Latest / Rusty's Garage / Coral Taylor (Part 1)

Transcript

Coral Taylor (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.
• 0:24
  I'm a listener production.
• 0:30
  On this episode, I've driven to the Sydney home of a relative of our first ever Rusty's Garage guest.
• 0:37
  It's where we recorded the ep with Molly Taylor in a workshop on the property where her dad has various cars and resto projects.
• 0:45
  Molly used to keep a 1986 BMW M3 here, and we unearthed the yarn about an Audi Quattro she jointly purchased with her mum, Coral, a car once owned by media magnate Kerry Packer.
• 0:59
  It's Coral that I'm here to chat with today.
• 1:01
  The story is remarkable in both motorsport as a champion rally co-driver and more recently on the board of organisations like the National Roads and Motorists Association and now Motorsport Australia.
• 1:15
  When you think of Coral, you immediately think of Neil Bates Motorsport.
• 1:19
  She navigated, as they used to say, beside Neil, to four Australian titles, including three in a row in the early 90s.
• 1:26
  The Toyota pairing enjoyed epic, very memorable battles with the late Possum born in his trademark Subaru and others during a golden period for the sport.
• 1:37
  They've driven in World Rally Championship events in Seleka GT4s and Corollas.
• 1:43
  There's a Target Tasmania win and more.
• 1:46
  No wonder this widely loved member of the motorsport community is an ARC and Australian Motorsport Hall of Famer.
• 1:54
  As you'll hear, Coral's talents go beyond pace notes.
• 1:58
  She regularly drives the team transporter or semi-trailer.
• 2:02
  Can ride a dirt bike, sort of.
• 2:05
  and can run the tyre changing machine better than most.
• 2:08
  Now we started our record outside by the pool, but the wind picks up and we move inside during the discussion.
• 2:15
  This is a really nice walk down memory lane with as many twists and Scandinavian flicks as you get on your average rally stage.
• 2:24
  We'll head to the start line and open up on the early life of a family from overseas who chose to make Australia home.
• 2:32
  I was born in England and my parents were 10 pound immigrant poms when I was four, three or four.
• 2:41
  And when I look at that, you know, it's different now.
• 2:44
  You know, in the 80s, I went to England and I visited where they lived.
• 2:49
  And I really hadn't appreciated what it must take for a young couple with two small children, you know, to just
• 2:57
  pick up their life and move to another country.
• 3:00
  But my mum always said the big thing about living in England was it was always freezing cold and she was just so over being cold.
• 3:07
  So they arrived here and they are absolutely the people that thought they'd come to the lucky country.
• 3:13
  You know, dad came six weeks ahead, had bought a house.
• 3:17
  Now, their house in England, they were living with, like, no indoor bathroom, no toilet.
• 3:21
  It was an outdoor toilet down the back of the garden, no hot water.
• 3:26
  You know, it was the traditional boil the copper and have your bath once a week on Sunday.
• 3:32
  So my mum couldn't believe it.
• 3:33
  She'd come, dad had bought, you know, a brand new three bedroom brick and tile in the suburbs that had a bathroom.
• 3:39
  The weather was warm and, you know, it was just amazing.
• 3:43
  They loved it.
• 3:44
  They then decided that people in Australia had swimming pools.
• 3:48
  So they hand dug the pair of them with shovels.
• 3:52
  This hole in the ground, we've got old, you know, super eight videos of them with these scorched sunburnt backs, you know, black red from bending over in the sun.
• 4:02
  and hand digging this pool that dad then formed up and poured the concrete.
• 4:08
  So for us, my early childhood memories are all about this swimming pool.
• 4:13
  You know, summers in the swimming pool.
• 4:15
  That's my big memory.
• 4:17
  And dad...
• 4:20
  You know, he was a jack of all trades, master of none, but he was a super hard worker.
• 4:25
  And he just dug in, you know, within a very short time.
• 4:28
  He had multiple businesses in Adelaide and had a hardware shop and a fencing business and a demolishing business and various things.
• 4:35
  And, you know, life was all cosy in suburban Adelaide.
• 4:38
  He was a man of conviction, I think, too, from memory.
• 4:41
  Did he not sort of say on a whim that, you know, I can't remember what side of politics he may have followed, but it was like, you know, if the Labor Party gets in, well, we're out of here, kind of deal.
• 4:50
  And you moved to Mount Isa, I think, didn't you?
• 4:52
  Oh, totally.
• 4:54
  And I still remember, I was 11 at the time, and Don Dunstan was standing to be Premier of South Australia, and Dad said at dinner, and I probably can't repeat the words he actually used to describe Don Dunstan, but...
• 5:07
  Enough to say that he would not live in a Labor state and if that man comes to power, we're leaving.
• 5:13
  And...
• 5:15
  You know, Don won the election and on the Monday morning, and when I tell this story, people don't believe me, and it's absolutely true, he closed the door on all of his businesses.
• 5:26
  He bought an international truck and a caravan, a 30-foot caravan, mind you, which in the day was like, that was just the biggest thing we'd ever seen in our lives.
• 5:37
  And he packed, yeah, mum, dad, two kids and my dog and we drove out of South Australia.
• 5:42
  And was it Mount Isa that you ended up at?
• 5:45
  And I mean, I hear stories of like, you know, you would kind of chase snakes, you weren't afraid of snakes, things like that.
• 5:51
  Oh, you've been doing your research.
• 5:53
  Well, at that point, Dad just took jobs as a form worker.
• 5:58
  So we lived in multiple places, wherever there was a job.
• 6:01
  You know, we lived in Dolby while they built some wheat silos and various things.
• 6:05
  But then he did take a job.
• 6:08
  Yeah, it was building a dam.
• 6:10
  It was about two or three hours north of Mount Isa, in the middle of the bush, Julius Dam.
• 6:16
  So they were building this huge dam.
• 6:19
  And so that's where we headed.
• 6:21
  And when we pulled in there, my mum said...
• 6:25
  You know, all it was, like seriously, we're in outback northern Queensland and there's nothing.
• 6:29
  It's seriously hot and there's just bush and there's, you know, a camp, which was predominantly those, used to call them the dongers, all the single men dongers, you know, just those little portable dongers.
• 6:42
  huts set up and another few of those joined together, which was the men's kitchen.
• 6:47
  And that was it.
• 6:48
  We were just parked in the middle of the bush with our caravan.
• 6:51
  There were a few people there with caravans.
• 6:54
  We were the only family with any children, so there were no other kids around.
• 6:58
  Wow.
• 6:58
  And my mum just looked at this and she said, Norman, you can stay here for the first fortnight till you get a pay packet and then we're leaving.
• 7:07
  But we ended up being there for 18 months.
• 7:08
  Wow.
• 7:10
  And we loved it, even my mum.
• 7:12
  And it was, you know, a totally unique way of living.
• 7:16
  You know, we did our school by correspondence and basically you had to do X number of hours.
• 7:23
  And initially because of the heat we decided, Pearl and I, my sister and I, that we'd get up really early, you know, start it really early.
• 7:30
  So we'd done our hours by mid to late morning and then we had the rest of the day free.
• 7:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:35
  So, you know, we learnt to ride motorbikes, drive cars.
• 7:37
  We would just go bush for the afternoon.
• 7:39
  Yeah, we'd catch snakes and do all sorts of things.
• 7:42
  It was an amazing, amazing time.
• 7:45
  At some point, your dad, Norm, obviously gets a motorsport bug.
• 7:49
  What was the first sort of attraction to it that you can remember?
• 7:54
  Maybe an event that you went to or what was it?
• 7:57
  It wasn't.
• 7:58
  I didn't have an attraction to it.
• 7:59
  You know, dad, when we lived in Adelaide, dad rallied in the sixties.
• 8:04
  I know he promised my mum a new car and he bought a new Toyota Corolla at the time, but he forgot to tell her that, yes, that was her car to go shopping.
• 8:11
  But on weekends, he was going rallying, which he did seriously.
• 8:16
  And then he ended up driving for what was Datsun distribution at the time.
• 8:20
  In the 1600?
• 8:22
  Yes.
• 8:23
  And he did the Ampol Round Australia trial in 1970.
• 8:26
  And then when we left Adelaide...
• 8:34
  We were actually living in Queensland at the time.
• 8:36
  It was 1979 and they were talking about the Repco Round Australia trial.
• 8:41
  And over dinner one night, so I'm 18 by now, and Dad said, oh, they're having a Round Australia trial.
• 8:48
  I think I'm going to get a car and go and do it.
• 8:51
  And I said quite innocently over dinner, oh, that sounds like a great adventure.
• 8:56
  I'll come with you.
• 8:57
  But I never really thought I would.
• 8:59
  You know, I just said it.
• 9:01
  And like within a couple of weeks, Dad and I had bought another Datsun 1600.
• 9:05
  Yeah.
• 9:06
  You dipped in a bit of savings too.
• 9:07
  All of my savings.
• 9:08
  I was saving for my first car.
• 9:10
  So my first car ended up being a half share in a rally car and I stopped going out with my friends.
• 9:16
  I got all involved in this.
• 9:17
  We were prepping the car in the garage for this big adventure we were going on.
• 9:21
  And I still remember the first time we tested it.
• 9:24
  It wasn't Dad driving.
• 9:25
  It was another friend, Bruce Smith of ours, that took it out and I went and sat beside him.
• 9:31
  And I was just blown away because I, you know, I was a young child when he rallied.
• 9:36
  in the early years.
• 9:37
  You know, I knew he rallied.
• 9:38
  I thought everybody's father was a rally driver.
• 9:40
  It wasn't something I was aspiring to, but I also had no idea what it was really like.
• 9:46
  So when we did this first test run, my eyes were like saucers.
• 9:50
  I just couldn't believe it.
• 9:51
  But anyway.
• 9:52
  In a captivating way, you fell in love with it?
• 9:54
  Well, I don't know that I fell in love with it at that point.
• 9:58
  I think I was so amazed at what we were about to do
• 10:01
  What a car could do.
• 10:02
  What a car could do, exactly.
• 10:06
  And then we did the Repco.
• 10:07
  No, well, sorry, we actually did a couple of rallies first because, you know, I had to learn how to navigate.
• 10:13
  So I joined the Brisbane Sporting Car Club and Ian Stewart, you know, Ian that used to co-drive for Murray and others,
• 10:23
  He was running like a navigator school at the BSCC.
• 10:26
  So I went along to that.
• 10:27
  That was how I learnt initially to co-drive.
• 10:31
  And we did a couple of rallies to sort of set that in motion before we set off on the Repco.
• 10:36
  So set it in motion here for us because now you, you know, champion co-driver, pace noting for you is like a second language.
• 10:45
  But back then, what was it?
• 10:46
  Is it a tulip-based system?
• 10:49
  Describe what co-driving and navigating was like way back then.
• 10:53
  Totally different.
• 10:56
  You know, I did a little bit of driving.
• 10:58
  I wasn't, you know, I decided to... You didn't watch either.
• 11:00
  Come on.
• 11:00
  No, well...
• 11:03
  Yeah, my dad's 1,600, but that was later on.
• 11:08
  But the co-driving initially and the rallies we did, tulip events were normal, but there was also still quite a lot of mapping events going on.
• 11:18
  And that was fun and something different.
• 11:20
  But, you know, I can't say that I would ever want to go back and do mapping rallies.
• 11:25
  And even blind tulip rallies for me now don't hold any interest.
• 11:30
  I love rallies on pace notes.
• 11:32
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:33
  I think as a co-driver, you're a much more integral part of the whole thing that's happening rather than saying, you know, well, in two kilometres, we're going to turn left and then calling that call down and then just sitting there.
• 11:44
  you know, with the pace notes, it's an incredible form of teamwork that there's just this constantness going between the co-driver and the driver and you're a part of every corner and what's happening.
• 11:56
  Yeah.
• 11:57
  Are you using back then things like Haldas and set the scene for people because they were a great tool for sort of co-driving back then that you had to sort of set you certain gears with them and things like that to calibrate them, didn't you?
• 12:12
  Oh, absolutely.
• 12:14
  So they were basically very mechanical.
• 12:16
  So a little black box with two lines of black and white letters that would turn over and read the distances.
• 12:23
  But you had this gear set.
• 12:25
  And so they were all different sizes depending on how you needed to calibrate.
• 12:30
  But from
• 12:31
  you know, say a 10 cent piece up to a 50, probably bigger than a 50 cent piece, all these little round cogs.
• 12:38
  So any co-driver that was any good had this bag that you carried around that weighed a ton and you had a full set of all the gears, the X gear, the Y gear, because you used to have to, you always had to have a screwdriver to loosen the mechanism and then slot, you know, different cogs in together and mesh them at just the right time and tighten it up.
• 12:57
  You had to be back and watch them then.
• 12:58
  It was very much, yeah, and then you had to slot it back into the unit and screw the outside on.
• 13:03
  But there was always this, you know, it was a big thing in the day is who could calculate.
• 13:08
  What you're trying to do is read a true kilometre with it.
• 13:11
  So back in the day, a rally would always give you a halder check so there would be a marked kilometre somewhere on a road and you'd measure it and you'd go, oh, gosh, my car's reading, you know, 1.1 kilometres when it should read one.
• 13:22
  And then you'd have to do the mathematical calculation for which number of gears you needed to change.
• 13:27
  To get it right, yeah.
• 13:27
  To get it right, yeah.
• 13:28
  And I can't even remember the calculations now, but once you had it sussed, you'd always have a line of about 10 other co-drivers going, oh, Coral, Coral, mine's reading this over this, which gears do I need to put in?
• 13:39
  So expand on Round Australia because, I mean, that's held in, even now, such folklore in all areas of motorsport.
• 13:46
  To go and contest that, to go and do that alongside Dad, that's a big mission, right?
• 13:51
  I had no idea what I was getting into.
• 13:54
  And also the other part of our mission was that Dad didn't have enough funding to do it completely.
• 13:59
  So he also took in a second driver who contributed to the costs of the event.
• 14:05
  But the problem for me was that I had two drivers and neither of them would co-drive.
• 14:10
  And the Repco was the most gruelling event you've ever done.
• 14:16
  And the schedule that was set was just, it was just incredible.
• 14:20
  We did, I can't remember the longest stretch now, but, you know, it was probably up in the 70 hours between a rest break.
• 14:27
  So when you're co-driving for one driver and then he gets in the back to have a sleep and a rest and you're co-driving for the next one and they keep swapping and you stay awake.
• 14:35
  I have never been so tired in all my life.
• 14:39
  And I remember one night we were coming back through the back of Maralinga somewhere.
• 14:44
  And the route instructions, which were a route chart, the instruction was something like 50-something kilometres, turn right, was it a water tank or a water mill or something?
• 14:53
  I can't remember.
• 14:54
  So I knew I had 50 kilometres and I remember telling Dad that's what we were doing in 50 kilometres.
• 15:00
  I'm just going to have a sleep, you know.
• 15:02
  Wake me up when we get to that point.
• 15:04
  You were having a snooze at Spoon.
• 15:05
  Oh, I was.
• 15:06
  I was asleep in a rally car in a competitive stage.
• 15:10
  I love it.
• 15:10
  So you leave, am I right in saying that kind of schooling wraps up at age 15 or thereabouts for you?
• 15:18
  And what did you then do in terms of a job?
• 15:22
  What was the first car?
• 15:24
  Did you get your licence first go?
• 15:26
  Oh, my gosh.
• 15:27
  You know, some of the things that happened you would never do today.
• 15:31
  But essentially after we had travelled, we'd lived in, we'd changed schools so many times.
• 15:37
  In those travelling years in the caravan, we'd lived in all sorts of different places.
• 15:41
  But after we'd been up at Julius Dam, mum and dad decided that they were going to settle down and build a new house.
• 15:49
  And we settled at Alexandra Headlands on the Sunshine Coast, which was such a beautiful place to live.
• 15:55
  And I went back to a normal school, to a high school.
• 16:00
  And I just hated it.
• 16:01
  And I think, you know, the teachers were struggling to control the class, let alone teach anything, I think, at the time.
• 16:08
  But I realised I'd just been in an adult world.
• 16:11
  You know, we were in control of our own school days.
• 16:14
  We worked it out ourselves.
• 16:16
  We worked the times that we wanted to...
• 16:19
  do our schooling.
• 16:20
  And suddenly I was sitting in a room of, you know, 20 or 30 children that weren't really interested in learning anything.
• 16:27
  And everything was so slow to do one thing, you know, think, well, I could have done that in 10 seconds.
• 16:32
  Let's move on to the next thing.
• 16:34
  And I actually started wagging school.
• 16:36
  Did you?
• 16:36
  Yes.
• 16:37
  And that's where it all fell apart because I had a girlfriend and her boyfriend was a carpenter who actually worked for dad on occasion.
• 16:45
  So dad knew this guy, Tim.
• 16:48
  Anyway, one day, Judy and Tim were going to go to Noosa for the day.
• 16:51
  And I said, oh.
• 16:52
  I'll come.
• 16:52
  So I left home in my school uniform, walked around the corner, got changed into my casuals.
• 16:58
  They'd pick me up and we'd go to Noosa.
• 17:00
  And as we were driving into Noosa, my dad at the time was building a block of units right on the edge of the main road.
• 17:07
  And as we came down the hill, I could see him standing on the top
• 17:11
  of this building, you know, probably on a second-storey roof.
• 17:15
  And so I ducked down in this ute that we were in and on we drove and I was thinking, oh, I wonder if he recognised Tim's ute or saw me or anything.
• 17:26
  Anyway, got home that night, nothing was said.
• 17:28
  I thought, great, got away with that.
• 17:30
  And we're sitting having dinner and quite casually Dad said to me, he said, so, did you have a good day at Noosa today?
• 17:36
  LAUGHTER
• 17:38
  And I thought, oh, I'm in a bit of strife here.
• 17:40
  And I said to him, I said, I hate school.
• 17:42
  I hate going there.
• 17:43
  And he said, well, you're not leaving school unless you get a job.
• 17:47
  I said, fine.
• 17:48
  And a week later, I had a job.
• 17:50
  What I never told my dad was that the job that I got, my boss had actually offered me the job and said we were halfway through year 10 at the time.
• 18:00
  So then it was called your junior certificate.
• 18:03
  And my boss had actually offered to hold the job for me so I could finish my junior certificate first and then come to work.
• 18:10
  And I said, no, no, no, it's fine.
• 18:11
  I'll start now.
• 18:14
  So that was the end of, you know, formal schooling for me.
• 18:17
  Wow.
• 18:18
  Later life would, you know, motorsport would become occupation for you.
• 18:22
  What was that job to begin with?
• 18:24
  And tell us about your first car and life generally at that age.
• 18:28
  Well, you know, nothing that I think, nothing I've done in my life was planned.
• 18:34
  It all sort of kind of just happened.
• 18:36
  And my first car was actually a Datsun 1200 Coupe, which I thought was a fabulous car.
• 18:43
  But I was driving lots of Dad's cars before I had my own car.
• 18:47
  So when I got that first job, which was down at Maloolaba, I used to just take Dad's youth to work, you know.
• 18:54
  And, I mean, can you imagine that today, you know?
• 18:58
  There was never many rules with my dad, but, you know, you need a car, you need to go to work, take the ute.
• 19:04
  No licence, doesn't matter.
• 19:07
  I actually can't remember when I did formally get my licence because I was really just driving.
• 19:13
  You were so used to it.
• 19:13
  I was just driving for years before I even had a licence.
• 19:17
  And one of the other stories about all that was dad was still doing form work, he had a form working business at that point.
• 19:24
  And he was really, really busy and he had jobs going all around the place.
• 19:27
  And he basically had some jobs running on 24-hour shifts to meet deadlines.
• 19:32
  And at the time he was doing a job in Gympie.
• 19:36
  And he'd come home for dinner that night and he was going to have dinner and then he was going to leave because he had to get a load of form work back up to Gympie to this job.
• 19:43
  And my mum wasn't happy at all because she was sort of sitting there saying, Norman, you're far too tired, you can't keep working these hours and you're too tired to drive to Gympie, take that form work out.
• 19:55
  And so I said, well, I'll take it up if you like.
• 19:58
  And Dad said, oh, OK.
• 19:59
  He came with me, but he did sleep in the passenger side.
• 20:03
  So I'm still underage and no license.
• 20:06
  And I take Dad's truck and he had this old Bedford, like a big flat tray with those wire cages on the side.
• 20:12
  And Dad being Dad, the formwork towered far taller than the wire cages on the side.
• 20:18
  Yeah, everything was always overloaded to the hilt.
• 20:21
  And I'd never even driven this truck before.
• 20:22
  So I took this.
• 20:24
  I overloaded truck from Alexandra Headlands up to Gympie to drop it off at the job that night.
• 20:31
  Nice.
• 20:31
  I remember going up, you know, this hill and going down through the gears.
• 20:35
  And of course, this truck was struggling with the weight it was carrying.
• 20:39
  And the only gear left was first gear.
• 20:41
  And I'm having that little panic like, oh, my gosh, you know, is this truck going to make it up the hill?
• 20:47
  Which it did.
• 20:48
  When you look at the CV from a rallying point of view, I can remember people like Peter Glenny, you've mentioned Murray Coote there as well.
• 20:54
  From that moment with Dad in the Datsun 1600 and doing Round Australia, what then transpired in the early co-driving years for you as far as opportunities?
• 21:04
  And was it something that came easy to you?
• 21:08
  Well, the thing was I did the Repco and I loved it.
• 21:10
  You know, that was only ever intended as a one-off adventure with my dad.
• 21:15
  And so dad and I kept rallying for a few years, doing mostly Queensland state championship events, but we would often go and do an ARC round, always do the Queensland ARC round, but the Alpine was the big thing of the day.
• 21:28
  So we'd always, you know, do a trip down to the Alpine.
• 21:31
  And then I think he just got busy at work and he wasn't doing so much.
• 21:34
  And Peter Markovich was at the time the Queensland champion, had asked me to do an event with him.
• 21:42
  So I started doing some rallies with Marco and...
• 21:46
  And the Peter Glenny thing happened next because Peter was coming down to do the 2GO in New South Wales.
• 21:55
  In Gosford?
• 21:55
  Yes, and his co-driver was ill, his normal co-driver.
• 21:59
  So I was just asked to fill in for one event.
• 22:02
  And so that's how working with Peter came about.
• 22:06
  And then that became a permanent position and Peter and I continued to rally together.
• 22:11
  And I actually won my first ARC with Peter.
• 22:14
  Yeah.
• 22:14
  Tell me a bit about that.
• 22:15
  In Tasmania, well, the crazy, oh, my gosh, the crazy part of that story is that I'd just had my first daughter.
• 22:24
  Jane.
• 22:25
  Jane.
• 22:26
  And...
• 22:30
  I'd convinced Mark that we could, you know, we've got this little baby.
• 22:34
  I mean, we went to our first rally when she was two years old.
• 22:37
  I wasn't competing.
• 22:38
  We just took this baby and went up to a rally in Bernarkin.
• 22:41
  And I've got photos of us sitting in the service tent with Murray Coote, all dusty and dirty in the middle of the rally.
• 22:48
  And then next to him, this baby bassinet with the baby in it next to the generator.
• 22:55
  Oh, it's so crazy to think about it.
• 22:57
  So then so I convinced Mark that he should be Mr Mum for the year and we'd go and do the ARC season.
• 23:05
  And so we went to Tasmania.
• 23:08
  But, oh, my gosh.
• 23:10
  You know, I was a breastfeeding mother.
• 23:11
  So we had sorted out that there would be bottles so that if anything happened, Mark could feed this baby.
• 23:18
  He was all covered.
• 23:20
  And I was just like pretending to be Superwoman that, you know, having a baby wasn't going to change your life and you can still go rallying.
• 23:28
  But what happened was we came into the first service and I thought, great, I'll feed the baby.
• 23:34
  and then we'll go back out, except the baby was asleep.
• 23:37
  And so we decided we didn't want to wake her up.
• 23:40
  So then it was, okay, we've got two more stages, then we're back for a service.
• 23:44
  So I'll feed her at the next one.
• 23:46
  And we came back the next time and we had all sorts of dramas that Hilda we were talking about.
• 23:54
  By this stage, Hilda's had moved a little bit
• 23:57
  and there was now an electronic device.
• 23:59
  You could press buttons.
• 24:00
  But also if you were really lucky, you had a remote, so you didn't have to lean forward and press the button.
• 24:08
  So we had this little rectangular box on a cord that was attached to the powder.
• 24:14
  This is top drawer.
• 24:15
  Oh, top drawer.
• 24:16
  And as you, you know, did the turn left, you could press the button and the button.
• 24:22
  the meter would go back to zero and start again for your next intermediate call.
• 24:26
  Well, just before coming into service, I'd thrown that up on the dashboard, but the back of the dash was kind of an open area and this little rectangle unit fell down behind and got stuck in the wiper mechanism.
• 24:39
  in a rally where there was some rain and we needed the wipers to work.
• 24:43
  So by the time we pulled into that service, Mark standing there with the baby, who was happily awake, but not crying, just standing there.
• 24:50
  And I said, I haven't got time, I haven't got time, I've got to sort this.
• 24:53
  So I'm fiddling around to get this remote untangled from the wiper mechanism.
• 25:00
  And so then we went back out and I said to Mark, it's okay, we've got two more stages and we're coming back.
• 25:04
  And then they had
• 25:05
  what they used to call a division break, which was like an hour.
• 25:08
  I've got a whole hour in the division break.
• 25:10
  It'll all be good.
• 25:13
  The problem is, and only a woman will understand, is that when you breastfeed a baby and the milk is being produced, if you don't actually feed the baby and relieve that, you get to explosion point.
• 25:27
  But then it backs up.
• 25:29
  And I didn't know, but it actually gets lumpy and goes back up under your arms into your underarm.
• 25:34
  and it's excruciating to touch.
• 25:37
  So I was getting to that point.
• 25:39
  And I've got a harness on in the rally car, but I'm not gonna let on to Peter that there's any issue.
• 25:44
  He'd always say, how are you going, mate?
• 25:45
  I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all good.
• 25:49
  So by the time we got to the division break, I was just, all I wanted was this baby and I couldn't find Mark anywhere.
• 25:57
  And I'm walking around the service park.
• 25:59
  I say, where's my husband?
• 26:00
  Where's my baby?
• 26:02
  And, of course, what had happened while we were out, she'd cried, so he'd given her a bottle.
• 26:05
  Oh, my God.
• 26:08
  So I spent an hour of the division break in a car and it was quite cold trying to wake this baby up enough to feed.
• 26:15
  And of course, she wasn't really interested.
• 26:17
  So on we went.
• 26:18
  And the rallies went into the night back then.
• 26:21
  And we had a nighttime service somewhere in the middle of a forest and it was absolutely freezing cold.
• 26:27
  Peter's wife, Barbara, was there making hot soup for everyone.
• 26:30
  to keep us warm.
• 26:32
  And that was where Mark lost it.
• 26:34
  He finally, he just looked at me.
• 26:36
  I can't, I can't tell you the actual words he said, but it was along the line with a few expletives thrown in, like, what the heck are we doing to this child?
• 26:44
  Why are we out with this newborn baby in the middle of a freezing forest in the middle of the night?
• 26:49
  I said, it'll be all right, darling.
• 26:50
  It'll be all right.
• 26:51
  Oh my gosh.
• 26:53
  Yeah, and he is.
• 26:54
  I mean, you've joined a little dot there about your husband because he's got rallying in the veins as well.
• 26:59
  He's got a beautiful 1970 XYGT Falcon rally car.
• 27:04
  How did you guys meet?
• 27:05
  And then if I'm right in saying, I think your honeymoon even took in some rallying where you took in a bit of the WRC and all sorts, didn't you, overseas?
• 27:13
  Well, no, eventually a delayed honeymoon did the overseas trip.
• 27:17
  Our actual honeymoon was one night because we had to get home to prep the car for a rally that I was driving in the following weekend that he was co-driving in.
• 27:27
  So we had one night and then we went up to home and spent the rest of the honeymoon in the garage.
• 27:34
  Have you driven with him?
• 27:35
  Have you guys sort of
• 27:37
  Yeah, well, as me co-driving for him, yes, only a couple of times and one of them was actually back in Tasmania at the ARC round after Jane was born.
• 27:48
  So it must have been the following year because she must have been about a year old or so and we had a babysitter at the hotel and Mark was just driving so slowly.
• 27:58
  And we got to one start control and I said, are you all right?
• 28:01
  I said, for heaven's sake, you know, I could drive faster.
• 28:05
  What are you doing?
• 28:07
  And it wasn't until after the rally that early on in that rally we'd had just a very minor off in a stage and he didn't tell me till after the rally that his thought at that moment was, what are we doing, both of us in the same car, and our child is with a babysitter at the hotel.
• 28:24
  And so that's why he just drove so slowly for the rest of the night.
• 28:27
  So we made a pact at that point that we wouldn't be together, both parents in the same car at the same time.
• 28:44
  The Scandinavian flick sounds like a hairstyle.
• 28:49
  When you eventually did get that honeymoon, join the dots here for me, somehow you ended up hooking up with a television crew that was working on the World Rally Championship and helping them.
• 29:00
  And tell people, I mean, are we talking here sort of Group B era and Audi and Persia?
• 29:05
  What sort of cars were you?
• 29:06
  Oh, absolutely.
• 29:07
  We're talking Audis and Michelle Mouton and Walter Roll and, you know...
• 29:12
  It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen in my life.
• 29:15
  We were in Australia rallying in escorts and Datsun 1600s, you know, and suddenly this was our delayed honeymoon.
• 29:22
  We decided to take six months.
• 29:23
  We bought a camper van and we were travelling around Europe and going to rallies and we went to Finland and...
• 29:31
  Which is, for people that don't follow rallying, I mean, iconic rally event.
• 29:35
  Absolutely.
• 29:36
  Well, we hadn't, we had a very limited daily budget and we hadn't realised how expensive all the ferry crossings were to take a camper van across to Scandinavia.
• 29:45
  So we'd ended up free camping for a few weeks to save the camping ground fees to save up for the extra petrol and the ferry fees to go to Finland.
• 29:53
  But we arrived there and we
• 29:56
  What are you in, a little Bedford van thing?
• 29:58
  Yeah, it was a Bedford van.
• 29:59
  It was a power blue Bedford van called, we called it Bluebell.
• 30:01
  We were in Bluebell.
• 30:04
  But we are, my eyes were just opened.
• 30:08
  We couldn't believe the crowds for starters.
• 30:11
  You know, it's, rallying in Finland is what football is to Australians.
• 30:15
  You know, it's.
• 30:18
  It's like their national sport.
• 30:21
  And we were just standing, well, the first thing we went to was the shakedown and the first time I saw those cars come past, I'm sure if you had a picture of my face, it was jaw dropping and mouth open and the most stunningly fast things I had ever seen.
• 30:39
  But while we were out spectating...
• 30:42
  Back then there didn't seem to be many English-speaking people around.
• 30:46
  You know, people didn't travel as much as we do now.
• 30:49
  And we were just chatting at a spectator point and it was actually this film crew who were an English crew started chatting back because they were English.
• 30:57
  And then we bumped into them...
• 31:00
  I think then we'd gone back to England for a while and we ended up on the Manx rally on the Isle of Man and we bumped into this same film crew again.
• 31:07
  And so basically they thought that we were just following rallies everywhere.
• 31:11
  Rally duties.
• 31:12
  And so at the end of that on the Isle of Man they said, oh, well, we'll see you in San Remo.
• 31:16
  That's the next rally.
• 31:17
  And I said, oh, no, we're actually going to, you know, be going back home to Australia.
• 31:21
  We don't have any more money left.
• 31:22
  And he said, I tell you what, he said, we need some people to carry the camera equipment and,
• 31:27
  He said, if you can get yourself to San Remo, we'll look after the rest.
• 31:31
  So we sold Bluebell.
• 31:33
  Bluebell became some air tickets to Italy.
• 31:37
  But just imagine, Rusty, you know, like now you've got all these little portable devices to record and do things on.
• 31:43
  Back then, the camera units and the recording units were huge, heavy boxes.
• 31:49
  So it was actually hard work.
• 31:51
  Well, Mark carried most of the...
• 31:53
  the heavy stuff.
• 31:55
  But yeah, lugging these big cumbersome recording boxes out into forests and out on the stages.
• 32:02
  But that was unbelievable.
• 32:04
  You know, we were lucky to see the WRC back in the heyday, back in the era of those amazing cars and people.
• 32:13
  And when in Italy...
• 32:16
  Like it's mind-blowing, you know, you've all seen the videos of it, the people just lining the edges of roads.
• 32:21
  There's no crowd control, the parting of the seas and all of that.
• 32:25
  It was just an amazing experience.
• 32:27
  And the cars, as you say, were, you know, loud, bold, what they could do compared to what you were used to in, say, a Datsun 1600s.
• 32:35
  I mean, it was just next level, wasn't it?
• 32:36
  Yeah.
• 32:37
  And the most amazing part was because we were part of the film crew, we had media passes.
• 32:42
  So for me...
• 32:43
  just sitting in a press conference.
• 32:45
  And, you know, my hero was always Fabrizia Pons.
• 32:48
  And I was able to go and sit in a press conference and listen to her be questioned and talk.
• 32:53
  And, yeah, it was just incredible experience.
• 32:56
  Just to expand on that, I mean, mentors often come up in the context of the podcast or people that inspire idols and things like that.
• 33:04
  Just expand on Fabrizia because she and, you know, Michelle Mouton, they were, it was a big story back then, wasn't it?
• 33:12
  And it was huge.
• 33:13
  You know, they almost won the world championship.
• 33:16
  You know, they were that close to winning it.
• 33:19
  I just admired them because they were out there, they were competitive and they were, you know, fighting the fight.
• 33:27
  They were such professionals.
• 33:28
  And, you know, over the years since then I've met Fabrizia and, you know, she had done some mentoring with Molly when Molly first started and to this day I think.
• 33:38
  I can't believe I actually met her or knew her or that she was even involved in, you know, some of the rallying that we did.
• 33:45
  But they were just truly inspiring.
• 33:48
  You know, I don't know if you've ever seen, there's an old video called Chariots in the Sun, which is of an Acropolis rally.
• 33:55
  And when you would pull up on the side of the road and have five minutes to do a major service and it's stinking hot and the rally's as rough as.
• 34:03
  And there's always this scene with Fabrizio Mazzini,
• 34:05
  jumping out of the car, looking at a watch, which is this huge watch, you know, almost the size of a dessert plate, to see if she's got enough time to run in and grab this drink of water in the shop.
• 34:17
  And she runs out.
• 34:19
  And at that time they had some issues with the car and Michelle's, you know, yelling, is it fixed?
• 34:25
  Can I go fast?
• 34:26
  Can I go fast?
• 34:27
  They said, yes, you can go fast.
• 34:28
  And they zip off, you know, just incredible.
• 34:33
  I love the recount of all that.
• 34:37
  So maybe jumping around a little bit here, from that, had you already started working with Murray Coote and I think he was in a 323 back then or was that post this trip?
• 34:46
  No, that was after that trip.
• 34:48
  So Murray was, initially it was supposed to be 91 and then Mazda didn't get organised so it ended up starting in 92 in the Mazda 323 Familiar.
• 34:59
  So that was my first, you know, factory official experience.
• 35:05
  Yeah.
• 35:06
  And look, none of this was intended.
• 35:07
  When I was doing some rallies in Queensland, I would stand at a presentation at the end of a Queensland State Championship round and I would look up,
• 35:16
  And Wayne Black and Dale Payne had won this event.
• 35:19
  And I still remember standing there looking at them going, wow, could you ever imagine winning a round of the state championship?
• 35:26
  You know, I was in awe of that.
• 35:30
  And then you do some more rallies and more rallies and then you've actually won a round of,
• 35:35
  the Australian Rally Championship, and you think, oh, my gosh, you know, none of it you could have imagined going back.
• 35:42
  And now I've forgotten what the question was.
• 35:43
  No, but I'm just about, you know, clearly...
• 35:47
  A little bit of inspiration from WRC, the professionalism, seeing an idol in action, factory opportunity with Mazda, even though it may not have been planned in a career sense, you had just gravitated.
• 36:03
  It was your life, wasn't it?
• 36:05
  Yeah, and I didn't have any career plan.
• 36:07
  It was just that I loved the sport and I loved rallying.
• 36:11
  I just loved everything about it.
• 36:14
  It just happened that, you know,
• 36:15
  There was Peter Markovich, then there was Peter Glennie, then there was Murray Coote and then from Murray to Neil.
• 36:22
  But Murray and I competed 92, sorry, 91 and 92 in the world.
• 36:28
  But Neil had actually rung me at the end of 91 to ask if I would co-drive for him in 92.
• 36:34
  And at that point Mazda had pulled out from rallying.
• 36:38
  But as a team, Murray and I had intentions and hopes and dreams of pulling sponsorship in so that we could continue what we'd started.
• 36:48
  But as it turned out, we only ended up I think doing two, maybe three events in the year.
• 36:53
  That was all that was...
• 36:56
  possible financially.
• 36:59
  And, you know, I think also something about rallying and a loyalty to a team because even though we had a sort of a possible season happening with Murray, Neil was ringing up and offering...
• 37:14
  an absolute season, you know, a full season.
• 37:17
  But you feel very loyal to the team.
• 37:20
  You know, you would feel like you were jumping ship because someone had a better offer.
• 37:24
  So I didn't and I stuck with it and it didn't all come together.
• 37:28
  And it was actually Murray who said, because Neil had rung back again that year, and it was actually Murray who said you should take the offer and rally with Neil.
• 37:36
  The game teaches you from a younger age that you have to...
• 37:43
  be a bit of a bit of a grafter you've got to think outside the square to make things happen sometimes and
• 37:49
  There's a good story about you and the Mazda and Murray Coote going to New Zealand and you had to front the bank manager to make it all come together for a car night and you had to learn about a car night and all sorts of things, didn't you?
• 38:04
  I know, that's really funny.
• 38:06
  You know, when you've been competing in Australia and you haven't been overseas, you're totally unaware of the logistics and what's involved and so...
• 38:16
  We'd been invited to go and do this rally sprint in New Zealand and we were pretty excited.
• 38:20
  So that was all booked and everything was happening.
• 38:22
  And at the last minute we were told we needed this carne, which allows the car to go in and out of the country without duties and so forth.
• 38:31
  But what we also didn't know was that carne required a bond
• 38:36
  and I think it was about $100,000 or something like that, we needed a bond for $100,000 to get the car to send it.
• 38:44
  And we didn't know how to do it.
• 38:46
  And so I said to Mike, I wonder if our bank manager would let us mortgage the house temporarily to this car for a couple of weeks.
• 38:53
  Back when you could walk into your local bank manager.
• 38:55
  Yeah, exactly.
• 38:55
  Back when we had our little local bank just down the road and you actually had an appointment with the bank manager and,
• 39:01
  the bank manager didn't know what a rally was, let alone anything else.
• 39:05
  So I've gone in and just given him some spiel about going to do this rally and this is what happens and, you know, it's only temporarily.
• 39:13
  Anyway, he said yes.
• 39:14
  So we had this bond mortgaged against our house that made the trip so easy.
• 39:19
  For 100 grand.
• 39:20
  Yeah.
• 39:21
  Yeah.
• 39:22
  It would have been a lot of money probably.
• 39:23
  Well, it was.
• 39:24
  It was, you know, and it seems so...
• 39:27
  I mean, if the car didn't return to Australia, then, you know, that money was gone.
• 39:31
  So, yeah.
• 39:32
  Yeah, and Neil recalls that period and Murray being very good at kind of recommending you in that regard.
• 39:40
  So, I mean, obviously there was an offer there, but what would follow...
• 39:45
  And it expands on that loyalty that you're talking about was an unbelievable chapter of your life with Neil Bates, with Neil Bates Motorsport, you know, Australian titles that would come along and, you know, through a lot of hard work and a great collective partnership with a wonderful group of people in Canberra and with the Toyota company that has gone for decades, hasn't it?
• 40:09
  Yeah.
• 40:10
  And we were just so lucky to, well, you know, Neil Bates Motorsport still has that association now with Harry and Lewis and Toyota.
• 40:17
  But we were just very lucky to have their involvement and their commitment to the team.
• 40:23
  I think the great thing about Toyota back in the day was...
• 40:26
  was that there were people who worked there who had a true understanding of motorsport and what was required to do it properly, and Mike Breen in particular.
• 40:34
  And we were very, very lucky to work with Mike.
• 40:38
  Mike might have some other stories because we did terrible things to Mike.
• 40:42
  Poor Mike, you know.
• 40:44
  There was a time where we, you know, well, just going back, 93, so I joined Neil.
• 40:50
  He's built a Toyota Celica GT4 in Canberra.
• 40:55
  And our main opposition is Possum Bourne and he's in a pro-drive Subaru.
• 40:59
  So it was sort of like the privateer car versus the factory car.
• 41:03
  This is Rowley's version of Dick Johnson versus Peter Brock in many ways in terms of Ford v Hold and that style of rivalry.
• 41:09
  They're kind of parallel, if you could say that.
• 41:13
  To this day, people often say to you, you know, oh, what was your most amazing moment in rallying?
• 41:18
  And certainly winning an ARC and that first ARC and winning a first championship, you know, they're all big moments.
• 41:25
  But to me, there's still one moment.
• 41:27
  that stands out.
• 41:29
  And it was in that very first rally with Neil and it was a rally of Melbourne and we were leading.
• 41:36
  And back in the day, we didn't have service parks.
• 41:38
  So servicing was still on the side of the road and you would come out of a stage, your service crew would be there, you'd pull up, do your bit, move on.
• 41:46
  They'd all pack up and they'd move to the next spot.
• 41:48
  So, you know, the service guys just had the biggest job of with repacking trucks and moving and setting up
• 41:56
  on the side of a road somewhere to service each time.
• 41:59
  It's just incredible.
• 42:00
  But we came into one of these services and it was down quite a narrow road.
• 42:06
  So all the service vehicles had parked up on the right-hand side and there was sort of just enough room for us to drive past and look for where's your crew in this big line of...
• 42:16
  service vehicles.
• 42:18
  And as we drove past Possum's team, the guys, his own service crew stood out in the road and clapped and
• 42:28
  as we went past, and even now I feel a little bit emotional just telling the story.
• 42:32
  But that, you know, at the time I was really emotional.
• 42:35
  I thought, oh my gosh, we are leading this rally and the Subaru team are actually recognising that you're doing a great job.
• 42:45
  You know, that recognition from your peers was just, yeah, that is still, as you say, very cool.
• 42:51
  Probably one of the coolest moments ever.
• 42:53
  And we did win that rally and we won the championship that year.
• 42:57
  So, you know, it has to be said that we got off to a really great start.
• 43:03
  Molly, you mentioned your daughter before.
• 43:04
  She's my first ever podcast and we'll talk more about her in our little discussion here today.
• 43:10
  A couple of things.
• 43:11
  Firstly, she says she can recall the moment realising that mum was cool and what mum did and...
• 43:20
  And I think it's even kind of captured in a little photo now.
• 43:24
  Harry Bates, who's now gone on to win a national title, was probably in nappies.
• 43:30
  A young Molly Taylor, very young Molly Taylor, was with the crew and the Salika and...
• 43:37
  I don't know if it was Rally Melbourne or which one it was, but she says she can absolutely recall that, you know, understanding the impact rallying would have kind of in a life sense, but just what mum did.
• 43:52
  Yeah, we've got some photos of the kids.
• 43:54
  We used to get the kids up onto the bottom of the car and they'd get a podium photo, which they thought was pretty cool.
• 44:00
  I think my other daughter, Jane, always thought it was pretty cool if I could drop them to school because, of course, back in the day then, my road car was a nice GT4 with, you know, the wing on the back.
• 44:11
  So they thought they could impress their schoolmates if I could drop them to school in the Celica.
• 44:15
  Yeah.
• 44:17
  Jane was a little miffed, I'm told, because Molly's birthday used to fall around Rally Canberra.
• 44:23
  Is this true?
• 44:24
  And can you remember how you used to deal with it?
• 44:26
  I think Molly used to get nice presents because you were away rallying in Canberra and you felt maybe a bit guilty about that.
• 44:33
  So Jane was like, for goodness sake, can't my birthday fall on a rally?
• 44:38
  Oh, I don't remember the bits about one prison being better than the other, but, you know, it was probably true.
• 44:44
  Actually, they used to, because when I was away in those early years when they were young, Mark would work from home at the time to be with the girls.
• 44:54
  And so usually the biggest regret when I was home was that if I made school lunches, apparently I didn't make them as good as Dad did.
• 45:00
  This is true.
• 45:02
  And we actually had a funny moment.
• 45:05
  One day Toyota were wanting to do a filming for something.
• 45:09
  I can't remember what show it was for.
• 45:10
  But they wanted a segment on Coral Taylor at home.
• 45:14
  So they would come in the morning and I was just to act as normal and make the girls' lunches and, you know, kiss them goodbyes.
• 45:21
  I'll have to find it for you one day, Rusty.
• 45:22
  It's hilarious.
• 45:23
  And then they would run off to school saying, bye, Mum.
• 45:26
  Anyway, the aftermath of that day was when they got home and they walked in the door and they were absolutely dirty because at that point, Mark was always making their lunches.
• 45:36
  And apparently I'd put the wrong sandwiches in the wrong box.
• 45:39
  So, you know, Jane got what Molly was supposed to have and vice versa.
• 45:43
  And neither was happy that they had the wrong lunch.
• 45:45
  You know, could I get out of the kitchen, please, and bring dad back?
• 45:49
  I love it.
• 45:50
  Neil reminded me of a good yarn.
• 45:53
  You are the eternal optimist.
• 45:56
  He says, cast your mind back to Rally Australia.
• 45:59
  Engine shits itself.
• 46:01
  Do you remember what you told him?
• 46:03
  And I think he was holding the fire extinguisher at the time.
• 46:06
  I am the eternal optimist.
• 46:08
  And I think you're so, you know, you're so engrossed in the event you're doing and you're competitive and all you want to do is do your best and win.
• 46:17
  And then an engine lets go.
• 46:19
  So the disappointment is huge.
• 46:22
  And, you know, I'm not particularly, you know, a mechanical person.
• 46:25
  I have, you know, a rough idea.
• 46:27
  But, you know, I always look at the miracles that, you know, the guys at Neil Bates Motorsport can perform.
• 46:33
  So to me the engine's just made a big bang and there's flames and Neil's got a fire extinguisher.
• 46:37
  But in my head...
• 46:39
  we might still be able to patch something up and get going.
• 46:41
  So I think that's probably what Neil is referring to.
• 46:43
  I think when I said, well, can we get it going?
• 46:47
  And he sort of kind of pointed down and there was a big hole in the side of the block and he said, I don't think so, Carl.
• 46:52
  I don't think so.
• 46:53
  I don't think so.
• 46:54
  Rally's got many different disciplines, gravel, snow in some countries, tarmac, obviously.
• 47:00
  You and Neil have an outright win and class success at Targa, Tasmania as well.
• 47:05
  I mean, that's another event in this country and globally that's held in such high esteem.
• 47:10
  That's another pretty big box that you've ticked along the way.
• 47:12
  Yeah.
• 47:13
  And, you know, the first year we went to Targa, Rusty, Toyota had just released the new GT4 205.
• 47:20
  It was the...
• 47:21
  And so our taking that car into Targa was the world competition debut for that model.
• 47:27
  And the boys only got it, you know, a couple of weeks, two or three weeks maybe before the event.
• 47:32
  So it was pretty much a standard car.
• 47:34
  They'd put some suspension in it and tested it late at night on Cotter Road.
• 47:40
  Probably couldn't do that these days either.
• 47:43
  Anyway.
• 47:44
  And so off we went.
• 47:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 47:49
  And there was a guy, Rowan Burns, who was actually the PR manager of Targa at the time.
• 47:56
  I think maybe, I probably shouldn't talk about people on air, should I?
• 48:00
  But I think they were very keen that a European mark would win that event rather than a Japanese mark.
• 48:06
  I'm not sure.
• 48:07
  But anyway, we went down and Targa does a prologue to determine your starting position and we had won the prologue.
• 48:17
  he didn't seem very happy about that.
• 48:19
  So he started to say things along the lines of that we were there with a full blown rally car.
• 48:25
  And we were saying, well, it's pretty much a standard car with some decent suspension and so forth.
• 48:32
  And it went on and on by sort of, we were leading and day four, by then the stories were that supposedly we'd gone there with a car straight from TTE in Europe.
• 48:42
  And so that was all a bit amazing.
• 48:44
  But for Toyota Australia,
• 48:47
  and Toyota Japan, when it looked like we were going to win the event, Japan were then very keen to have some vision and footage of this.
• 48:54
  You know, it was the world competition debut and it was going to win target Tasmania.
• 48:59
  But the final days down the west coast of Tasmania, so access is limited and difficult.
• 49:06
  So Toyota Australia hired a helicopter, which led to a whole other group of stories.
• 49:11
  But anyway, they had this helicopter.
• 49:14
  to grab the vision for Japan.
• 49:17
  And anyway, long story short, three stages from the end, we passed a car and a rock flew up and hold the radiator.
• 49:29
  And so the car overheated, we came to a halt.
• 49:33
  We tried to keep it going.
• 49:34
  We limped through the next stage.
• 49:38
  And so we had one stage to go, which was just the little town stage at New Norfolk
• 49:44
  but we were sitting on the side of the road.
• 49:45
  And there is a vision of me sitting on the side of the road in the long grass with a few tears in my eyes.
• 49:50
  We were very sad.
• 49:52
  So we'd gone from sort of hero to zero, particularly with Japan getting so excited about the possible result.
• 50:00
  And it wasn't to be.
• 50:01
  So that was hugely disappointing.
• 50:05
  But we figured that if they were going to accuse us of going down there with a full-blown rally car, then next time we would.
• 50:12
  So we took the full-blown rally car down the next year and we won the prologue by something horrific, like 13 seconds or something.
• 50:20
  Neil will remember, I can never remember the exact amounts, that we even looked at each other and sort of went, oops.
• 50:26
  Maybe if we'd known it was going to be that, maybe we should have just backed off a bit because there'd been quite a furor going on even in the newspapers prior to the start of the event that we shouldn't be allowed to take the rally car down.
• 50:41
  Anyway, and we did win it that following year.
• 50:43
  So, you know, that was certainly another highlight of our motorsport to that point.
• 50:52
  Sad thing is, though, they banned the car the following year so we couldn't take it back.
• 50:56
  Yeah.
• 50:56
  What's the secret to the longevity with Toyota, do you think?
• 50:58
  I mean, I know there's been moments where they've changed directions slightly in terms of a motorsport strategy or whatever it may have been.
• 51:04
  But, I mean, it is one of the longest partnerships when you look at it in Australian motorsport history.
• 51:10
  Yeah, it is.
• 51:12
  And, you know, I think, you know, Neil and Neil Bates Motorsport has obviously had, you know, a great relationship with them and total loyalty to them for so long.
• 51:22
  But I also think that Neil's one of those guys, you know, a lot of people come into motorsport and might burn sponsors, you know, you want too much or you ask too much or you don't deliver what you say.
• 51:34
  I think Neil's always been very honest and fair and,
• 51:38
  and done so much for them in so many ways, lots of little things around the edges that people don't see.
• 51:45
  And we did have and still do have, you know, a great relationship with the company.
• 51:51
  As you do in the sport with all sorts of people and over time I've known you to, you know, help this person or someone comes to visit and you do something for them or you might even be caretaker of something for a while.
• 52:02
  And I'm going to recount a little story for you here.
• 52:04
  Yeah.
• 52:05
  Mark, your husband, was on the Australian Safari with me in the mid-90s.
• 52:09
  He drove one of the press cars and we were going through Central Australia and somehow I ended up with something of his or a piece of camera equipment or something and I had to return it to you guys.
• 52:18
  At the time, you were living in Beecroft in Sydney and when I got to your place...
• 52:23
  He answered the front door and there was like this Cheshire cat, you know, big bright smile on his face and he couldn't wait to show me what was in the garage.
• 52:31
  So he flips open the garage door and in there is a full-blown ex-Team Toyota Europe WRC-spec Celica.
• 52:39
  Was that thing a, was it a Carlos Sainz car?
• 52:42
  And maybe it was bound for the late Ray Lintot at the time or something or other.
• 52:48
  And I think you guys had that for a little while in the garage.
• 52:51
  Do you know, to be honest, and I'm so bad with remembering which car was which, so Mark never owned the Carlos Sainz cars.
• 52:59
  I don't know what, but maybe that could have been, he did end up with Carlos Sainz's engine.
• 53:03
  Did he?
• 53:03
  I remember that.
• 53:05
  You know what my husband's like.
• 53:06
  He has so many cars and things going and...
• 53:09
  I can't remember what one that was, but maybe it was the one that went to Ray Lenton.
• 53:14
  I reckon it was in an interim phase.
• 53:16
  No, that's all right.
• 53:17
  That's all right.
• 53:17
  I think it was bound for Ray at that stage.
• 53:21
  That kind of leads me to, you know, when you look at the success you've had in Celica that you've talked about before, even as far back as 205, with Corolla and in different iterations of the Corolla from turbocharged to naturally aspirated trim, there was that unbelievable WRC spec.
• 53:36
  Corolla as well.
• 53:37
  Is there one for you, and even now, I mean, I love the RA40, the old, you know, tip of the hat to the classic car in the Team Toyota paint scheme as well.
• 53:48
  All of them beautifully built, beautifully presented by the team.
• 53:53
  Is there one for you that you have a fondness for, or does it become for you in a competitive sense that it's a tool of the trade?
• 54:02
  It is a tool of the trade, except that you do get attached to cars.
• 54:05
  I mean, aesthetically, a 205 GT4 will always be my favourite car.
• 54:11
  But, you know, there's very few people in the world that have competed in a world rally car.
• 54:15
  And we had that opportunity with the Corolla.
• 54:19
  And I remember, you know, great sadness trying to actually
• 54:24
  step out of that car for the last time.
• 54:26
  And I laugh because Daryl, our sort of head technical guy, Neil Bates Motorsport, he used to always call me Mrs. Come on, Mrs. Just get out of the car.
• 54:36
  You know, it was as if you can't be emotional about a car, you know, just hop out.
• 54:42
  And yet...
• 54:43
  I have seen him so emotional about cars.
• 54:45
  It isn't funny.
• 54:46
  So I think all of us get very attached and emotional to the cars.
• 54:50
  We did have a car once that, you know when they say you have a Friday car, you know, the lemon?
• 54:54
  We had a lemon one and I can't remember what year it was, but Daryl used to call her Christine.
• 55:01
  LAUGHTER
• 55:04
  Christine was always an issue.
• 55:06
  She had so many issues.
• 55:07
  It was just hysterical.
• 55:09
  But yeah, I think, you know, you love the sport, you love the cars, they are a tool, but you, you know, you get to know them so intimately, you know, and what a team can do, you know, you take a car that's destined to be a road car, and then you decide to do with it everything that the manufacturer never really intended it to do.
• 55:30
  And the technical expertise and what
• 55:33
  people can do to make a car go fast and handle on a gravel road.
• 55:37
  You know, I just, I've spent years just hearing all the chat in the background about, you know, one particular part of a car and the long discussions about, well, if we did this, we could make this better, all of that and so forth.
• 55:49
  And, you know, or even just getting weight out of the cars.
• 55:53
  Like Daryl, we used to call him dietician Daryl.
• 55:55
  He'd find something.
• 55:56
  He'd take the weight out.
• 55:57
  And he always had a notebook in the workshop and he would write it down.
• 56:01
  And it would, yeah, seriously, but it would be grams.
• 56:05
  Like, just give me grams.
• 56:08
  And I looked at this one day years ago and he always used to say, you know, grams add up to kilograms.
• 56:15
  And you just, you know, the nth degree to what they go to to build the perfect car.
• 56:20
  probably lesser known for the wider motorsport community, is that you can ride motorbikes, dirt bikes, and you went.
• 56:27
  There's quite a good story about you guys in WA one time.
• 56:31
  Is that right?
• 56:32
  On the way home from WA.
• 56:34
  But firstly, Rusty, I can't ride a bike very well.
• 56:36
  That's really the moral of the story because everyone in the team is a bike rider.
• 56:41
  You know, Daryl's an ex-enduro rider.
• 56:43
  I mean, they all, they didn't just ride for pleasure, you know, they ride to kill basically.
• 56:49
  But anyway, I decided that if I got a bike I could go riding with them.
• 56:53
  So we were at a Coffs Harbour rally one year.
• 56:56
  And we went to a bike shop and I bought a bike.
• 56:59
  And so Neil drove it back to the hotel where we were staying for me and loaded it in the truck.
• 57:04
  And then I went out a few times on rides with the boys.
• 57:08
  What are we talking here, a little 250 two-stroke, a four-stroke?
• 57:11
  Yeah, it was a little Yamaha XT250, I think it was.
• 57:20
  And so I went riding with them and that was great.
• 57:23
  I went where they went, albeit much, much slower.
• 57:28
  But the problem was we'd done a ride one day and I'd actually gone wherever they'd gone and Daryl said to me, well, you know, if you can get through there, you're fine.
• 57:36
  You can go anywhere.
• 57:37
  LAUGHTER
• 57:39
  Which gives a really bad rider too much confidence.
• 57:42
  And anyway, Daryl's sister used to manage the roadhouse at Cocklebiddy on the way to Perth.
• 57:54
  And over the years, we'd stop there and have a meal there.
• 57:57
  But every year, she used to say, you must bring the bikes because there's a fantastic ride that goes from the station down to the ocean.
• 58:05
  You know, you're talking great Australian bike.
• 58:07
  And so we were going to for years.
• 58:10
  And finally, we decided, okay, this is the trip.
• 58:13
  We packed all the motorbikes in the trucks.
• 58:16
  went to Perth to do the WRC round, had a hugely busy week.
• 58:21
  You know, in those days recce was unlimited.
• 58:24
  You know, you would recce at daytime, nighttime.
• 58:26
  You'd do multiple passes of the stages.
• 58:29
  You'd then do a three-day rally and then the end of rally party ended.
• 58:34
  usually meant you saw the sun coming up the next morning.
• 58:36
  They were always mega.
• 58:37
  They were mega.
• 58:39
  And then after all of that, you hop into the trucks and you head home.
• 58:43
  But I think our truck broke down on the way out of Perth.
• 58:45
  So the original plan had been to arrive at Cocklebiddy at lunchtime, do this three-hour easy ride to the beach and continue on.
• 58:55
  You highlighted easy then.
• 58:57
  Yeah, exactly.
• 58:59
  So we arrived late, we undid the bikes and Daryl gave me this little bit of paper, which was a mud map, and all it had really was one crossroads.
• 59:10
  You just followed this track, there was one intersection, go straight on, keep going to the beach.
• 59:15
  So I said, okay, you guys go ahead, I'm going to be really slow, I'll see you at the beach.
• 59:21
  But when I get to this crossroads, they're all waiting for me because they're so sweet.
• 59:24
  And I said, guys, just go.
• 59:27
  And up until that point it had been quite a rocky track but, you know, I was coping.
• 59:31
  But as we left this junction, Daryl said, oh, and at the end there's a couple of sand dunes.
• 59:39
  And I said, oh, great, I haven't ridden in sand.
• 59:42
  What do I do?
• 59:42
  He said, you just need to give it lots of power.
• 59:44
  Just gun it and hit the sand.
• 59:46
  I said, fine.
• 59:46
  A couple of sand dunes turned out to be ten kilometres of sand dunes.
• 59:51
  But when I came around the corner and first saw the sand, I went, oh,
• 59:56
  Oh, righto, sand, full throttle, hit the sand, fishtail, fell off.
• 1:00:03
  And I thought, oh, my gosh, this is awful.
• 1:00:04
  And I'm not kidding.
• 1:00:06
  If I tell you on that ride I fell off 100 times, I am not kidding.
• 1:00:09
  It was just sand dune after sand dune after sand dune.
• 1:00:13
  And it's exhausting because then you've got to get back up, get on the bike, get going again.
• 1:00:17
  Some of the sand dunes were really steep and my bike was underpowered and by this time it's just glow.
• 1:00:22
  The whole exhaust system is glowing red.
• 1:00:24
  under the load of what I've been trying to make it do.
• 1:00:28
  And there was even tree roots in some of these sand dunes that would catch the rear wheel.
• 1:00:34
  I mean, I would just stop for a rest because the bike was just standing on its own in the sand halfway up a hill.
• 1:00:39
  And, but all that sort of straddling and paddling and trying to get this bike up, I was so exhausted.
• 1:00:45
  Like my thigh muscles were burning, my arms were sore.
• 1:00:49
  Anyway, I finally made it to the beach.
• 1:00:51
  And as I came over the last sand dune,
• 1:00:55
  It was like a view from Krusty Demons, you know.
• 1:00:57
  It was like bikes zipping up and jumping off sand dunes and going around.
• 1:01:02
  And I just stood there looking at it going, oh, my God, how good are these guys?
• 1:01:06
  I can't even get here and they're...
• 1:01:10
  Anyway, I said to them, I said, look, it's going to take me so long to get back.
• 1:01:15
  I'm going to start heading back now and you guys just stay playing at the beach and then you can catch me up.
• 1:01:20
  So I headed back and I fell off multiple times again in the sand and
• 1:01:25
  And at one point I went around a corner and fell off, but my head fell into like a salt bush that you get out on the Nullarbor.
• 1:01:34
  And so my helmet was sort of cradled in this bush.
• 1:01:37
  It was sort of kind of quite comfortable and I was so tired I thought, I'll just lay here and have a little rest for a minute.
• 1:01:44
  And that's where they found me.
• 1:01:45
  So suddenly all these bikes appeared over the hill and here I am laying with the bike half on top of me and my head in a salt bush.
• 1:01:52
  Was there panic from them?
• 1:01:54
  No, there was a lot of laughter.
• 1:01:58
  But they were very kind at that point, so they decided they'd help me get this bike back and that I would walk.
• 1:02:06
  So they decided they would leave one of their bikes, one would drive my bike and then hop off, and then that person would walk back to get their bike and the other one would take over and they'd do it in segments.
• 1:02:17
  Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  But even for me, you know, this is kilometres walking back and it's now dark.
• 1:02:22
  Like we've been out there so long, it's dark.
• 1:02:25
  And it's amazing, you know, out there when the days are so hot, the nights are really, really cold.
• 1:02:32
  And you've got big bike boots on and you're trying to walk in the sand up and down hills and you're already completely buggered.
• 1:02:39
  You know, you've got no energy left.
• 1:02:42
  And eventually I get back to where the others are waiting at the edge of the sand and they've built a bonfire at this point and now it's just sort of lightly raining.
• 1:02:50
  So it's miserable, it's cold, you're tired but, you know, at least there's a little fire going.
• 1:02:55
  And we're waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for Neil and Daryl to come.
• 1:03:01
  And eventually, a long time later, Daryl finally comes with my bike and he pulls up and I can't use the expletives that he used, but imagine all of the worst expletives there ever were.
• 1:03:13
  That was how he was describing this bike.
• 1:03:15
  And he said, you cannot ride this in sand.
• 1:03:19
  So I felt a little bit better that the bike was really useless in sand, but, you know, the rider was pretty useless as well.
• 1:03:25
  But then we had to wait for Neil.
• 1:03:27
  And apparently in this little tandem thing they had where they would ride and walk and bring the bikes back, apparently they started, I think they were going to do it a kilometre each or something, but in the end they were only going a few hundred metres each because no one wanted to ride my bike.
• 1:03:45
  So the distances got shorter.
• 1:03:46
  But the funniest part was eventually we could hear Neil approaching.
• 1:03:51
  Mm-hm.
• 1:03:51
  And we went, oh, here he comes, you know, in that beautiful still evening under the stars out in that part of the country and you just hear a motorbike coming through the dark, except you would hear it and then it would suddenly stop.
• 1:04:04
  And then across the night you would just hear this swearing and cursing and swearing and cursing.
• 1:04:11
  And then you'd hear the bike start up again and it would go for a while and then it would stop and you'd hear swearing and cursing.
• 1:04:18
  And so what was actually happening is Neil didn't have a light on his bike so he's driving in the dark but he can't see where he's going.
• 1:04:25
  So the stopping is every time he'd sort of driven into one of those salt bushes and the bike had stopped and he was trying to get it back to keep going.
• 1:04:35
  I felt forever indebted to them for getting this bike back for me.
• 1:04:40
  But by the time we all got to the truck, because then we had to still do the last rocky stretch in the freezing cold where your hands are frozen on the bike.
• 1:04:49
  And I was so exhausted that I couldn't even get my bike gear off.
• 1:04:53
  They had to literally pull the clothing off.
• 1:04:56
  And Daryl's sister, they made us dinner and then my plan then was, well, I think I'll just climb in the bunk of the truck and have a sleep.
• 1:05:05
  And Neil said, no, no, no, no, no.
• 1:05:07
  He said, we helped you get your bike back.
• 1:05:09
  So it's your turn to drive.
• 1:05:13
  Okay.
• 1:05:14
  Oh, man.
• 1:05:14
  But we also, I think it was Mundrabilla was the next...
• 1:05:18
  fuel stop because not all the stations are 24 hours over there and our original timing before we ran late was that we could do this ride and make Mundrabilla before the service station closed.
• 1:05:28
  But, of course, we got there and it was closed.
• 1:05:31
  So we drove up and parked the trucks at the Bowser.
• 1:05:35
  And I looked left, Daryl was driving the other truck, and when I looked left as we stopped, his head was laying down asleep in the steering wheel, you know, with his arms up.
• 1:05:44
  Already shut down.
• 1:05:44
  Already.
• 1:05:45
  And so I just slept in the driver's seat of the truck until, you know, it was very abruptly, we were very abruptly woken up by this cranky service station owner because trucks were packed in his driveway and basically it was bashing on the side of the door and saying, come on, come on, get your fuel.
• 1:06:03
  Yeah.
• 1:06:03
  I love it.
• 1:06:04
  So I decided that, you know, I should probably quit the bike riding thing before I really injured myself.
• 1:06:13
  The great thing that this leads to is I'm sure they've recounted that story many times and wound you up about it.
• 1:06:18
  It's had lots of good miles.
• 1:06:20
  is just the strength in that team of people, long-termers, Darrell Bush, you know, Neil Bates and yourself obviously, but others.
• 1:06:29
  There is a great group of people there that have played such an important role over a long time in the team success.
• 1:06:37
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:06:38
  And, you know, how lucky am I because I...
• 1:06:41
  Joined the team in 1993, so we've had, you know, 28 years as a team.
• 1:06:48
  And, you know, other co-drivers, you know, drive for different people.
• 1:06:53
  And I've just really, for those last 28 years, sat beside Neil, beside, you know, a driver who's so competent and so good.
• 1:07:03
  So I've never been one of those co-drivers who had to jump in with someone whose ability you weren't quite sure of or worried about the capability in the right-hand seat.
• 1:07:12
  You know, I've joined a team that has become a family to me over all these years and I've
• 1:07:21
  You know, I just feel really, really grateful and lucky to have joined such a great team, to have been there for so long.
• 1:07:29
  You know, I think I might have said before that the kids all laugh at the way Neil and I do our notes and so forth.
• 1:07:34
  But it worked for us and it was just such an incredible journey to be able to be part of that team.
• 1:07:41
  And, you know, we had lots of success along the way and, you know,
• 1:07:46
  But I think, you know, the big thing is having had a small amount of exposure to working in a WRC team briefly when we did a couple of events...
• 1:07:57
  you really appreciate the fact that you're in a team that is like a family where it isn't that everyone just has a delegated role.
• 1:08:06
  You know, the guy doing the right front does more than just the right front.
• 1:08:10
  He helps out wherever is needed.
• 1:08:12
  Whereas in a bigger team, it's very segmented.
• 1:08:15
  Everyone has their individual roles.
• 1:08:17
  And, you know, in our truck, in our team, you know, it doesn't matter who you are, you're probably washing the truck sometimes as well as
• 1:08:25
  you know, building the gearbox or the engine or whatever.
• 1:08:28
  And such an amazing group of people that have built world-class cars, you know, absolutely comparable to any of the best teams in the world, all has been done at their team, at their workshop in Canberra.
• 1:08:48
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with respected rally co-driver Coral Taylor, but there is still lots of good stuff to come in this ride.
• 1:08:56
  Head back to the library for part two.
• 1:08:58
  It's there, ready to go, right now, and includes driving recollections of the great awesome Bourne.
• 1:09:04
  Pace noting, doing the graveyard shift during long-haul trips driving the team transporter.
• 1:09:10
  And a very cool 80s Celica they rallied among the classics.
• 1:09:22
  Listener.