a road or you're going across the sand dunes and you're hauling arse and going, and it's just like you're on a magic carpet.
• 26:52
  You know, the car's working well, you're off the ground, and you're just floating, and you're just going past this unbelievable scenery of mountain ranges and oasises and all sorts of old castles and whatever, and you just go, wow, and it's happening 100-mile-an-hour, and that feeling of freedom and no speed limits and no...
• 27:14
  chimes going off in the dash is very hard to replicate in a real life.
• 27:20
  Anywhere in the world.
• 27:21
  Yeah, yeah, it's a sort of freedom.
• 27:24
  It's very hard to describe it, but it is like it's...
• 27:28
  But when you get it, if it goes wrong, it hurts like shit, you know.
• 27:32
  I've had it go wrong a couple of times.
• 27:35
  Like, you get some wrong and it winds you.
• 27:39
  You land that hard that you actually get winded, you know.
• 27:43
  That's pretty normal.
• 27:44
  But, yeah, I've had one big crash that broke my back, but...
• 27:49
  Yeah, but getting back to the question, it's just sort of surreal.
• 27:55
  It's like a, I don't know, it's like going to a different dimension.
• 28:01
  The real world goes away.
• 28:03
  You can completely concentrate.
• 28:05
  And now I've got an issue.
• 28:06
  Because I taught myself over years to concentrate so long, like when you're doing five, six hours constant, and then you've got to back it up again.
• 28:18
  again in the afternoon, another three or four hours at full speed, and then you've got to go to bed and sleep on the ground in a swagon and get up and do it again and again and again and again.
• 28:27
  You know, your concentration, the ability to concentrate and block everything out goes to another level.
• 28:34
  So my wife will talk, if I'm reading something and I'm concentrating, I'm not blocking everything out.
• 28:40
  And actually gets the shits.
• 28:40
  You get in trouble, Bruce?
• 28:42
  I'm in trouble a lot, mate.
• 28:44
  I don't know how I get through life with doing so many things wrong.
• 28:48
  But I do get into trouble.
• 28:49
  But I can't switch it off now.
• 28:51
  It's like once I lock onto something...
• 28:55
  Because the problem, because you've not seen the road and you're locking onto, you're trying to drive the car as fast as on the edge of what it'll go before you crash, if you just wander off about, oh, what am I going to have for dinner tonight or something, bang, you...
• 29:12
  Rip the wheel off.
• 29:13
  You know, you'll get a punt.
• 29:14
  Because you just, you can't afford a fraction of a second concentration.
• 29:20
  Yeah.
• 29:20
  Yeah.
• 29:20
  Neil Crompton's got a great line that he sometimes says in commentary about, in circuit racing terms, about buying a ticket to that last hour of a Bathurst or something along those lines.
• 29:29
  Yeah.
• 29:30
  Is it similar in a Dakar in the sense, or a Fink or a Safari in that,
• 29:35
  you can't always go 100%, or is the calibre of the competition, the calibre of the factory machines and so on that turn up, does that demand it for days and days and days of you at that level?
• 29:49
  Yeah, you've got to...
• 29:53
  Yeah, that's a difficult question.
• 29:54
  But the thing is, you've got to pace it.
• 29:57
  Even the dudes that have got the best equipment in their drive, they'll overdrive it.
• 30:01
  And it'll only take one second, just a fraction of a mistake, and then the whole lot will be you're out of the race.
• 30:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:09
  And so it's a balance of going right to that edge and coming back.
• 30:14
  And if you can do that and come back off that and win the race, you've done a good job.
• 30:19
  So safaris, you know, I was lucky.
• 30:22
  I wasn't lucky.
• 30:23
  I won five safaris.
• 30:25
  What would happen is you'd race really hard for a race.
• 30:29
  But a little bit up your sleeve for four days, five days, and then you'd see who has got any fight left in them because some people run out of fight, their car's not built properly, they've got too much fatigue.
• 30:44
  And you get to a point, I was talking about before, when you get into that zone, and Crompton's talked about it, when you get into the zone...
• 30:51
  even though you're going really fast, everything slows down and your movements are just super relaxed and your breathing's, you're not breathing and that, but the things, you're putting the times in because, and then to do that little bit more,
• 31:06
  you might gain on a stage one or two minutes, but the wrist level goes skyrockets.
• 31:12
  So you can drive at a certain level, whatever percentage of how you measure it, but you go that little bit more and then you'd start missing the corners and you start going off and then all of a sudden it's gone.
• 31:24
  And the gain is not that much.
• 31:27
  But, yeah, so when you get into that zone, it's pretty good.
• 31:31
  Your career...
• 31:35
  It kind of shaped you for this in many ways, the learnings that you had as a young bloke, the stuff you've learnt behind the wheel.
• 31:42
  Invariably, you have to be that adaptable guy or person when something breaks in the middle of nowhere.
• 31:48
  You've got to find solutions.
• 31:49
  You might have some things with you that'll help repair it, but have there been some real bush mechanic moments where you've managed to get something over the line that...
• 31:58
  Shouldn't have.
• 31:59
  Yeah.
• 32:00
  There's a couple, there's so many of them.
• 32:02
  I remember one safari I drove and I jumped over the gas line between Moomba and down to Port Augusta.
• 32:11
  And when the car landed, it was in four-wheel drive and jumped out of four-wheel drive.
• 32:14
  We couldn't get it in high range anymore.
• 32:16
  So we drove in low range for 650 kilometres.
• 32:20
  So that's second gear.
• 32:21
  Imagine getting in a car, put your car on second gear and drive from Sydney to Coffs Harbour.
• 32:27
  It's very slow.
• 32:28
  But in the stages, we weren't too slow.
• 32:32
  And I drove it.
• 32:33
  It was right on the rev.
• 32:34
  It was revving.
• 32:35
  It's revving.
• 32:36
  It's tits off all day.
• 32:38
  I thought the wing was going to blow it.
• 32:39
  We lost an hour and 15 minutes.
• 32:41
  They were 20 minutes to the leader.
• 32:44
  And we lost the race by five minutes.
• 32:46
  Unbelievable.
• 32:47
  So that was come back from like 15th or something.
• 32:50
  So never give up.
• 32:51
  Never, ever give up.
• 32:52
  If it's moving and it can go, keep going forward.
• 32:56
  And another one that happened that when we were leading the rally, we had about a 26-minute lead.
• 33:02
  So I was cruising a little bit and we were first car on the road that hadn't been driven on for 40 years up in Northern Territory.
• 33:09
  And there was a termite mound.
• 33:12
  in everywhere, those big tournament mounds.
• 33:14
  And there was one, and it hit the...
• 33:15
  It was in the long grass, and it hit right in the wrong spot of the steering chart, one of the tie rod ends, and bent it.
• 33:23
  I go, no, that's not good.
• 33:24
  And then we hit another rut and it broke it.
• 33:26
  We normally carry a spare, because it's happened before, normally carry a spare in the car, but we'd washed the car and done a show with it beforehand, and we've got to put it back in.
• 33:37
  So I thought, oh, Brockie's coming, we'll get it off Brockie.
• 33:40
  So Brockie was, he was 10 minutes behind us, so we pulled him up.
• 33:44
  Yeah, he hasn't got one either.
• 33:46
  Boys haven't put it in.
• 33:47
  It's all, you know, it's my fault in the end of the day.
• 33:49
  We didn't check it.
• 33:50
  Should have been on the checklist.
• 33:51
  So anyway, so we go, shit, shit, what are we going to do?
• 33:54
  So we got spanners.
• 33:55
  We got two spanners and zip ties and wire, and we strapped the splintered thing, and we had 80k to go, and then another transport, and then another 110k stage through crocodile-infested creeks, and it said, this is the roughest stage of the rally.
• 34:13
  And we went, holy shit.
• 34:14
  So we got out of the stage.
• 34:16
  We lost seven minutes.
• 34:17
  I think by the time we patched it up.
• 34:19
  Unreal.
• 34:19
  So we lost seven minutes.
• 34:20
  So now we've got 19 minutes left.
• 34:23
  But that's a fairly fast transport, so we're belting along.
• 34:25
  It's in Northern Territory, there's no speed limit.
• 34:27
  So we're still doing, with the strapped up steering, we're doing like 130, and then she'd get a bit wobbly, and you feel it.
• 34:33
  The zip ties would start breaking, and the wheel would turn left, and the way she would spear off into the bush.
• 34:38
  and we get out and we do it again, and then we're running out of zip-tile, and we're trying to look on the map to see if there's an old...
• 34:43
  There's a farm somewhere that we could go and get a welder.
• 34:46
  So we're looking for some of the cars that have been rolled and burned upside down.
• 34:52
  We want to... Oh, I think we get HQ Holden, I reckon I can make that one fit.
• 34:55
  So we're driving, looking at all these old cars, and we're slowly... We're going along, we're going along, and then finally it...
• 35:02
  She let go and we had no more zip ties left, race tape, we'd taped it all up.
• 35:06
  We still got about 30k to go to the thing, and we're wasting it.
• 35:10
  We're going, we're out of the rally.
• 35:12
  There's going to be no way we're going to finish this stage.
• 35:17
  Unless we can weld it up or get another one.
• 35:19
  And you wouldn't believe it.
• 35:21
  Coming down the road was a jacquari the same as ours.
• 35:25
  No way.
• 35:25
  No, you're true.
• 35:27
  With the policeman and his wife and two kids in the back.
• 35:31
  So we flagged him.
• 35:33
  I got my silver driving suit on.
• 35:35
  like stop stop what what can we help and i said yeah can i buy your tie rod in and i'm looking and i'm going they're not so you're going to leave them stranded potentially yeah so i'm going they're not going to do this for 10 bucks so and i've worked out i'm doing quick calculations i've already spent 250 000 to get here and i said we're living on a i'll give you a thousand dollars for they didn't even know what it was and they get
• 35:58
  okay so I pulled over I cut it off in about two minutes and then I we put it on our car and we've gone well we haven't got the money here but if you come to the bivouac tonight I've got thousand bucks for it and then we've just left and we're going oh shit okay thanks here boom boom and off we went because we were in a hurry and then we did the stage and then the other two dudes they thought we were out of the rally so they're
• 36:20
  now arguing who's in first, I'm winning, no, you're second.
• 36:24
  So they'd given up trying to win, but now they're going to fight each other now because I'm not in the race anymore.
• 36:31
  But as they're just about to leave, there's a bit of a delay at that control.
• 36:35
  I've come screaming into the control, and the look on their faces, they just, their jaw dropped, because I've come back basically from the dead.
• 36:43
  Anyway, they both hydraulic, because they both wrecked their cars in the stage in the creek crossing where the crocodiles, they shit themselves and they hydraulic their engines.
• 36:52
  And then we just sailed through.
• 36:53
  I said, I'm just going to drive through this stage.
• 36:56
  We didn't even race.
• 36:57
  I said, we got out of jail already.
• 36:59
  And then I got the message.
• 37:01
  So to go back to the...
• 37:04
  So I got the tie rod and I'm going to go back to put it back on the car, but it's 350km back down the highway and back into the bush.
• 37:13
  But it's Northern Territory, so it's no speed limit.
• 37:16
  Yeah.
• 37:16
  So I filled our service, Jackaroo, and I did this.
• 37:19
  It wasn't a smart thing to do because I got the message, he's worried about that his car's going to get burned or stripped or something.
• 37:26
  But his wife and kids had already been taken out by another policeman, so they weren't stranded out there.
• 37:30
  Yeah.
• 37:31
  So I've got the tie rod.
• 37:32
  I've taken it back off so I can put it back on his car.
• 37:36
  And at the meantime, he's going...
• 37:37
  He's come up with his wife to have dinner with Brockie and get his $1,000.
• 37:41
  And I've passed him at Warp Factor going the other way and didn't realise that... And I had no way to contact him because we didn't have phones or anything back then.
• 37:48
  This is 2,000 phones that worked out there.
• 37:51
  So I drove all...
• 37:52
  I found his car, put it back on, come back.
• 37:54
  And because I was doing like a million mile an hour, I've run out of fuel.
• 37:58
  And it's like...
• 37:59
  2 o'clock in the morning, the race starts again at 6, and I haven't even come back.
• 38:03
  I go, shit, we're going to be into trouble here.
• 38:05
  So anyway, I flagged down some officials that were in the rally, and they had 20 litres, and I got back.
• 38:10
  And then I met him on the way back, and they were fine.
• 38:13
  They had a nice dinner with Brockie, because we had our own chef at that time.
• 38:18
  And I gave them.
• 38:19
  They wouldn't take the $1,000.
• 38:20
  I said, look.
• 38:21
  take the $1,000 to just go and buy something for you.
• 38:24
  Let your wife buy some clothes or dress or whatever.
• 38:28
  You've saved me.
• 38:29
  I didn't tell him I'd have already.
• 38:30
  You just saved me $250,000.
• 38:34
  Anyway, so we ended up winning the rally.
• 38:36
  It was, yeah, but because we didn't give up,
• 38:39
  And we just kept going, things change.
• 38:42
  And that taught us a lot.
• 38:43
  That was in 2000.
• 38:44
  That taught us a lot.
• 38:45
  As long as you can keep moving, just keep moving.
• 38:47
  It doesn't matter if it's a race, just in life.
• 38:50
  If you sit there, nothing will happen.
• 38:52
  You've got to move and do something.
• 38:55
  And that's where we just kept going and going.
• 38:57
  And then we ended up getting a deal.
• 38:58
  We put a deal together to go to Dakar by just keep going, you know.
• 39:03
  We'll get to Dakar because you've brought up Brock.
• 39:05
  Yeah.
• 39:05
  People love a Brock story on the podcast.
• 39:08
  What was he like to be around in that environment?
• 39:11
  And we tend to think of him – I mean, he was such a diversely successful driver anyway, but we tend to think of him from a Bathurst point of view or a touring car point of view.
• 39:19
  But he had this sort of deft touch in all machines, didn't he?
• 39:23
  Yeah, look, he was –
• 39:26
  He was special.
• 39:29
  But he was just a good character.
• 39:30
  And when he was with the team, the boys didn't, I knew I was Brockie, but he used to put buggers under his chair and shit like that.
• 39:39
  They just treated him like one of the boys, you know.
• 39:42
  He was looking for booby traps all the time because they were pulling pranks on him like they pulled on everyone.
• 39:48
  So, yeah, I think he really loved the safari, those long distance and...
• 39:53
  he did two or three with us, three or four, anyway, he did a few did around Australia and got really good the thing with Pete was, I think personally, I think
• 40:07
  What made him so good is in the end is what killed him because he wanted to just, he'd go like, well, he was supposed to drive a standard car, sign some autograph, he was retired and he was, you know, just have a good time and do a lot of PR and stuff like that.
• 40:24
  But as soon as he got a sniff of the lead, he just, something switched in him.
• 40:27
  And he did it around Australia.
• 40:29
  He was trying to beat me.
• 40:30
  I was miles in front of him.
• 40:31
  I was 20 minutes in front.
• 40:33
  And he was trying to catch me.
• 40:33
  It was the last day and he rolled the car.
• 40:35
  I said, what did you do that for?
• 40:36
  It didn't make any sense.
• 40:38
  I said, unless I break down, you're never going to catch me.
• 40:42
  And he'd do that.
• 40:43
  He'd just go.
• 40:44
  And I passed him once in the safari.
• 40:46
  I mean, he was in a different car.
• 40:48
  I was in my car as a lot.
• 40:49
  more in a different class and I got the shits because I overtook him and then he hit a tree.
• 40:55
  I'm going, well you should have just slowed down after I overtook you.
• 40:58
  But anyway, he switched.
• 41:01
  He was like...
• 41:03
  doing that, signing autographs and just having a cool time.
• 41:06
  But as soon as he could sniff that he could win, that switch just changed.
• 41:12
  And I think that's what happened in the Targa over there.
• 41:19
  He got second on the first stage or whatever, and he hadn't done the recce right, and there was a lot of other things that caused it.
• 41:24
  But it was that competitiveness that he would switch on, and that's what I reckon anyway.
• 41:37
  That's the end of part one of my chat with larrikin off-roader Bruce Garland.
• 41:41
  Some great personal insights there into his time with Peter Brock.
• 41:45
  Make sure that you head back to the garage library and fire up part two.
• 41:49
  It's there, ready to go right now.
• 41:51
  There's more good laughs, including some Aussie ingenuity to cope with long stints at the wheel when you need a bathroom break, but you just can't lose those precious seconds.
• 42:02
  Plus, the Dakar crash that almost left him in a wheelchair.
• 42:07
  Why he's a big believer in doing it now.
• 42:10
  Don't put off that resto project or the dream to go racing a moment longer.