Latest / Rusty's Garage / John Smailes | Part 2 - a star struck Colin McRae and a new book on Colin Bond

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John Smailes | Part 2 - a star struck Colin McRae and a new book on Colin Bond · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:19
  G'day, it's Rusty here, all set for part two of my podcast with legendary commentator, journalist and PR wizard, John Smales.
• 0:26
  If you've arrived here, as I always say, and not given the first half a listen, jump back to the library and check it out.
• 0:33
  You are missing some gold.
• 0:34
  From writing to ferry Porsche in his teens and getting a reply to working with his hero, Australian touring car champion David Mackay.
• 0:43
  His early years in mainstream media covering bank robberies and working for the Packers...
• 0:49
  Vivid memories of meeting the great Jack Brabham.
• 0:52
  Recollections of interviews with a straight-talking Frank Gardner and how highly the Kiwi Chris Amon was rated by Enzo Ferrari.
• 1:01
  You will be gripped by those stories.
• 1:03
  I know I was.
• 1:04
  And there are still some rippers to come as we get into this second half.
• 1:10
  One thing I may have missed in the joining the dots here, would you have had to have had a conversation with either Sir Frank or someone like that to exit nine and go and do some of this stuff?
• 1:18
  What'd you do?
• 1:19
  No, I was above grade, a journalist degraded, and I was above grade and about to sign a contract with Channel 9, which was...
• 1:29
  Very good.
• 1:30
  Yeah.
• 1:31
  But a guy called Evan Green, who was the doyen of motoring journalists in Australia and also the doyen of motoring promotion, he was, for example, the guy who was manager of Donald Campbell's Bluebird attempt on Lake Eyre in 1964 and one of the promoters of the early Ampole Round Australia trials.
• 1:50
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:51
  And Evan approached me and said he was leaving British Leyland where he was a director and was going to start a PR company and wondered whether I would join him in it.
• 2:03
  I was...
• 2:04
  pretty chuffed with that idea because, you know, I mean, I didn't realise what I had, Rusty.
• 2:09
  I didn't realise where I was in the lexicon of Channel 9 and where my career could go.
• 2:17
  I was just having fun.
• 2:18
  And so Evan offered me this opportunity.
• 2:21
  So I went to see Clyde Packer, Kerry's brother, who was running Channel 9 at the time.
• 2:26
  And I said, Clyde, because he could, you know, I mean, it was amazing.
• 2:29
  In those days it was really a family affair.
• 2:31
  You could call him by his first name.
• 2:32
  I could call him by his first name.
• 2:34
  Try doing that now.
• 2:37
  And I said, Clyde, I've made this opportunity.
• 2:39
  I know I'm talking to you about a contract, but I've been given this opportunity.
• 2:42
  He said, look, you've got to follow your dream.
• 2:45
  Give it a go.
• 2:45
  And if it doesn't work out, you can always come back.
• 2:49
  I said, wow, golden parachute.
• 2:52
  This is sensational.
• 2:54
  So I told Evan, yeah, I'll join him for a year and see how it goes.
• 2:58
  I had to work out a long period of resignation because of my grading.
• 3:03
  And at the end of it, the last week, Kerry, Clyde's brother, is walking down the corridor towards me and he looks at me and he says, I hear you're leaving.
• 3:15
  And I said, yeah, I am at the end of this week.
• 3:17
  He said, you can never come back, you know.
• 3:21
  There went the safety net.
• 3:23
  And so I started with Evan, a company called Projects Automotive, which was working in communications in the automotive field.
• 3:33
  And that led me to be available to do things like the ABC.
• 3:37
  A couple of things out of that.
• 3:39
  Firstly, Evan Green, beautiful voice, much missed part of the commentary and so on.
• 3:45
  And Project Automotive, which later became the project group for you.
• 3:51
  Was its charter to begin with to be this sort of company that provided all sort of media and PR-related services for automotive, or what was its charter?
• 4:03
  Yeah, we all loved automotive.
• 4:05
  And when I say we all, Projects Automotive was originally started by Paul Higgins in Melbourne and by Ian Fraser, who went on to become the owner of Car Magazine in Great Britain.
• 4:17
  recently deceased, actually, only earlier this year.
• 4:20
  And he bequeathed...
• 4:21
  When Ian went to Great Britain, he bequeathed Projects Automotive to Evan and so I became a junior partner in Projects Automotive.
• 4:31
  But it was because we were all mad keen motorsport enthusiasts and motoring enthusiasts that Projects Automotive existed.
• 4:38
  And at the time, there were companies that...
• 4:41
  needed our services, not just wanted, but needed our services because it was very much an evolving time.
• 4:47
  So we would do all sorts of communications work for the major car companies, but also in the retail area and in the first and second tier supplier area.
• 4:58
  Wow.
• 4:58
  Yeah.
• 4:59
  So it would later become the project group, and I had been in there in senior offices in North Sydney and so on.
• 5:06
  At its peak, JS, how many people would you have had there?
• 5:08
  What sort of things did you cover?
• 5:10
  Toyota were a big client and so on, weren't they?
• 5:12
  Yeah.
• 5:12
  Toyota were the biggest client and we were very fortunate to be there when Toyota became number one in Australia.
• 5:18
  You know, success has a thousand fathers.
• 5:20
  We were one of the thousand in terms of helping them get where they got.
• 5:24
  But we were very fortunate that we managed to achieve the Toyota account and held it forever, which was sensational.
• 5:34
  You got to do some great things in conjunction with them.
• 5:38
  I mean, you fill in more if I'm not covering all of them.
• 5:42
  But I mean, one of them that stands out was a search for a champion based thing that unearthed like Neil Bates, for example, and so on, didn't it?
• 5:50
  Toyota Australia was formed from the amalgamation of Tease Toyota, which was the commercial vehicle division, and AMI, which was the passenger vehicle division.
• 6:02
  And AMI was running Corollas with an employee called Tony Niavani running the team.
• 6:11
  And when the new management took over as the conglomerate Toyota Australia...
• 6:19
  Tony had probably achieved everything he could with the Corollas.
• 6:22
  He was in the Guinness Book of Records as having won 27 successive two-litre class Australian Touring Car Championships.
• 6:30
  And the new management decided there was nothing more to be achieved, so they were going to shutter the race team.
• 6:38
  And a few of us, again, success has a thousand fathers, a few of us determined that there was a better way.
• 6:45
  And what about if we had a search for a star where we'd look for under-25-year-old aspirants from each of the categories of motorsport, like NASCAR and Speedway and, you know, motorcycling and rally, and brought them all together and gave them an opportunity to drive...
• 7:04
  a Toyota Corolla in a round of the Australian Touring Car Championship.
• 7:08
  And I went to CAMS and Bruce Keyes, who was their motorsport manager at the time, actually agreed.
• 7:16
  I mean, could you imagine today saying to supercars, listen, I've got this bloke who's never driven a supercar.
• 7:21
  I'm going to stick him on the grid.
• 7:22
  I'd like to stick him on the grid.
• 7:26
  But we did it.
• 7:27
  We actually ran one at each of the race meetings in the Australian Touring Car Championship that year, 1989 or something.
• 7:34
  And at the end of it, we voted on who should get the prize, which was the ability to drive the Corolla in the Bathurst 1000, for goodness sake.
• 7:43
  First time, never been there before.
• 7:47
  To my somewhat embarrassment, I voted against Neil Bates.
• 7:52
  Did you really?
• 7:53
  Do you talk about that now?
• 7:55
  Yeah, we still talk about it.
• 7:58
  We laugh.
• 7:59
  Well, sort of laugh.
• 8:02
  He would pair with Michael Dowston though, ultimately.
• 8:03
  He would pair with Michael Dowston.
• 8:05
  And they, at the Bathurst 1000 that year, were sensational and they actually beat a
• 8:10
  the works team of John Faulkner, whoever was with Faulkner at the time, maybe John Smith.
• 8:14
  That sounds right, yes.
• 8:16
  And so Bates and Dowson created themselves as guys of the future and Toyota still didn't want to go motor racing but Bates was smart enough to turn that success into his rally team
• 8:32
  and to become the ongoing, now for three decades, rally partner of Toyota, which has led to the 86 series as well.
• 8:42
  I cut you off there before, just around the, you know, I guess it's peak, what the project group represented in terms of the amount of staff and things like that.
• 8:52
  Yeah, I pulled out the other day a telephone directory of project group staff and at our peak we had 45 people.
• 9:02
  Wow.
• 9:02
  Which was just amazing.
• 9:03
  I mean, you feel your responsibility immensely.
• 9:07
  I mean, I'm a sole operator basically.
• 9:10
  That's my mental thinking.
• 9:14
  And suddenly I find myself responsible for 45 people and their families.
• 9:19
  Yeah.
• 9:19
  And, you know...
• 9:21
  That was about the level of my ability.
• 9:23
  I mean, I know guys who've built businesses which have hundreds of employees, goodness gracious, thousands of employees, and I'm amazed at how they managed to do it.
• 9:35
  I mean, what sort of mindset have you got to have that you can do that sort of thing?
• 9:41
  Yeah, but you did it and it was gold standard.
• 9:43
  And am I right in saying I think there were even photographers perhaps on the books at that point?
• 9:49
  Would you have done even maybe speech writing for executive at Toyota and things?
• 9:52
  What sort of stuff did you do?
• 9:53
  Oh, yeah.
• 9:54
  We set out to be an all-encompassing umbrella communications company and we were the first in Australia in pretty much any field to do it.
• 10:04
  At the outset, I was simply selling my time and my talent
• 10:08
  You know, I had a lot of time and some talent.
• 10:13
  But then I realised that I was relying on other people to provide other services.
• 10:18
  Like, for example, I needed a photograph taken, so I had to book a photographer.
• 10:23
  And then I was paying for his profit, but I was also relying on his professional ability or her professional ability to...
• 10:33
  to enhance my business.
• 10:35
  So I hired a photographer so I could control time, quality and cost.
• 10:41
  Archive and library too.
• 10:42
  And cost and had archive and library as well.
• 10:44
  And from that, we started a production company and had in-house...
• 10:51
  in-house vid going on.
• 10:53
  Excellent.
• 10:53
  And then we had event organisation and so it grew.
• 10:59
  And so suddenly we were a one-stop shop for all of this activity and a lot of people, it sounds a bit...
• 11:08
  it sounds a bit egotistic, but a lot of people copied us.
• 11:12
  And so today that's kind of the format if you want to have a communications company that you need all those services in-house.
• 11:19
  But we were the first.
• 11:21
  I want to come back to what you alluded to there before about being responsible for effectively 45 mortgages and so on, right?
• 11:27
  So does that mean that broadcasting...
• 11:31
  takes maybe a little bit of a backseat just because you had that responsibility, but also it became a fix for you where you could fit it in.
• 11:39
  Is that about right?
• 11:42
  It's about right, but it also was, the broadcasting was a sensational means of showcasing my business.
• 11:50
  Yes, of course.
• 11:51
  People really enjoyed the fact that they were working with somebody who they saw on television on the weekend.
• 11:58
  Right.
• 11:58
  Got you.
• 11:59
  Yeah, and it gave me a reputation which perhaps I didn't deserve.
• 12:04
  Rubbish.
• 12:04
  No, seriously, seriously.
• 12:08
  You're just another operator when it comes right down to it, but television uplifts you.
• 12:12
  And even today I would respectfully suggest that people regard folks who are on television as something a bit special.
• 12:23
  Are they?
• 12:23
  I don't know.
• 12:24
  Well, but people...
• 12:28
  have an attachment to that.
• 12:30
  You're in a place talking about something that is in your heart, pure, that you love.
• 12:35
  And invariably, when you see them, people at a bar, people at a car club meeting, whatever, they want to tap into the things you've seen and done over the time in your career.
• 12:45
  One of them was a young Neil Crompton in the ABC days.
• 12:48
  Tell me about, did you pick him up from the airport or something?
• 12:50
  How did that all come about?
• 12:52
  David Wood was the producer of ABC television sport at that stage.
• 12:57
  And he was a star maker.
• 12:58
  He really could understand.
• 13:00
  He really understood the medium.
• 13:01
  And he understood the way the medium was evolving.
• 13:05
  And he realised that the uptight, you know, terribly plumb in the voice, do it the ABC well, chap, was possibly becoming a thing of the past.
• 13:14
  And it needed a bit more free form about it.
• 13:16
  And he received notification that there was a young bloke out of rural Victoria who owned a bicycle shop in Ballarat who was doing a bit of motocross calling down there.
• 13:27
  And wouldn't it be a good idea if we gave him a trial?
• 13:30
  And Willie Hagen and I sort of looked at each other and went, hang on, is this a competitor?
• 13:34
  Yeah.
• 13:36
  And anyway, it turned out to be Neil Crompton.
• 13:40
  And I picked him up at the airport and drove him out to Warren Park and we gave him a gig and he was sensational.
• 13:47
  And I drove him back and he stayed at our place that night.
• 13:49
  Jimmy and I played at my place that night before.
• 13:51
  This was in practice on Saturday.
• 13:54
  And he stayed at our place that night and called it on Sunday.
• 13:58
  And you just knew from that point onwards that there was a new kid on the block.
• 14:02
  He was fantastic.
• 14:04
  This is all pre-Aaron Noonan and statistics and all this sort of stuff.
• 14:10
  So are you and Will, and I think the pair of you complemented each other beautifully.
• 14:15
  People can remember your voices attached to the coverage then.
• 14:20
  Are you walking in with a briefcase with nodes?
• 14:23
  What is the preparation to do this work?
• 14:26
  Well, we varied.
• 14:29
  Will likes his notes.
• 14:30
  Yes.
• 14:31
  Will would have many airline onboard bags with which he would carry notes.
• 14:39
  Okay.
• 14:39
  He would have notes on things that occurred 20 years ago.
• 14:43
  But when he got to the broadcast point, they would all stay in his bag.
• 14:47
  Okay.
• 14:47
  All from the top, all from his head.
• 14:49
  But, yeah, because they were all there as kind of... Safety net.
• 14:55
  Safety net, yeah.
• 14:56
  But he'd never use them.
• 14:57
  Yeah, well, he seldom used them.
• 14:59
  I would, on the other hand, walk in with one reporter's notebook in my hip pocket.
• 15:02
  Which you still have to this day.
• 15:03
  Which I still have to this day, where I've taken a few notes and I tend to rely... Because, Rusty, I never really enjoyed commentary.
• 15:14
  I much preferred being the interviewer on Pit Lane.
• 15:18
  Gotcha.
• 15:19
  Chasing the story.
• 15:19
  To me, chasing the yarns was what I was about.
• 15:22
  I was never totally confident in my own ability calling an event as much as I was interviewing for the event.
• 15:31
  Gotcha.
• 15:32
  Whereas Willie was in his element up there.
• 15:35
  In the commentary box.
• 15:35
  And so he would always try to grab the microphone from me.
• 15:39
  David Wood, a bit like Murray Walker and James Hunt.
• 15:43
  Yes.
• 15:43
  Yeah.
• 15:44
  The way that the BBC sorted those two out was by giving them only one microphone.
• 15:51
  David Wood did the same to Willie and myself.
• 15:53
  So you were in an arm wrestle, the pair of you over there?
• 15:55
  Well, there was this one cast-of-six-hour where they were doing a live edit as we went and cutting six hours down to two hours to go to air that afternoon.
• 16:08
  Quick turnaround.
• 16:08
  Quick turnaround.
• 16:09
  So they were actually editing on the run and we'd take the last hour live but the first hour would be an edit of the highlights of the five hours that occurred.
• 16:20
  mistakes had to occur uh willie's way of of telling me that it was his turn to talk which was very very often would be to clutch me by the knee and and squeeze hard and uh at one stage of this broadcast i turned to him i said will will you get your hands off my knee
• 16:44
  so in the course of this i'm so pleased you brought up two wheels we can't do this conversation without talking about a bit of two wheels you lit up before about six hour and others there is a funny story around wayne gardner tell us tell us what happened there
• 16:59
  We're at the Castrol 6 at Amaru Park and there's this amazing guy called Miles Stavano who is the PR man, sales manager for BMW Motorcycles in New South Wales.
• 17:10
  Larger than life.
• 17:12
  Wayne Gardner is the young bloke on the way up.
• 17:14
  Peter Molloy is looking after him.
• 17:16
  He's driving for…
• 17:17
  Billy Hill of Mentor Motorcycle, riding for Billy Hill of Mentor Motorcycles.
• 17:22
  And before the race starts, Miles said, if Wayne Gardner wins this race, I will run naked around the circuit, or words to that effect.
• 17:32
  And six hours later, I'm interviewing the winner of the Castrol Six Hour, Wayne Gardner.
• 17:37
  And over Wayne Gardner's shoulder, I see the big white bare ass of Miles Stavano heading for the pond over at the stop corner.
• 17:47
  Oh, terrific.
• 17:49
  And plunging in.
• 17:50
  And I'm trying to keep a straight face while interviewing Wayne Gardner.
• 17:54
  And keep it on camera.
• 17:56
  Yeah.
• 17:57
  Oh, that's awesome.
• 17:57
  Yeah.
• 17:59
  In talking with you, because you've travelled the world and covered lots of different forms of motorsport and some big, big events, it's probably very difficult to say what's your favourite.
• 18:10
  But I know you fondly recall a race between the late Greg Hansford, Warren Willing.
• 18:15
  There's a real standout race for you with those two battling away, isn't there?
• 18:19
  Yeah.
• 18:19
  If you ask me what's my favourite motor race ever in the world, it was 1974.
• 18:23
  It was Bathurst.
• 18:24
  And the Yamaha 700s turned up for the first time.
• 18:27
  Crazy.
• 18:27
  Amazing.
• 18:29
  I call them super bikes, but they were Grand Prix bikes.
• 18:31
  No chase then?
• 18:32
  There was no chase, it was straight over the second hump and I walked up to the humps and took a group of journos with me on the first time these bikes went out and they were doing warp speed they were monoing over the second hump at 180 miles an hour and there was a crosswind blowing and you know
• 18:53
  I was on a 400mm lens looking at them coming down the straight and suddenly this crosswind blew and one of them turned sideways directly towards me and apart from a certain bowel movement which was threatening to occur...
• 19:11
  I took one step sideways to move out of the one.
• 19:15
  By the time I'd taken that one step, they were 200 metres down the road that way.
• 19:18
  Crazy.
• 19:19
  It was just amazing.
• 19:21
  In the race, the Australian Grand Prix that year, Willing and Hansford passed each other 20 times and they weren't mucking about.
• 19:28
  This was not a set-up for the crowd.
• 19:31
  This was full-on motor racing and it was just the most sensational race you'd ever seen.
• 19:36
  Love that.
• 19:37
  Love that a lot.
• 19:38
  And the fact that it is still now very, very vivid for you.
• 19:43
  Let's move a little along here in the broadcasting sense.
• 19:48
  A couple of things.
• 19:51
  It went to seven from the ABC and the Mike Raymond chapter.
• 19:55
  Was that difficult, that sort of move?
• 19:57
  I didn't go to seven.
• 19:58
  No, I know that, but the championship did, didn't it?
• 20:02
  The championship made a move because the ABC had set it up.
• 20:06
  The ABC had done all the hard yards and created the foundation.
• 20:09
  Then along came an ambitious Mike Raymond...
• 20:12
  and said, OK, I'll have it now, and he took it over.
• 20:15
  And, of course, when he took it over, he took it over with only one of the three commentators.
• 20:20
  He left Willie and I behind as yesterday's men and took Neil Crompton as tomorrow's young, young starter, which was only fair and ideal.
• 20:30
  Were you OK with that?
• 20:30
  How were you about that?
• 20:31
  Look, I've always worked on the principle that, you know, one door closes, another one opens.
• 20:36
  And I turned it into an opportunity.
• 20:41
  I had a friend, Mike Ortson, who'd worked on the ABC and was now working at Channel 10.
• 20:47
  He's now called, very sadly, a great man.
• 20:50
  And Ordi and I started playing with motorsport at Channel 10.
• 20:54
  And I was brought in to do late-night commentary on IndyCar races that were coming in from the States.
• 21:01
  And I was doing motorsport stuff for the news and a bit for the sporting programs at
• 21:07
  as well.
• 21:08
  Cool.
• 21:08
  Yeah, ultimately working with guys like Billy Woods and I was there for the start of RPM.
• 21:13
  Yeah.
• 21:13
  Yeah, which was all kind of cool.
• 21:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:16
  Yeah, and so for me, you know, you should never look to the past and what you lost.
• 21:21
  You should always look to the future and what you can gain.
• 21:24
  Great advice.
• 21:25
  Great advice.
• 21:27
  You might play this down a little bit, but I think he talks about it even in his podcast episode with me as it being a significant moment.
• 21:37
  You go to Le Mans in the late 90s with one young Lee Diffie.
• 21:43
  It is an eye-opening moment for him in relation to the potential of...
• 21:50
  if you will he at this stage has done uh super touring very successfully very very well a bright fresh face and voice he'd gone into the early supercars coverage at 10 and they'd given it a real um change up if you will and he was front and center of that but all of a sudden his eyes are open to potential global opportunities and you had a you had a big chat with him there didn't you
• 22:13
  It was his first international gig, first time he'd been offshore, and Tim Jardine was putting together a one-hour doco on the Le Mans 24-hour race, sponsored by BMW and Toyota.
• 22:24
  Is this the year that Weber flipped it or have I got the year wrong?
• 22:26
  Yeah, yeah.
• 22:26
  Yeah, okay.
• 22:27
  Anyway, it's about, yeah, yeah.
• 22:28
  Yeah, it was, it was.
• 22:30
  And we were over there doing a one-hour doco, but Tim wanted...
• 22:38
  to do the intro as live.
• 22:41
  Excellent.
• 22:41
  So Diffie was the lead commentator, I was the boy reporter again.
• 22:48
  And the sequence was we're standing on the grid at the Le Mans 24-hour race surrounded by a quarter of a million people, you know, and the drivers are coming over the ramp, you know, in open cars.
• 23:01
  And my job was to walk up to Martin Brundle who was driving for Toyota and was on, I think, pole position.
• 23:07
  Yeah.
• 23:07
  and ask him one question.
• 23:09
  But the sequence was, Diffie opens the program, throws to me, timing has to be pin sharp.
• 23:17
  One shot at it.
• 23:18
  One shot.
• 23:18
  One shot.
• 23:19
  I go, walk in on Martin, say, what's your aspect for the race?
• 23:25
  Martin gives me a response.
• 23:26
  He doesn't know it's coming.
• 23:28
  Uh...
• 23:28
  And then I throw it back to Diffie, who rounds out.
• 23:31
  All of this has got...
• 23:32
  Whereas Martin drives by.
• 23:33
  All of this has got to happen perfectly.
• 23:35
  Thanks to Diffie and to Brundle, it does.
• 23:40
  And at the end of it, there's a whole heap of fist-pumping going on.
• 23:44
  And I say to Diffie, mate, why are you coming back to Australia to speak to 20 million people when you could be over here speaking to 200 million people?
• 23:54
  And it was just a throwaway line.
• 23:56
  But it sparked.
• 23:57
  I mean, it absolutely made him begin that process.
• 24:03
  I mean, he became synonymous for a period there with the Le Mans 24-hour race.
• 24:10
  He'd call a number of those.
• 24:12
  He had conversations with Baz that led to the World Superbike Championship and a move to the UK.
• 24:16
  And he's now doing...
• 24:17
  from IndyCar to NASCAR this year.
• 24:19
  He's done some amazing things in the United States and it's clearly stemmed from that moment, JS.
• 24:24
  Look, can I tell you, I'm amazed that he says that because to me it was just a throwaway line but it obviously tweaked something in his brain.
• 24:32
  And actually, he came back and thought about it for a while and then he went to David White who was, as you know, the sports supremo at Channel 10 and...
• 24:41
  And he said to Whitey, mate, I'm going to the UK.
• 24:45
  I've got nothing to go to, but I'm going to the UK to have a big go.
• 24:50
  And Whitey was filthy, filthy.
• 24:53
  With me.
• 24:54
  Was he?
• 24:54
  Was he?
• 24:56
  Because he knew that I'd, you know, Diffie told him that it was all to do with what I'd said.
• 25:01
  And so Whitey never quite forgave me.
• 25:04
  But those two have ended up very, very close.
• 25:07
  And David's been a great friend and mentor of Lee's.
• 25:10
  And I think, you know, ultimately where it's ended up for him, David has great respect for.
• 25:16
  At Lee's beautiful home at Ridgefield in Connecticut, there is a room which is the David White Suite where you and I have both stayed at one stage or another.
• 25:27
  Tremendous.
• 25:28
  A young Greg Rust comes along and…
• 25:32
  probably a little life lesson for me around, uh, respecting people.
• 25:36
  I'm, I'm, um, hungry.
• 25:38
  I'm probably ill prepared.
• 25:40
  I'm not, um, savvy with, with aspects of the business.
• 25:44
  And, uh, you had been in the pit lane for them for supercars and, and in time I would replace you.
• 25:50
  And that was a bit,
• 25:52
  a bit awkward, JS, so I apologise for that.
• 25:56
  Don't.
• 25:57
  You were also highly talented and I was doing other things.
• 26:02
  But Channel 10 had just taken over supercars.
• 26:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:06
  I'd done the pit reporting with Barry Sheen for the very first Channel 10 coverage of supercars, the 1,000-kilometre race in 1997.
• 26:21
  And Channel 10 needed to, once it realised that it was going to go forward with this thing because that was an experiment, they needed to put together a team which was young, vibrant and really knew what it was doing.
• 26:33
  none of which described me.
• 26:36
  But seriously, they needed new fresh faces.
• 26:40
  They needed a new look.
• 26:42
  And I will never forget the phone call you made to me to apologise for taking my place in that coverage team.
• 26:55
  I don't think I was necessarily particularly nice to you in that phone call because it hurt.
• 27:02
  Of course it does.
• 27:03
  But at the same stage, go back to what I said earlier, when one door closes, another one opens.
• 27:10
  And so I reinvented myself again.
• 27:12
  You went on to have a great career.
• 27:15
  And I went on to take my career in other directions.
• 27:18
  But the reinvention thing that you're talking about is a thing that really, even to this day, resonated with me.
• 27:25
  And I'm a huge believer in doing that.
• 27:27
  And we would get to, which I'm so pleased about, you know, we've become...
• 27:33
  friends in the wake of all of that we get to do some good things around hall of fame and more and i was so pleased that we got to work on things like the australian rally championship for it for a time there you basically took it over and and um built the coverage didn't you you made the coverage well well from from the time of you boning me
• 27:51
  I'm glad we can laugh about this now.
• 27:53
  No, right.
• 27:53
  Yeah.
• 27:54
  I took on the Australian Rally Championship and I took it on not only as a commentator and as a producer and my company, The Project Group, in fact, did the production of the championship for a couple of years before Channel 10 decided to, quotes, internalise it because it was successful.
• 28:14
  And I still stayed on as a commentator.
• 28:17
  But at that time...
• 28:21
  Rally was in its formative stages, and I actually formed a company called Rally Corp, and we became the commercial arm of the Australian Rally Championship as well, convincing Subaru and Toyota to fund the broadcast.
• 28:35
  Amazing.
• 28:36
  So, you know, to that end, I'm quite...
• 28:38
  Proud, you should be, mate.
• 28:39
  Proud, pleased, pleased at least, of the fact that we managed to give rallying a bit of a foundation in this country, which led us to, of course, in Channel 10, being able to cover the World Rally Championship as well, which Gary Connolly was running out of Perth.
• 28:53
  I want to come to a good story around that.
• 28:55
  We got to work on it on several occasions.
• 28:58
  Barry Sheen was a part of it before he left us as well.
• 29:02
  And there is a moment where you have a conversation with Colin McRae.
• 29:06
  Just share that with people because it's a little bit surreal, isn't it?
• 29:09
  You and I are in the service park at the Bunnings Stage, the infamous Bunnings Stage south of Perth.
• 29:18
  And Colin McRae is world champion.
• 29:20
  I've just done this wonderful interview with Colin back at his hotel earlier that day.
• 29:24
  And as you know, Colin was the enfant terrible of rallying.
• 29:29
  Yeah.
• 29:30
  You know, the things he got up to at night time, you know.
• 29:33
  in the midnight hour were things that you don't want to talk about or write about, you know.
• 29:39
  And so Colin is brash and full of himself and, you know, an ego beyond belief.
• 29:45
  And yet he walks up to me in the pit, in the service park, and says, is that guy who's working with you as a commentator, is that really Barry Sheen?
• 29:59
  And I said, yeah, it's Baz.
• 30:00
  And he said, look, look, and this is Colin who's brash and what have you and he's turned into Fanboy and he said, look, could you introduce me to him?
• 30:09
  And so I call one world champion over and introduce him to the other world champion and they become the best of mates.
• 30:14
  And if you recall that evening, we're driving back to Perth from Bunnings.
• 30:20
  Colin's in his million-dollar rally car left-hand drive, Barry is in our $30,000 rent-a-wreck...
• 30:28
  And he is driving because he won't let us drive because he trusts only himself.
• 30:33
  And so he's in the right-hand seat, Colin's in the left-hand seat, and they're travelling millimetres apart down the road at 110 kilometres an hour, hooning on the way back into Perth, and they became best of mates ever since.
• 30:47
  Some great days there I don't know if you were with me One morning we jumped in the car to go out to the Bunnings stage And Baz was always pretty chirpy You know, he's always happy And up to some sort of mischief And he was a bit flat this morning And I said What's wrong with you?
• 31:05
  And he goes, oh I missed my window To go to the bathroom before And it just threw him all out of Kiltie Absolutely
• 31:16
  You have a memory around Peter Brock's swan song and Baz and Bathurst, don't you?
• 31:22
  Yeah, it was the year before you boned me again.
• 31:24
  Oh, sorry.
• 31:25
  If I could go back to that.
• 31:26
  I'm sorry.
• 31:26
  It's just you put the idea in my mind.
• 31:29
  And so I'm doing the commentary, the pit lane commentary, and so is Baz.
• 31:34
  But Baz, as you said just a moment ago, Baz needed to be in his comfort zone.
• 31:40
  He would only interview those people that he knew well.
• 31:44
  He was a Dick Johnson fanboy, so he wanted to look after the Dick Johnson pit.
• 31:51
  He wasn't too keen on looking after the Brockie pit because he didn't understand Peter.
• 31:56
  He didn't know him well, but he knew Dick and he knew he could do things with Dick that he couldn't do with anyone else.
• 32:01
  Yeah.
• 32:02
  In a personality sense, in a fun sense.
• 32:04
  In a personality sense, yeah.
• 32:05
  But so we're sharing the pits and I've got Brock and this was Brock's last race.
• 32:11
  This was his retirement race, well, his first retirement, but the one he announced as being retirement.
• 32:15
  Mark Scaife's his co-driver and Mark pulls to a halt at the top of the mountain and Brock is now left in the pits.
• 32:23
  Cup of tea in hand.
• 32:24
  Cup of tea in hand, staring into space.
• 32:26
  And I've got...
• 32:28
  I've got the producers in my ear saying, interviewing, me interviewing.
• 32:32
  And I'm thinking, no, this is too good a moment.
• 32:34
  Just take the vision.
• 32:35
  Just leave Brockie sitting there by himself, you know.
• 32:39
  And it was a minute before I walked in on Brockie with, you know, people yelling at me to interview him.
• 32:45
  I'm not going to do it because I just reckon the moment was too good.
• 32:48
  Good.
• 32:49
  But to come back to what was happening outside, on the other side of Pit Straight,
• 32:54
  Most of the crowd had gathered outside Broccy's pit because this was Broccy's last day.
• 32:59
  But while he was getting cheers...
• 33:03
  Baz, whenever he deigned to walk down that end of the pit lane, was getting double the tears.
• 33:09
  Baz was the hero of that weekend as the first time that he'd commentated on the Bathurst 1000.
• 33:16
  On the Bathurst 1000, yeah, yeah.
• 33:18
  So it was Baz who was the hero of the day.
• 33:20
  Brock was almost the secondary hero.
• 33:23
  But I will never forget that moment when Peter Brock retired for the first time.
• 33:28
  And the silence was just extraordinary.
• 33:33
  The moment was amazing.
• 33:36
  And it didn't need commentary.
• 33:37
  All it needed was silent vision of Brock and his cup of tea.
• 33:41
  Of how kind of broken he was, so to speak, or not the way to go out.
• 33:45
  You obviously crossed paths with him many times in your career.
• 33:49
  Have you got another memory of Brock?
• 33:50
  I mean, the way you described...
• 33:54
  the heartbreak, the silence from the audience there says so much about how loved he was by the Australian public.
• 34:04
  And I can even remember the Brock movie and things and them adjusting a few little aspects of his story to suit the biopic.
• 34:13
  But the fans didn't like that.
• 34:14
  They didn't like, you know, you don't muck around with the Brock story, do you?
• 34:18
  No, not at all.
• 34:19
  I mean, Brockie was a weird dude.
• 34:21
  You know, sort of.
• 34:22
  I mean, there are a lot of people out there who love him and love the image, but he was a strange cat.
• 34:28
  I mean, a couple of personal stories.
• 34:31
  Number one, he was very competitive with me.
• 34:33
  And, you know, any time we'd see, you asked earlier how many people I employed, he'd say, Smilesi, how many people have you got on board now?
• 34:40
  Because he had, you know, Brock Special Vehicles.
• 34:43
  And, you know, he and I were employing about the same number of people.
• 34:47
  And so he would always check in with me to see whether I had more than he had in that respect.
• 34:54
  He and Bev were lovely people.
• 34:56
  When he and Bev were together, that was the epitome of the Brock era when he was, you know, fairly.
• 35:06
  And my dad had just died.
• 35:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:11
  And Peter and Bev took me aside in the pits at Gennett Bathurst and sincerely offered to put me in touch with my father.
• 35:22
  Oh, wow.
• 35:23
  Because they believed strongly in the afterlife.
• 35:26
  Is it in the Eric Dalka stuff?
• 35:27
  And they believed strongly in the ability to communicate with those that had passed.
• 35:33
  Wow.
• 35:33
  And their offer...
• 35:35
  while bizarre, was totally sincere.
• 35:38
  I'll always remember that, the fact that they did it out of the goodness of their heart.
• 35:42
  You spoke earlier of Evan Green.
• 35:45
  They were good friends of Evan Green.
• 35:46
  When Evan was lying, dying in a hospital in Sydney, they visited him.
• 35:54
  And the Brocks weren't wealthy at the time, in fact, far from it.
• 35:58
  But they left a cheque for $5,000 beside his bed, recognising that Evan was in impecunious circumstances.
• 36:06
  Wow.
• 36:07
  Amazing stuff.
• 36:08
  You know, the Brocks were a lot deeper than you'd ever imagine.
• 36:21
  There were many people that helped ex-pat Aussie lead if he take those first steps that lead to his successful international broadcast career.
• 36:29
  But it was a conversation with John Smales at Le Mans that was the initial spark.
• 36:34
  We were standing in the pit lane and he said to me, what do you think about all this diff?
• 36:37
  And I said, oh, it's crazy.
• 36:39
  Like, look how big this place is and the cars and the drivers.
• 36:42
  And he said, no, no, no, no, no.
• 36:43
  I'm not talking about the event.
• 36:45
  I said, he said, I'm talking about motorsport and sport and living in the northern hemisphere.
• 36:50
  He said, you should be here.
• 36:51
  You can do this.
• 36:53
  Diff's incredible drive and determination then saw him land roles in the world super bikes in Europe, and later IndyCar and NASCAR in the United States.
• 37:02
  As well as track and field for NBC, the biggest broadcaster at the Olympic Games.
• 37:07
  Check out Diff's episode in the garage if you haven't already.
• 37:10
  Now back to Smalesy.
• 37:14
  In your career too, JS, we've lost some big names along the way.
• 37:18
  You're on the Toyota side, but covering the Australian Rally Championship as a whole.
• 37:23
  What about the departure of Possum Bourne, the loss of Possum Bourne?
• 37:27
  I can vividly remember being in Canberra and how sombre the mood was and so on.
• 37:31
  Yeah.
• 37:32
  Possum was larger than life.
• 37:34
  He was brilliant.
• 37:35
  He was the man who could achieve anything.
• 37:38
  He was the bloke who should have gone on to be world champion.
• 37:41
  Yeah.
• 37:41
  Instead, he was Asia-Pacific champion many times, and he was Neil Bates' nemesis, and he was just brilliant to be around.
• 37:51
  I'll never forget at the Rally of Victoria, Rally of Melbourne, where...
• 37:57
  when Possum walked up to me and he said, see that bloke over there?
• 38:01
  Possum spoke a bit strangely.
• 38:02
  He was in New Zealand.
• 38:03
  He said, see that bloke over there?
• 38:05
  What do you think of him?
• 38:06
  And he's pointing to this young bloke in a...
• 38:09
  dreadful old black Subaru, several eons old, and it was Cody Crocker.
• 38:15
  Wow, wow.
• 38:16
  He said, what do you think of him?
• 38:17
  I said, I think he's got some possibility, Possum, like Possum's asking me.
• 38:23
  And next thing you know, Cody is in the fold and there's Possum's number two.
• 38:29
  The day Possum died was just the worst day of all, taken out quite ridiculously in a situation that was,
• 38:40
  you could say it was avoidable but it was you know it just happened you know no one no one to blame even though a bloke did the other guy on the accident did suffer for it wow but it was just just a horror the horrible thing I have to say Rusty is that they built a statue a larger than life statue well it's at Pookakoe now but it used to be at the at the top of the hill climb where Possum died it was actually mounted up there okay okay
• 39:08
  Can you tell me, does it look even remotely like Posse?
• 39:12
  You have to look at it closely, but I know where you're coming from in terms of...
• 39:16
  There's this guy on the hill.
• 39:18
  And you say, who in goodness name is that?
• 39:20
  You know, is it the spirit of Possum Bourne perhaps?
• 39:23
  Because it certainly doesn't represent him.
• 39:25
  You can find it, for those listening, you can find it in one of the main streets of Popakoe.
• 39:30
  Now, Murray Walker is another who is sadly gone, but we got to both work with him in different, you know, capacities along the way.
• 39:40
  You got to do...
• 39:42
  a fun, was it a book tour or a book launch with him?
• 39:46
  He'd take questions from the audience and all sorts, wouldn't he?
• 39:48
  Murray was promoting his book in 2003, I think it was, and Murray was promoting his book and I was hired to be his warm-up man.
• 39:59
  So I would warm up the audience and the audiences were huge.
• 40:02
  400 people were paying for the privilege of listening to Murray speak.
• 40:06
  He was a superstar and so I would be the warm-up man
• 40:10
  And then Murray would come up and he would wow the audience.
• 40:13
  And then at the end of it, I would come up and I would take questions from the audience for Murray.
• 40:17
  For Murray, yeah.
• 40:19
  And they would always try to stitch him up.
• 40:20
  I don't know why, but there's something in the Australian psyche that said you had to win one over, Murray.
• 40:26
  And so people would stand up and they'd say ridiculous things.
• 40:29
  Look, Murray...
• 40:30
  Thinking back to the 1986 Belgian Grand Prix on lap 36 and Jacques Villeneuve overtook Martin Brundle, was that the trigger that enabled Damon Hill to win by two seconds from Michael Schumacher?
• 40:47
  And Murray wouldn't even hesitate.
• 40:49
  He'd look him straight in the eye and in his Murray voice he'd say, well, you're partially right, but in fact it was an incident on lap 72 where in fact XYZ overtook XYZ and, you know, there was a small crash which in fact, and oil on the track, and that was the real reason why Damon Hill won that day.
• 41:17
  And everyone would go, wow.
• 41:21
  And then Murray would sit down and I would say, Murray, how did you do that?
• 41:25
  He said, I have no idea what happened in that race.
• 41:28
  I don't even remember that race.
• 41:29
  But are they going to argue against me?
• 41:31
  And it was just brilliant.
• 41:33
  It was fantastic.
• 41:35
  And then that led to Murray saying to me,
• 41:39
  You know, the one event I'd like to do... Murray is 79 years of age at this stage.
• 41:43
  He said, I would love to do a rally.
• 41:46
  I would love to drive in a rally.
• 41:49
  And I said, what about Target Tasmania?
• 41:50
  He said, I would love to drive in Target Tasmania.
• 41:53
  Co-drive.
• 41:54
  And so I happened to be in a position where I was doing some work with Toyota and Mike Breen was the PR manager for Toyota.
• 42:03
  So I rung Mike and said, listen, I've got Murray Walker hot to trot for Target Tasmania.
• 42:10
  And Mike said, I've got Colin Bond
• 42:13
  capable of driving him and I've got a Toyota Camry, what do you think?
• 42:18
  And I said to Murray, what do you think?
• 42:20
  I would love to, I would love to.
• 42:21
  So we brought Murray and Elizabeth, his wife, out and he co-drove for Colin Bond.
• 42:28
  At nearly 80.
• 42:29
  At aged 80 and Colin says it was the thrill of his life hearing Murray commentate, not call the notes, commentate.
• 42:37
  Go, go, go, go.
• 42:39
  And they were passing Porsches.
• 42:40
  And Porsches would stop at the side of the road and let them through rather than have the ignominy of being passed by a Toyota Camry.
• 42:48
  I love that.
• 42:49
  And they finished second in class and 44th outright.
• 42:52
  Amazing.
• 42:52
  For goodness.
• 42:53
  And Murray, I've got a photograph of Murray with the medal around his neck and he was so proud of that.
• 42:58
  He kept it for the rest of his life.
• 43:00
  Bondi is the natural link here.
• 43:04
  There is a beautiful new book that you have out.
• 43:07
  It's called Full Tilt.
• 43:10
  Tell us about that.
• 43:11
  You've literally, just before we've recorded here, you've been up to a car club meeting.
• 43:16
  Was it the Cortina Owners Club?
• 43:17
  What was it?
• 43:18
  Was it at Bathurst?
• 43:18
  Where did you go?
• 43:19
  200 Cortinas got together at Bathurst, their annual convention.
• 43:23
  It was brilliant.
• 43:24
  It was fabulous.
• 43:25
  It was a really good thing.
• 43:27
  And Colin was invited up and I was invited to MC the night.
• 43:31
  Excellent.
• 43:32
  With CB and Ian Tate.
• 43:34
  Oh, lovely.
• 43:34
  Who was Harry Firth's man.
• 43:35
  And Frank Lowndes.
• 43:38
  Great roll-up.
• 43:39
  Who these days sees that he's these days only known as Craig's father.
• 43:45
  There you go.
• 43:47
  And he's not resentful.
• 43:49
  So, I mean, the book itself tells an incredible story of a man who has driven for both the key marks in... Only man.
• 43:59
  Yeah.
• 44:00
  In the day, he's the only man to have been the teammate of Peter Brock and the teammate of Alan Moffat for Holden and for Ford.
• 44:09
  It's an amazing record.
• 44:10
  But keep in mind also he was three times Australian rally champion and he was the Australian touring car champion in...
• 44:18
  And he was the winner of the Bathurst 500, which is an amazing triple that no one else has ever achieved.
• 44:25
  We want people to read the book, so we won't take from all of it.
• 44:28
  There's actually a little tip of the hat to his ability in an open wheeler too, isn't there?
• 44:34
  Frank Matic asked him to drive for Frank's Rothman's Matic team in the American series.
• 44:45
  So he trialled in a McLaren M10C, which was a Frank Matic development of the M10B.
• 44:53
  and they turned up at the Australian Grand Prix in 1971 at Warwick Farm, and it's raining.
• 45:00
  Frank had only bought one set of rain tyres, naturally, so Frank went out and qualified on his one set of rain tyres, then gave the rain tyres to Colin to put on the M10C.
• 45:10
  This is Colin's first drive in anger at Warwick Farm in an Australian Grand Prix against people like John Surtees.
• 45:17
  Unbelievable.
• 45:18
  Colin put it on pole.
• 45:19
  Unbelievable.
• 45:21
  He said, I thought I was driving like a rally car and I thought I was going really badly.
• 45:25
  When he came back, he was the quickest of everyone.
• 45:27
  But then, as you did in the day...
• 45:33
  Frank Radisic, father of Paul, made a bid for the motor car and bought it from underneath Colin, so Colin never got to do the L&M series in the States after all because Frank had sold his car.
• 45:47
  Harry Firth made an approach to Colin and convinced him to stay to drive for the Holden dealer team instead.
• 45:53
  Amazing.
• 45:54
  Yeah.
• 45:54
  You alluded to the diversity there before or the variety in his skill.
• 46:00
  He's a real kind of –
• 46:05
  family man, I mean, he was quite good from a car build or a mechanic perspective, wasn't he?
• 46:12
  And they made world-class BDA escorts, basically, didn't they?
• 46:16
  Oh, yeah.
• 46:18
  I mean, Colin, working with blokes like Bob Riley, were genius, and Henry Nurebeki, were absolutely genius at building and constructing.
• 46:30
  as well.
• 46:31
  Colin had the Ford rally team gig, which Edsel Ford had signed him up for, which was running in parallel to his racing with Alan Moffat in the Moffat dealer team, but was not related.
• 46:46
  In other words, one didn't depend on the other.
• 46:48
  So Colin was building rally cars in Sydney while he was racing for Moffat in Melbourne.
• 46:54
  And they were winning championships with young Greg Carr.
• 46:58
  They won the Australian Rally Championship and they were winning castrol rallies in Canberra.
• 47:04
  And Colin determined...
• 47:09
  that he wanted to build the world's best rally car, which was based on the Ford BDA Escort, using a lot of Ford BDA parts, but they built a better BDA in Sydney using local contacts for componentry.
• 47:25
  And that car was just genius.
• 47:27
  And Colin, to this day, is so proud that he brought out two world champions to drive for his team.
• 47:34
  What are we talking about?
• 47:34
  Bjorn Valdegaard and Ari Vathnen.
• 47:37
  Yeah, Ari Vartnan, who was driving with Dave Richards.
• 47:41
  Dave Richards was co-driver to Ari Vartnan.
• 47:43
  David Richards, we all know.
• 47:46
  And Ari said, Colin, I will only drive this car if it's left-hand drive.
• 47:50
  So Colin dutifully made it a left-hand drive car.
• 47:52
  Then he said, I will only drive it if the seat is elevated so I can see over the bonnet.
• 47:56
  So Colin duly elevated the seat.
• 47:58
  And then Dave Richards said, I want my seat low and inboard.
• 48:02
  And Colin thought, this is amazing.
• 48:05
  They've got it down to a situation where they use the co-driver as ballast to put weight down low over the rear wheels.
• 48:12
  And David said, no, no, I just want to be as far away from the accident as possible.
• 48:15
  LAUGHTER
• 48:19
  In the Moffat aspect, if you will, he boarded or lived with the captain, with Peter Jansen, did he not, for a bit there?
• 48:30
  Yeah, well, Peter Jansen was integral in the development of the Holden Dealer team.
• 48:35
  Ignore Peter Jansen at your own peril.
• 48:37
  This guy may have been a bon vivant.
• 48:40
  He may have been the greatest playboy Melbourne had ever known by his own admission.
• 48:46
  But the reality is he was so well-connected.
• 48:49
  And he did amazing things.
• 48:51
  And he very much ran the...
• 48:58
  the commercial aspect of the Holden dealer team.
• 49:01
  Right.
• 49:01
  Yeah, and was amazing at it, except, of course, John Bagshaw, who worked for Holden, had a minder on Janssen so that all of the money would flow to the team and not be siphoned along the way.
• 49:15
  Okay, okay.
• 49:17
  But Janssen had the towers in Melbourne.
• 49:19
  Janssen's towers were a place that you wanted to visit regularly,
• 49:24
  simply so that you could see what went on, but you didn't ever want to be caught being there for fear that you'd be tainted by the brush, you know.
• 49:34
  Yeah.
• 49:34
  Some wild parties.
• 49:36
  Yeah.
• 49:37
  But Harry used to board Colin at the towers because he was free.
• 49:44
  Yeah.
• 49:44
  And free was very important in Harry's world.
• 49:47
  Yeah.
• 49:47
  Yeah.
• 49:48
  Colin had just fallen in love with Robin.
• 49:50
  Yes.
• 49:51
  And she was part of motorsport and she was up on the Gold Coast with Murray Louise Gagan at the time.
• 49:56
  Okay.
• 49:56
  And Colin rang and said, look, come down and spend a few days with me in Melbourne.
• 50:00
  So Robin came down to spend a few days with Colin in Melbourne.
• 50:03
  This was the very early days of their romance.
• 50:05
  Yes.
• 50:06
  And on the way in from the airport, Colin gave her a newspaper clipping, which had just appeared in the Herald Sun that day, which had covered a Janssen party or a Janssen atrocity the previous weekend.
• 50:17
  Just for her interest's sake, to give her a bit of context of where she was going.
• 50:20
  They've got to the door of the towers.
• 50:22
  Janssen has opened the door dressed in his red velvet suit and with a glass of champagne in his hand, saying, ''Have a flute of champagne, my dear,'' and Robin has turned and fled.
• 50:35
  Collins brought her back and everything was fine.
• 50:38
  Amazing times.
• 50:39
  I said moff.
• 50:39
  I should have said Holden Dealer team before.
• 50:41
  Sorry.
• 50:41
  Thank you for correcting me.
• 50:44
  On that, you talk a little bit too about –
• 50:48
  the wives club, if you will.
• 50:49
  That's not the right words for it, perhaps.
• 50:51
  But they did some very important things in the paddock that helped around safety and all sorts, didn't they?
• 50:58
  Motor racing was dangerous.
• 51:00
  It always says it on the back of the entries.
• 51:02
  Even now, motor racing is dangerous.
• 51:03
  Back then, it was lethal.
• 51:05
  And the promoters were doing nothing to make it less lethal.
• 51:08
  You know, you turn up at a motor racing circuit and there wasn't a lot of safety precaution going on.
• 51:14
  So the wives and girlfriends, the WAGs, got together and determined that they had to do something to protect the lives of their loved ones.
• 51:24
  Because they wouldn't do it themselves.
• 51:25
  All they wanted to do was go motorising and let the cards fall while they will.
• 51:28
  But the girls figured that something needed to be done.
• 51:31
  So Betty Hill, wife of Graham in Great Britain, had started a thing called the Doghouse Club and they were a fundraising activity because it was equally dangerous over there.
• 51:41
  Yes.
• 51:41
  They were a fundraising activity where they were buying safety equipment for motor racing circuits because no one else was.
• 51:47
  And so in Australia, girls like Robin Bond started the Down Under Doghouse Club and it became the social heart of...
• 51:54
  of motor racing in the 1970s.
• 51:57
  So after any race meeting, there'd always be a party, fundraising, but a party where everyone forgot what suit they were wearing and what had happened during the day and they were all friends together.
• 52:07
  Love that.
• 52:08
  Which just doesn't happen in motorsport these days as much anymore, although I think there's a resurgence.
• 52:14
  But they raised funds for things like what we call crash trucks at the time, which are now, of course, first intervention vehicles.
• 52:20
  Vehicles, yes.
• 52:21
  And they raised money for fire extinguishers and jaws of life and all of that sort of thing.
• 52:28
  And they effectively brought safety to motor racing in Australia.
• 52:34
  So this is the forefront of our thinking, which is...
• 52:36
  Indeed.
• 52:37
  So, I mean, the Holden Dillard team chapter, the rally chapter, the Moffat chapter, people can read about that in full tilt.
• 52:45
  It is beautifully done, as is always the case with you.
• 52:48
  Thank you.
• 52:48
  Can I just touch, mate, on the forward...
• 52:51
  because there's some commentary in there from Alan Jones, who I got to work with in years gone by, and he gives a beautiful summary of Colin's talent and perhaps where it could have gone, doesn't he?
• 53:08
  Yeah, he... Alan claims, and I think quite rightly, that there are certain drivers whose egos won't let them understand how good they really are.
• 53:22
  Alan said there are...
• 53:24
  two people who he exemplifies as that.
• 53:28
  One was the late Ronnie Peterson, who never ever knew, according to Alan, how good he was.
• 53:34
  And the other is Colin Bond.
• 53:36
  Wow.
• 53:36
  He says Colin could have been one of the best in Europe, but he didn't understand in his own mind how good he was and how good he could be.
• 53:47
  And that's not a negative either.
• 53:49
  He's a beautiful family man who made choices to stay and build a life here, basically, didn't he?
• 53:56
  Yeah, he didn't really have aspirations like the Vern Shuppens and the Tim Shenkins of this world, who were his contemporaries at the time.
• 54:04
  Keep in mind, Tim beat him by half a second in the Australian Hill Climb Championship in 1965, which Colin will never forget and which Tim will never let him forget.
• 54:16
  and those guys put their lives on hold to go overseas motor racing.
• 54:21
  Colin couldn't see that.
• 54:22
  He couldn't see past, you know, living in Hunters Hill and buying their first home together and raising a family, and to him motor racing was a professional sport.
• 54:33
  He always wanted to be a professional sportsman, and he could make money out of motor racing, but he didn't see that picture overseas.
• 54:41
  Which I think in one respect is a pity because it would have been lovely to see what he could have achieved had he gone overseas.
• 54:48
  On the other hand, as Alan Jones said, there were some people who went over there who had to be tough.
• 54:55
  I mean, Alan said his dad Stan...
• 54:59
  would rather have a fight than a feat.
• 55:01
  And Alan's view on life was skewed by that.
• 55:04
  Colin grew up in a very respectful middle-class family in Hunters Hill and his view was skewed by that.
• 55:11
  To him, doing it his way was what he knew and he built a career out of it.
• 55:18
  I want to talk in wrapping this up about family.
• 55:22
  Firstly, your son is doing some great things at SBS.
• 55:26
  So he's ended up in the TV landscape, Andrew, hasn't he?
• 55:29
  Well, our family are media junkies, isn't it?
• 55:33
  Yes.
• 55:33
  Andrew is supervising director at SBS and he's doing some sensational things.
• 55:37
  I've had a chance to work with him over time too.
• 55:40
  He's terrific.
• 55:41
  Nicest director you'll ever meet.
• 55:43
  He actually says please and thank you.
• 55:45
  How many directors do you know who do that?
• 55:47
  And Katie is absolutely, I mean, the kids say crushing it, which means that, you know, she's doing something in agency land, very cool things, mate, isn't she?
• 55:55
  When my company folded into a much larger PR company in Australia, communications company in Australia, Kate went with it and she's now managing partner of that organisation and is still running the Toyota account, which is fabulous after all these years.
• 56:08
  Yeah.
• 56:09
  So very proud of her.
• 56:10
  So Jen's looked after us today.
• 56:12
  She's gone to the gym now.
• 56:13
  She's had enough of you and I gibbering away here and reliving life and time.
• 56:17
  Let's wrap up with a couple of things here.
• 56:19
  Firstly, a yarn that you won't know about.
• 56:22
  I go to the Race of Champions after party.
• 56:25
  It's about 3 a.m.
• 56:28
  The late Tim Miles is there causing havoc and so on.
• 56:31
  And Peter Solberg walks up to me and he...
• 56:36
  eyeballs me in that beautiful way with his smile and he shakes my hand and he goes, you used to do the WRC in Perth, didn't you?
• 56:44
  And I said, yes.
• 56:45
  And he goes, you were with that grey-haired commentator.
• 56:49
  What was his name?
• 56:51
  And I said, firstly, Petter, I've gone grey like him.
• 56:54
  I said, he's a great fellow.
• 56:55
  He's a mate of mine.
• 56:56
  John Smales, that's it.
• 56:57
  And he lit up.
• 56:57
  He lit up.
• 56:59
  He thought that was tremendous.
• 57:00
  Um...
• 57:01
  I was reminded in the preparation for this conversation today about a little yarn you'd shared with our good friend Aaron Noonan for his podcast, and that is a little run-in with Kimi Räikkönen at the Australian Grand Prix.
• 57:15
  What happened there?
• 57:16
  Did you two – was it Kimi that you – Oh, yes.
• 57:19
  Oh, yes.
• 57:20
  Oh, yeah.
• 57:21
  Yeah.
• 57:21
  What happened there?
• 57:23
  For years –
• 57:25
  I was set the task of door-stopping Formula One drivers up and down Pit Lane.
• 57:31
  As you know, it's a structured environment.
• 57:34
  They'll do media when it's scheduled, but they won't...
• 57:38
  Which you've got to do weeks in advance.
• 57:40
  They don't want to do vox pops.
• 57:41
  They don't want to do door stops, you know.
• 57:43
  But I was tasked with the task of doing door stops on these guys because it's good for the audience.
• 57:51
  Yeah, Michael Schumacher, for example.
• 57:53
  You know, I'd walk up to Michael and I'd say, Michael, just one quick question.
• 57:57
  And he'd say, look, please, not now if you don't mind, but perhaps we could make a time when we could possibly do it.
• 58:02
  And I'd say, but Michael, your fans are waiting for you to talk now.
• 58:05
  But look, really, I'd love to do it with you.
• 58:07
  By the time he'd given me the excuses he couldn't do it, he could have done it, you know?
• 58:13
  That referral to catch up with him later was never going to happen, mate.
• 58:16
  Well, I don't know.
• 58:18
  I figured he was so polite he probably would have.
• 58:20
  Okay.
• 58:20
  But either way, that was almost the thing with us, every Australian Grand Prix for several years and at Singapore, that he would always give me the excuse why he couldn't do it, all of which was going to air because I was live to air at the time.
• 58:34
  Anyway, Kimi Raikkonen.
• 58:37
  I've walked up to Kimi and, as you know, Kimi absolutely hated and detested doing anything to do with media, you know, and he was a one-stop wonder anyway, a one-word wonder anyway.
• 58:49
  And I walked up to him and I said, Kimi, and I've asked him a ridiculous question, and instead of just walking on, he's given me the big elbow in the side.
• 59:00
  Bang!
• 59:02
  And I've gone, no, you're not getting away with this, you miserable.
• 59:06
  And I've given him one back.
• 59:07
  And we're walking down pit lane at Albert Park on camera, live to air, pretty much.
• 59:15
  We weren't having fisticuffs, but we're giving each other the big elbows.
• 59:21
  It's like the first turn of the Grand Prix, you know.
• 59:25
  And it all went to air and, you know, nothing ever came of it.
• 59:28
  I love that.
• 59:29
  But it was just an extraordinary moment in time.
• 59:31
  In time.
• 59:32
  Yeah, yeah.
• 59:33
  But you didn't back down.
• 59:35
  You never gave it.
• 59:35
  You couldn't, could you?
• 59:36
  No, exactly.
• 59:37
  I mean, did I miss you let him get away with it?
• 59:39
  Yeah.
• 59:39
  Two to go.
• 59:40
  Hall of Fame.
• 59:42
  Sure.
• 59:43
  I have the joy of playing a very little role in that with you.
• 59:47
  You do an amazing job leading it.
• 59:49
  It's...
• 59:52
  In the manner that you are doing with these books, this is in your mind a passion project of preservation of the people that have made their mark in motorsport in this country, isn't it?
• 1:00:05
  It's an absolute privilege to work with the guys who have made their mark.
• 1:00:10
  And I think it's essential that their achievements be captured and commemorated.
• 1:00:17
  But also...
• 1:00:19
  it's not enough that they should simply be put in the library and put away.
• 1:00:23
  Yes.
• 1:00:24
  It's really important to see Hall of Fame, especially as a living entity.
• 1:00:30
  The past has got to inform the future.
• 1:00:32
  It's got to motivate the future.
• 1:00:34
  And you and I both know that what we're working towards at the moment is making Hall of Fame dynamic.
• 1:00:40
  Yes.
• 1:00:41
  So that the people who are in it can motivate people
• 1:00:47
  the young people coming up through the ranks.
• 1:00:50
  To me, that's really important.
• 1:00:52
  But for me, it's the world's greatest privilege to be able to sit with my heroes and write books about them or induct them into the Hall of Fame when we have that opportunity.
• 1:01:02
  I love that we're celebrating their story and we're keeping it...
• 1:01:07
  front of mind in some respects in the in the motorsport community which is which is excellent and you bring I mean it brings together you know all these different federations and we've talked circuit racing for cars and bikes I mean there's there's drag racing in there and motorcycling and all sorts which is which is um
• 1:01:24
  And we'll do that at the Grand Prix next year.
• 1:01:27
  Each year we've been announcing the inductees, haven't we, at the Grand Prix on the Thursday.
• 1:01:33
  It's excellent.
• 1:01:34
  And the joy of it, Rusty, is that the Australian Grand Prix Corporation has now embraced heritage.
• 1:01:41
  Yeah.
• 1:01:41
  You know, for a while there, I think they thought they were just running...
• 1:01:45
  That sounds bad.
• 1:01:46
  I think they thought they were running a contemporary event, but they now recognise that they're representing the heritage of motorsport in Australia and the world.
• 1:01:59
  And this year when I walked in to discuss how we'd go about next year's presentation, I was so warmly greeted
• 1:02:07
  And so obviously they want to embrace history, which is, I think, magnificent and a real credit to the Australian Grand Prix Corporation that they've caught the flame.
• 1:02:23
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:24
  People can find in the app description the website link for the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame.
• 1:02:29
  You can go on there and it'll explain when the next round of voting happens next year for the inductees and so on.
• 1:02:37
  And you can be a part of that.
• 1:02:38
  It's open to the public.
• 1:02:40
  Have you got...
• 1:02:41
  another book in you you don't have to tell me what that is you don't have to give me any of the the scoop but but i mean you're up to 10 is there another one oh absolutely yeah i always have one yeah and and it'll never stop you did want to cover it over the phone i think didn't you yeah yeah yeah look i've just had a ball
• 1:03:01
  writing these books, everything from the London City Marathon, revisiting that, through the heroes of Formula One.
• 1:03:09
  I wrote a book on every member, every Australian or Australasian who's ever driven a Formula One car, which was sensational to be able to talk to those guys about their experience.
• 1:03:21
  Ditto Australians and Australasians who've driven Indy cars.
• 1:03:25
  Indy cars.
• 1:03:25
  Yeah.
• 1:03:26
  Yeah.
• 1:03:26
  Fantastic.
• 1:03:27
  And then the latest one with Colin Bond.
• 1:03:29
  I mean, it all started because Alan Moffat approached me and asked me to write his autobiography.
• 1:03:35
  I mean, goodness gracious, you picked me up off the floor.
• 1:03:38
  You know, Alan Moffat would request of me to write his book.
• 1:03:44
  and just in time.
• 1:03:45
  And it's a beautiful book too.
• 1:03:47
  What a perfect way to finish this conversation, from him telling you to F off on the grid in a live broadcast to engaging you to do a book that encapsulated his career.
• 1:03:56
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:03:57
  I couldn't believe it.
• 1:03:58
  I was so privileged to do it.
• 1:03:59
  Congratulations, JS.
• 1:04:01
  The new book is out now, full tilt.
• 1:04:03
  You can find it in certain bookstores.
• 1:04:05
  I think Aaron Noonan stocks it as well, doesn't he, on his V8 Sleuth store.
• 1:04:09
  So go and find it there.
• 1:04:11
  Thank you so much for
• 1:04:13
  um spending a couple of hours and and recapping your incredible career and um the big takeaway from me js is the the friendship that we uh that we have the things that we get to do together now and that you have um taught me the importance of of kind of reinvention and always being eyes forward that is one of your many great traits mate thank you
• 1:04:36
  Rusty, thank you very much indeed for saying that.
• 1:04:39
  In return, I'd just simply like to say that it's an absolute, it's an unexpected privilege to be on Rusty's Garage.
• 1:04:46
  It's not something I ever thought would occur to me because I'm a background bloke.
• 1:04:50
  It's overdue.
• 1:04:50
  It's overdue.
• 1:04:52
  And in truth, I just so much enjoy watching your career and the things that you've been achieving over...
• 1:05:01
  the recent past especially.
• 1:05:03
  And I'm so pleased that amongst your very busy engagements on air that you've agreed to join the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame and bring your depth of knowledge across the board of all sports to that august body.
• 1:05:23
  You're doing a great job.
• 1:05:24
  Thank you, mate.
• 1:05:24
  And we're looking forward to getting Bondi on for a chat about the new book too.
• 1:05:27
  Thanks, JS.
• 1:05:36
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 1:05:40
  Series editor and producer is Joel Harrison.
• 1:05:43
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• 1:05:46
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• 1:05:51
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