Latest / Rusty's Garage / Terry Morris | Part 1 - Gemini Rookie of the Year and Gold Coast Goal Setting

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Terry Morris | Part 1 - Gemini Rookie of the Year and Gold Coast Goal Setting · Rusty's Garage

0:04
I recorded this episode on Father's Day and I'm grateful once again for the hospitality of the Morris family.
0:10
Over the years, Lee Diffie, Daryl Beattie and I have been known to sneak into the bus or transporter at day's end at the track and enjoy a little glass of wine and been spoiled with all sorts of great food by Lurleen, Lurl, Paul's lovely mum and Nan to Nash.
0:25
There's always laughs and forthright convo and today's no different.
0:29
The reason I'm here though is to see Terry
0:32
TM, as most of us call him.
0:34
Before you say, why have you done an ep with Paul's father?
0:37
I want to give you a sense of the way he's regarded in many areas of the sport.
0:42
This is from five-time world motorcycle champion and Australian motorsport Hall of Famer, Mick Doohan, who I reached out to in the lead up.
0:50
This is a little of the voice message he sent me.
0:52
Look, TM is just one of those amazing people.
0:57
He inspires everyone to achieve success.
1:00
whatever they can.
1:01
He's always around to give support and was during my, you know, the latter part of my career really when I got to know him a little bit and supportive of everything, you know.
1:12
He's just got such a great energy and vibe and good for motorsport and a great businessman.
1:17
So good you're doing a story on him.
1:20
I also share in this conversation with TM, and he kind of didn't know that I've done this, some quotes from sprint car legend Donnie Schatz, BTCC boss Alan Gow, Diff, Brodie Kostecki, Owen Kelly, Nash, and Nigel Barclay.
1:35
Apologies if I've missed anyone.
1:36
Their help was invaluable.
1:38
Now, we won't cover every aspect of Terry's impressive business career.
1:43
The conversation kind of meanders and gives you a nice snapshot, including some fun stories that Paul has kindly worded me up on.
1:51
For context, the list of business achievements is impressive, and motorsport around things like the Cams Commission, Formula Ford, and Toka Australia have all benefited.
2:02
He founded the Carrara Markets, the biggest permanent weekend marketplace in Australia.
2:07
It's a bit of a Gold Coast institution.
2:09
He saw opportunity in gaps in places that others didn't see.
2:13
Cigarette sales, for example.
2:15
He pioneered database marketing and grew to be a national leader in catalogue sales.
2:21
In the early 80s, he established Morris International, which grew significantly to include Cogs.
2:26
property interests and employed more than 500 staff over a wide range of enterprises.
2:32
One of the highest profile, Siramay Wines, which has won several awards.
2:37
Terry and Lerlene have had a long interest in wine.
2:41
The 200-acre Mount Cotton property opened its doors around the turn of the century.
2:46
Siramay is T.E.
2:47
Morris, spelt backwards, and it's become a destination in its own right.
2:52
Little wonder TM was inducted into the Gold Coast Business Hall of Fame at the Business Excellence Awards there, joining the likes of Keith Williams, the Seawall founder, and Billabong's Gordon Merchant.
3:04
He openly says ball sports were never his thing, but he's had a real passion for motorsport since he was younger.
3:11
And he was a pretty handy steerer too, only calling time on his own driving after an exhilarating ride around Mount Panorama beside Paul in 1992.
3:21
Incidentally, the black and white pick that we've used in the EPP description is in a car called a Zefska, which we'll talk about.
3:28
Pretty rare car.
3:29
Having first dealt with him in the late 90s, I am chuffed to capture and share his story.
3:36
Enjoy getting to know Terry Morris.
3:41
Happy Father's Day.
3:42
Thanks very much, Greg.
3:43
So, you're a great-granddad, I've learned today.
3:46
I am a great-granddad twice.
3:48
That's amazing.
3:49
It's a wonderful feeling.
3:50
Do they all call you Pop, your grandkids and your great-grandkids?
3:54
Pop, the great-grandkids call me Poppy, and the grandkids call me Popsicle.
4:00
Do they?
4:00
Yeah.
4:01
I love nicknames like that.
4:03
It's excellent.
4:04
Thank you for seeing me on a day which is, you know, ordinarily for family.
4:08
It's probably a bit of a deep way to start things, TM, but what would you tell people that is the key to what has been such a full and successful life for you?
4:17
What would you say to those grandkids and great-grandkids?
4:19
The thing that's most important in life, Greg, I believe is setting goals and working out ways to achieve them.
4:27
Have you always done that?
4:27
Because, I mean, you left, I think if I'm right here, you left school at age 14, didn't you?
4:33
Yeah, 13 actually.
4:34
13, really?
4:35
Tell me about that.
4:36
Tell me about early life because we're talking at what is home now on the…
4:45
in Victoria.
4:46
Yeah.
4:46
Then when we were, I was aged about eight or nine, mum and dad decided to shift from Colac, which is a farming, a small farming community in the Western District.
4:57
And that time the Latrobe Valley power stations were being built and they thought there'd be better opportunities for their children if they shifted there and probably a better employment for dad who was a process worker in a milk factory at that time and made a bit of extra money by bagging onions and that on the weekend.
5:13
So very humble upbringing then.
5:14
Yeah, wonderful upbringing.
5:15
Yeah, but humble in the same breath too.
5:18
Did it teach you, what sort of values do you think that taught you, that style of upbringing, do you think?
5:25
Mum and Dad used to talk to me, Mum more than Dad, and she wouldn't let you get out of line.
5:30
You had to have good manners.
5:31
You had to say thank you.
5:32
Yeah.
5:33
And you had to be good.
5:35
I love that.
5:36
Were you, I mean, you left school at 14, as you just reflected there a moment ago, but...
5:40
Was that because you almost feel like you'd outgrown it?
5:43
Maybe it wasn't pushing your buttons?
5:44
No, I was a pretty good student.
5:45
Were you?
5:46
Yeah, I was, you know, I had a good report card.
5:50
But in those days, there was no such thing as free education.
5:55
Mum said it's time for you to get a job.
5:57
My...
5:59
Older brother, he left school about the same time as me because I was 11 months younger than him.
6:07
Yeah.
6:08
And so that was it.
6:11
You had to make a contribution to the family because there's three other kids coming behind.
6:14
Yeah.
6:15
What was the first kind of job that you did?
6:17
I think Paul tells me that you were quite good at ticket writing.
6:21
Is that right around?
6:22
Yeah, I was...
6:23
I wasn't good at it, but I was working in retail.
6:28
And one of the things, if you had ticket writing skills, it made you get a better chance of getting a better job.
6:34
First job was in a grocery store, but I had plenty of part-time jobs.
6:39
Before that, I was delivering papers, working as a...
6:42
working on the local merry-go-round, getting money for that.
6:47
I was always out looking to do something.
6:48
And mum and dad encouraged me to do that.
6:51
Did they?
6:52
I mean, to this day, I feel like you've kept that industrious side.
6:56
Is that kind of a bit of a back-to-back?
6:58
Yeah, it's just I've got an active mind.
7:00
Yes.
7:00
Not so much now.
7:01
I think I've...
7:02
Almost neutral.
7:04
I disagree.
7:05
I disagree.
7:06
So, the common thread of, you know, kind of successful people when I've had the odd chance to talk to them is, you know, that decision to leave school, that's not an unusual thing for school.
7:18
some successful people, whether that's by circumstance or whatever, to leave it at an early age.
7:24
Depending on the age group, I think, or the generation, what you're working with.
7:27
Yeah.
7:28
How do you think that sort of shaped you?
7:30
Do you feel like that sort of forced you to grow up quickly because you're dealing with adults a bit more or was it just circumstance?
7:36
No, I actually never thought about that, Greg.
7:39
It just happened.
7:40
Yeah.
7:40
Yeah.
7:41
Okay.
7:41
So, did you have an early attachment to motor racing?
7:47
Was it something as a kid?
7:48
Maybe there were heroes or...?
7:49
No, it was like cars.
7:51
And I remember the first time I saw the BP film of Fanjo.
7:56
Oh, yes.
7:56
Yeah.
7:57
And they still show it today, of course.
7:59
You'd have seen it many times.
8:00
Yeah.
8:00
And that sort of sparks an interest.
8:02
You then become a founding member a little bit further along of things like the Gippsland Car Club, don't you?
8:06
And the formation, the building of the Morwell
8:09
Hill Climb?
8:09
Yeah, that was – I always liked motorcars and if you haven't got them, you'll like them a lot more.
8:16
Yeah.
8:18
I remember going to the Melbourne Motor Show and the Austin Healy 100 came out for the first time.
8:24
I walked into the show and don't think I moved from that stand.
8:27
Is that right?
8:27
The most beautiful car ever I'd seen.
8:29
Yeah.
8:29
Yeah.
8:30
What was your first car then?
8:31
First car was an MG TD.
8:33
Was it?
8:34
Which I found in almost a barn find.
8:37
the money for that at that time or had you...
8:40
I nicked it.
8:40
I think I paid £125 for it and it was, you know, I ended up selling it later for about £500.
8:50
Is that right?
8:51
Yeah.
8:52
But did you enjoy that car?
8:53
Did you at least... Yeah, I did, but the police took an interest in it too, so I thought it was better to sell it rather than get another ticket.
9:01
Okay.
9:02
Were you a good, always a good talker, TM?
9:07
There's a part of your career here, maybe I'm fast-forwarding a little bit in the timeline, but you did like life insurance sales and things like that.
9:14
So you must have been a good communicator, were you?
9:16
Must have been, yeah.
9:17
I'd never thought of it that way, but I always...
9:20
I always liked selling well-being in retail.
9:22
It was good.
9:23
And then I worked in a grocery shop I started at.
9:26
And then I went to work for a menswear store in Morville.
9:30
And there was a guy called Michael Gus, and he was a fantastic gentleman.
9:34
And if you watched him selling trousers to a...
9:38
an SEC worker, you really got an action of someone selling.
9:41
Okay.
9:42
All these different experiences are invariably with other people's businesses, but were you taking things away from that that you think would have applied later on when you did own and set about doing your own businesses and things?
9:56
Yeah.
9:56
I always thought that anyone who had a business was successful.
9:59
It looked like it was.
10:01
From my background, if someone had a business, they were an important person.
10:04
Just like in those days, the doctor was the most important person in the community.
10:09
Yes.
10:10
And a successful businessman.
10:12
The policeman was very important.
10:14
What becomes, after you sell the MG, what's the next thing in the list of cars that you own?
10:21
I think I traded that in on a Volkswagen.
10:25
Did you?
10:25
Yeah, the Beetle.
10:28
And I ran that.
10:30
Then after I'd worked in the menswear store, I got a job as a collector salesman in the insurance business.
10:38
I turned 18, you need to have a...
10:40
license to do that because you had to drive around to things and that taught me a lot.
10:44
But I was never very good at writing and documenting and if you could imagine, in fact, I was so bad at writing, I had to print.
10:51
Really?
10:52
And I worked out it was because my mind raced ahead of me, the nib.
10:57
So I was trying to catch up.
10:58
So I said, only way you can solve this is to slow down and print.
11:01
Print it.
11:01
Okay.
11:02
Okay.
11:03
You're still in Victoria at this stage.
11:04
Had you met Lurl at this point or when did you meet her?
11:07
I met her before I sold the MG and that's probably what attracted her to her.
11:12
Is that right?
11:14
She was from a town.
11:15
There's three main towns in Latrobe, Alimaui, Morwell and Tarelgan.
11:21
Then Yelorn was the old original town.
11:24
coal mine where they converted.
11:25
That's the first power station.
11:27
Excellent.
11:28
Did you get a chance, I mean, in addition to working with the Gippsland Car Club and so on and having that membership and working on the Morwell Hill Climb and so on, did you start indulging in a little bit of competition or at this stage are you more on the other side?
11:41
No, when I had the first MG, I'm...
11:44
If you had an MG, it was like it created a friendship of MG owners.
11:48
And a bloke called Les Palmer had a TC and we'd become firm friends.
11:53
And we became interested in motorsport.
11:55
We used to go and watch at Phillip Island.
11:57
I mean, became the original Fisherman's Bend circuit, watched car racing there, then went to Ballarat another time.
12:05
And people talking, he said, we need a car club in the valley.
12:09
So a group of us got together and said, let's do this.
12:12
Excellent.
12:12
So it was really just consisted of meeting, having club meetings.
12:16
We held a motor show and got a lot of good cars come up from Melbourne to display there.
12:22
And then we said, see if we can get a competition back together.
12:27
Excellent.
12:29
So driving around, there was this bit of land that was next to the open cut in your lawn.
12:34
And it had an old road through it, so we got onto the council and said, could we use that?
12:37
And they agreed that we could.
12:39
And so it went on from there and became the Gippsland Car Club Hill Climb, which has now been relocated to the Hornet Hills and Bryan Park.
12:47
Okay.
12:48
Were you good at all that, like negotiating with councils and talking to all these people?
12:51
It was a learning experience, Greg.
12:53
What did it teach you?
12:53
Yeah, but not be afraid to do that.
12:55
And you found that if you were honest with people, they'd listen to you, and if they thought it was a good story, they'd help you.
13:00
Yeah.
13:01
I don't know why you went.
13:02
Paul tells me to ask you about, is it the Zewska?
13:05
The Zewska.
13:07
Well, wanting to race was one thing and I was quite successful in the life insurance business then and,
13:16
And I met a chap in Melbourne when I had another job as a pots and pans travelling salesman for a company.
13:27
And he said, oh, this chap called Bill Miller, he was damaged and he rolled a Morris Mojo at the Phillip Island 500.
13:36
But he had this...
13:38
Virtually completed, specialties built, which was an Austin Healey suspension ladder chassis and it was with a supercharged Zephyr 6 motor in it.
13:50
No, I got it.
13:51
Someone had to look at it and fell in love with it and found a way to buy it off Bill.
13:55
Did you?
13:56
When you talk like that, when you say found a way to buy, what does that entail?
14:00
Probably borrowing some money off my brother, was it?
14:02
Whatever was necessary.
14:05
What memories does that evoke from a competition standpoint?
14:08
What were the learnings from doing that?
14:10
Yeah, it was just an exciting car.
14:13
When that supercharger kicked in, you knew you were into something.
14:19
And I raced that at the first competitive race I had was the opening trial thing for the Sandown Pack Motorsport.
14:27
Excellent.
14:27
And that was, I didn't crash it then.
14:29
Yeah.
14:30
Did it come easily to you?
14:31
Did you get... Oh, no, not really.
14:33
I just like to go fast, but...
14:36
I had a few instances where I realised I really wasn't cut out to be a driver.
14:41
If I got into a situation, my elbows froze.
14:43
Okay.
14:46
Is that a nerve thing?
14:47
I don't know what it was.
14:48
Probably shit scared.
14:52
From the Zefskirt.
14:54
Scared of having an accident.
14:55
Accident.
14:56
That was the reaction that took on.
14:58
But you persisted.
14:59
I mean, that's where I was going to go a second ago here because you end up with an HD Holden, I think,
15:07
Les Palmer, the TC owner, we raced that together with H.T.
15:12
Holden, the Kelly brothers, the local Holden dealer.
15:14
We talked to him, that'd be a great deal to help him sell some more cars.
15:20
That's pretty damn cool on the CV, TM.
15:23
Did you enjoy that?
15:23
It was great, yeah.
15:25
It was an incredible experience.
15:27
And Bill Miller ran our team for us, the bloke who sold me the Zewska.
15:31
Excellent.
15:32
Yeah.
15:32
So from there, from the life insurance phase, at what point, is there a little light bulb moment for you around owning your first or moving into business as an owner yourself?
15:45
What transpires there?
15:46
Yeah, that's an interesting story.
15:47
Yeah.
15:49
I was a member of the Million Dollar Roundtable.
15:51
What's that?
15:52
It was an international organisation where you had to sell a million dollars worth of life insurance in a year to become a member.
16:01
And I'd never done that before, but I said, I'd heard about how good this round table was.
16:07
And I said, I'll do that.
16:08
So I set to work and I did sell enough insurance to become a member.
16:13
But they had a philosophy of the whole man concept, which you should be a good family man.
16:19
You should be good at your business and you should make a contribution to your community.
16:24
And you should be good at religion, which...
16:27
And to fulfil being good with the community, I decided, after we moved to the Gold Coast, I decided to stand for local government, the council at Albert Shire, which is now part of the Gold Coast City Council.
16:40
Council, yeah.
16:41
And I got elected, which was a bit of a thrill.
16:45
Yeah.
16:46
But then I realised that the council I had, the only time you're making any money in the life insurance business is when you're sitting down across the room with someone and asking them to buy.
16:55
Yes.
16:56
Yeah.
16:57
The council reduced my face-to-face time dramatically.
17:01
I thought, oh, this is not good.
17:04
And the councillors didn't get paid then.
17:05
You got paid for a meeting fee, but you got no salary.
17:10
something's got to be done.
17:12
After a Rotary meeting one night, I was at a Queensland election coming up and I said to my good friend, Dr O'Brien, oh, no doubt about it, Joe Bjorki-Petersen will win this next election.
17:23
He said, why is that?
17:24
I said, he's not going to tax the cigarettes and every other state is.
17:28
Oh.
17:30
And a light bulb went on and I said, oh, okay.
17:34
Section 94 of the Constitution of Australia guaranteed free trade between the states.
17:40
So I thought, oh, okay, if I bought, sold Queensland cigarettes at retail and bought them wholesale to people living in the taxable states, there's a business idea there.
17:53
So next day I organised to run an advertisement in the Melbourne Sun
18:00
And it said, smokers, use your constitutional rights.
18:03
Buy your cigarettes from Queensland, the low-tax state.
18:06
Send a stamped addressed envelope to the post office box in Southport where the insurance office was.
18:12
Yeah.
18:13
Sure enough, over the next week, all these letters come in.
18:16
I want to buy them.
18:18
And that was the start of the business.
18:20
That's amazing.
18:20
You've stoked a few ideas with me here.
18:24
Firstly, can I just peel back one little bit?
18:26
What prompted the move to the Gold Coast?
18:30
Was there something that kicked that off?
18:31
What made you do that?
18:32
That's such a big move from what had been home and so on.
18:35
Les Palmer, he developed a very successful transport business in the Latrobe Valley.
18:41
He decided to ship to Queensland.
18:43
He sold his transport business.
18:45
He said, you've got to come and join me.
18:46
He said,
18:47
So we went and saw him and he looked terrific.
18:50
That was all there was to it.
18:54
We went to another roundtable meeting in America and Lerlene came and met me in Hawaii.
18:59
So we spent a week in Hawaii, came back to Mall, middle of winter, the power stations are belching out pollution, the paper mill stunk.
19:11
Yeah.
19:12
I came home to work one night and I said to Lerlan, this is no good.
19:16
Let's finish.
19:17
Let's move to Queensland.
19:18
On a whim.
19:19
Off you go.
19:19
And off we went.
19:21
Amazing.
19:21
That's amazing.
19:22
And I mean, this is, you know, I only ever think of you now as this being home for you.
19:26
That's such a significant move.
19:28
One thing that I perhaps hadn't asked, I mean, had your own children arrived at this stage?
19:33
Were you a young dad?
19:34
What were you?
19:34
Nadine was born in 65.
19:36
Yeah.
19:36
Paul in 67.
19:39
You should know if you know his racing number.
19:41
Yeah.
19:42
And they moved to Queensland.
19:44
They settled in well.
19:45
Yeah.
19:46
That's such a significant move, TM.
19:48
And, you know, in seeing this opportunity, it's an opportunity that –
19:55
must have required a little bit of navigation because, you know, you put that ad in the paper, you're getting these responses from people.
20:02
Well, that was in Queensland, of course.
20:03
Yeah, yeah, of course.
20:05
What transpires next?
20:06
Do you then set about making a big commitment to buying truckloads of these things?
20:10
What do you do?
20:11
No, there was a...
20:12
There was a cigarette wholesaler on the Gold Coast.
20:19
We'd get the orders one day, go and have them delivered or picked up and then pack them and send them off the next day.
20:27
So sure.
20:28
Paul was helping us doing the packing.
20:29
He was actively involved in that business.
20:31
Is that right?
20:32
Yeah.
20:33
But because the business was growing...
20:36
We had to get some records and I thought, mail order, I joined the Direct Marketing Association and you learned a lot about what you could be doing in that business.
20:47
And they said the computers, you know, computerise your records, get rid of the paper ones.
20:51
Hope stuff, yeah.
20:53
So we bought a very small computer.
20:55
It was before the days of the laptops.
20:59
Yeah.
21:00
And we got to put our systems on that.
21:03
Okay.
21:04
And that was good.
21:04
So we're working those computers and that's – and I was still studying the mail order business.
21:11
I started reading about the IPU, which is the International Postal Union.
21:17
Oh, yeah.
21:18
And they had a rule called Terminal Dues.
21:20
Yeah.
21:22
What does that mean?
21:23
Terminal dues meant that if America spent a million dollars on sending postage to Australia, and Australia only spent $100,000 and spent sending mail to America...
21:37
America owed Australia 900,000 in unpaid postage.
21:42
Postage, wow.
21:44
So you could send a letter to Australia for a tenth of the cost as someone in America gets sent to America.
21:52
Wow.
21:53
Well, I've always had a head for a bit of arbitrage.
21:58
But to see the opportunity as well, TM, in places that obviously people weren't seeing these opportunities, were there?
22:06
I found out later that people were seeing them.
22:09
Were they?
22:09
Yes.
22:10
But you were ahead though.
22:11
You were clearly ahead.
22:12
And so we then contacted some...
22:16
American mail order companies and said, let's do a sample mailing for you.
22:21
And if we make more money for you than you're making for yourself now, will you use our services?
22:27
And they said, well, we'll look at it.
22:29
So we ran a couple and, of course, they made more money.
22:32
So we said, now, if you want us to continue, we want to be able to service you.
22:35
Because the people had to send their responses back to Australia.
22:39
They couldn't send them from America to America.
22:41
They had to send it from America to Australia to get the cost.
22:44
So all the information is arriving with the orders, so we did the banking for them, preparation, and sent them back.
22:51
You'll send your product to these addresses.
22:53
And this was using the... We couldn't have done that without the computer system we had.
22:58
Got you.
22:59
Got you.
23:00
And that was the start.
23:00
of our international mail order business.
23:02
I love that.
23:04
In both examples here, were there moments of trepidation?
23:08
Was there learnings?
23:09
Were there things that didn't go right?
23:12
You always hit hurdles, Greg, but they never scared me.
23:15
You're trying to work your way around them or just dismiss them and move on.
23:20
You were clean cut like that?
23:21
Like you could always just go, don't worry about that stuff.
23:24
Like here's a solution.
23:25
You only worry about things you can change, not what you can't change.
23:28
I love that.
23:29
I love that.
23:30
The mail order thing intrigues me.
23:32
I don't fully appreciate it.
23:34
So help me out here a little bit, TM.
23:35
Like, I can remember mum having, I don't know, like women's weekly mags or things like that and then, you know, on the coffee table at home and in the back there would always be, you could buy things, couldn't you?
23:46
Jewelry or... Yeah, well, we ran a business like that in Australia.
23:49
Yeah.
23:50
Paul set that up and ran that.
23:51
We called it the Morgan Vault.
23:52
Morgan Vault, yeah.
23:53
And the idea was that Morgan was the name of a big financial institution, vault you can eat with banks.
23:59
So, we thought that people might think they're dealing with a secure and wealthy organisation.
24:05
So the perception was this.
24:06
Well, that's advertising.
24:08
Yeah, it is.
24:09
It is.
24:10
Are you still doing the council stuff at this point in time or had you stopped a bit of that?
24:14
No, it stopped.
24:16
I did one term and got beaten by seven votes and didn't like that, but it turned out it was good.
24:20
So I had the time then to spend in the mail order business.
24:24
Business, yeah.
24:24
Yeah.
24:25
Are there still some things maybe even from that little window, Terry, where you look around and what the Gold Coast has become now and there's maybe a little sense of pride in that because you were part of the period of what has since become now.
24:38
A wonderful city, isn't it?
24:39
Yeah.
24:39
Incredible city.
24:40
Yeah.
24:41
It would help you, I guess, with connections with people around the GC2?
24:44
Oh, yes.
24:45
I was involved with Rotary.
24:46
The council helped out and involved.
24:49
And we were employing a lot of people in the mail order business at that stage.
24:55
Not only that, but you had to have a printing set up.
24:57
You had the storage for all the paper to print all these orders to send overseas.
25:01
It must have been huge in that process of managing all that.
25:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
25:08
What was it like balancing that and family life, TM, with young kids and so on?
25:13
Well, it was early.
25:15
We used to do stuff on the kitchen table at home to get the business cranked up.
25:20
And it just happened.
25:21
And the kids would help the way you were talking there before too, weren't they?
25:24
Yeah, well, Paul worked with us.
25:25
Nadine had a separate career.
25:27
Just as I arrived here today, a long-term friend, someone who's been around you in a business sense was here.
25:34
He's been with Aud Manette, had a significant role with the Brisbane Broncos and so on.
25:39
And he had this great one line as he left from some early dealings the pair of you had had.
25:45
Perhaps it was around some stockbroking, I can't remember.
25:47
But he was asking you about what your end goal, what you wanted out of it was, and you said,
25:54
enough to ensure we can go motor racing.
25:56
That was a bit of a thing, wasn't it?
25:58
That's right, yeah.
26:00
So what transpires here around, firstly, at some point, Paul, not all that far from here, which, I mean, I can recall as a young kid coming to the Gold Coast on holidays and seeing Alan Moffat race the Stuyvesant Mazda and Service Paradise Raceway and so on.
26:17
But there was a cool little speedway in that complex, wasn't there?
26:21
That's correct, yes.
26:22
And at some point he gets...
26:24
a car here for bombers, they called it, didn't they?
26:26
That's right.
26:27
Bit of a unique race.
26:28
Were you already doing this and he rode as passenger?
26:30
No, no, it wasn't.
26:31
He was keen to do it.
26:33
Yeah.
26:35
And I encouraged him to go motor racing.
26:37
It was a sport that was not bad for him.
26:40
Yeah.
26:40
And I rode jockey with him a few times.
26:42
What was that like?
26:44
Oh, mate, I banged all his...
26:47
No, I enjoyed it, but I was shit scared.
26:49
Were you?
26:51
I'm trying to remember what that car was.
26:53
Is that an EH?
26:54
What was the year?
26:54
EH, yeah.
26:56
Yellow and red, I think.
26:57
Was it?
26:58
Great fun.
26:59
I mean, and did you sort of see that as a...
27:05
A bit of a passion thing for you or something?
27:06
Oh, yeah, yeah.
27:07
I loved it.
27:08
But then he was racing bombers and Troy Dunstan was there and Troy's Charlie O'Brien's cousin.
27:15
Yes.
27:16
And he said, let's do a Gemini.
27:20
So we bought a Gemini and started racing and then we got to know Troy and I said, well, look, let's build a couple of really good Geminis and see if we can do any good.
27:29
Yeah.
27:30
So they did and they did good and Paul's learning to drive them and do okay.
27:35
He was good at that.
27:36
I love that.
27:37
And then the formula forwards come along.
27:39
Yeah.
27:39
But Gemini's, come back a fraction if we can a little bit on that because I guess they're a little bit like in some ways the Excels are today.
27:49
I mean, it was held in such high regard, that class of racing.
27:53
Excels are a great comparison.
27:55
Comparison, yeah.
27:56
You...
27:57
You raced yourself too, didn't you?
27:58
You raced them.
27:59
Is that right?
28:00
Yeah, they talked me into it.
28:01
I think I was the oldest ever rookie of the year.
28:04
Was that 1990?
28:05
I'm trying to remember when that was.
28:07
I don't know.
28:07
I love that though.
28:08
Don't undersell that because it would have been ultra competitive.
28:11
Did you enjoy that?
28:12
I loved it.
28:13
Did you?
28:14
Were you racing, were you both together on track at the same time or not?
28:17
No.
28:18
No?
28:18
No.
28:19
Paul was off doing four.
28:20
Four at these days.
28:21
Okay.
28:22
Four at these days.
28:23
But you would be doing it, I guess, as a family then.
28:24
Was he coming along, giving you a hand and stuff like that?
28:27
Yeah, we always attended each other's meetings.
28:30
What?
28:30
Paul had helped me run the car.
28:32
Did he?
28:32
Yeah.
28:33
Excellent.
28:33
What was a young Paul Morris like back then?
28:35
Was he wayward?
28:38
Was he good at school?
28:39
And now he's sort of going motorbike.
28:41
What was he like in that sort of phase of life?
28:42
Yeah.
28:45
Paul always had his nose to grindstone.
28:47
He did what had to be done.
28:48
Did he?
28:49
Always been a very, very logical thinker.
28:51
Yeah.
28:52
He thinks on something logical all the time.
28:55
Yeah, I love it.
28:56
The Gemini racing, what are we, I think he's talking, it was 85 to 88.
28:59
I'm sorry.
29:00
I should have clarified that period where you were doing that.
29:02
But the reason I raise it is because from his perspective,
29:07
own sort of racing perspective.
29:08
There was a big adventure, I think, to Orin Park at one stage, driving through the night, towing the race car to the track.
29:15
That's the Gemini.
29:16
Yeah, yeah, and going racing.
29:18
I sense this little yarn or whatever is worth delving into.
29:21
Tell me a bit more about that.
29:23
Yeah.
29:24
Yeah, off we went.
29:25
And the thing that I remember about that, there was Troy was with us, Brett Funnell.
29:31
Yep.
29:32
And Paul, the three-car team.
29:35
And after them, and Paul, Troy won the race, Paul comes second and Brett was back down the field because Paul had passed him and given him a workover.
29:45
So he said, that bloody Paul...
29:50
Admirate, he expressed how good he thought Paul was.
29:53
Paul, yeah.
29:54
Well, the big overnight missions from home here to places like Oran Park, that's quite a decent flight back there.
29:59
Oh, it was a big thing, yes.
30:00
Yeah, yeah.
30:01
Did you share the driving and things like that?
30:02
What were you all doing?
30:03
Yeah, it just happened.
30:05
It's all uncharted waters when you do it.
30:08
Yes.
30:08
We found somewhere to stay, and that followed on with taking the Formula Ford to those places too.
30:13
But that was the first interstate event we did.
30:15
Is that right?
30:16
In the Gemini, yeah.
30:20
Before the pandemic Rusty captured Paul Morris' story.
30:24
90 minutes of gripping convo with some humor and one-liners the dude is renowned for.
30:29
His recollection of the day Denny Hume passed away at Bathurst in 1992 is still crystal clear now, including team boss Frank Gardner giving the call to get on with it, to press on and race, despite the sudden loss of his good friend.
30:42
The polarising thing I remember, and I can still see it right now, Chikoto jumps out of the car, so Johnny Chikoto's driving with Tony and he walks up to Frank and goes, where's Denny in his accent, where's Denny?
30:57
And he goes, oh, he's dead.
31:00
And Chikoto goes, what?
31:01
And he goes, dead, D-E-A-D, dead, and just walked off, that was it.
31:06
You can sense from the conversation with TM that some of the mannerisms have rubbed off on Paul.
31:11
It is a great episode and worth a listen if you haven't already.
31:14
Search for it in the garage library later.
31:17
Now back to the convo with Terry Morris.
31:20
Coming back to business for a second here, TM, some people...
31:24
when they're successful in business, are a bit flashy, they chase headlines.
31:29
I don't know where in the kind of measurement of achievements in a business sense you are here, but I feel like it's right to say that you were doing it
31:38
you were doing it quietly.
31:39
You were letting the kind of the business just sort of do its talking.
31:42
Was that a conscious thing just to privately be successful in business rather than...
31:47
If I felt that publicity was going to help the business, I would.
31:51
That's why I've never been shy of the publicity about the winery as it is today.
31:55
Yes, yes.
31:56
If you're just running a business that's no one else's business, just keep doing that.
32:00
Keep trucking along.
32:01
You said earlier in the conversation here about goals and that you were good with goals in the life insurance period and stuff like that.
32:07
With...
32:08
When we're at this point here of mail order or wherever we are in the business CV for you, are you like that?
32:15
We want to hit this particular target.
32:17
Yes, yeah.
32:18
Just tell me about that.
32:20
You physically wrote these down or how did you – Yeah, you do that.
32:23
Yeah.
32:24
The goals is another thing that came from the membership of the Million Dollar Roundtable.
32:28
Yep.
32:29
And that was that there's three things pretty easy to work out, but your goals are where am I now, where do I want to be, how am I going to get there?
32:38
Yep.
32:38
And it's as simple as that.
32:40
But you've got to, first of all, be totally honest with yourself where you are now.
32:44
Yes.
32:44
Don't kid yourself.
32:46
Yeah.
32:46
And work out where you want to be and say, okay, I think I can do that.
32:50
It's realistic.
32:50
Yep.
32:51
And then you work out a plan to do it.
32:53
Have you had to adjust that along the way or have you been free?
32:55
Oh, yes, you do.
32:57
And, of course, with goal setting, once you reach your goal or you get in close, you're going to go up another rung on the ladder.
33:03
Otherwise, you're not going anywhere.
33:04
No, exactly.
33:05
That realism or that – you've always been good at that, have you, about chasing the next thing essentially.
33:13
Do you not stop to savour the success?
33:15
Oh, yes, you love it when it's happening, mate.
33:17
Yeah, yeah, it's great.
33:18
You give yourself a pat on the back and that's good.
33:20
You've done that.
33:20
Wonderful.
33:21
What transpires after the mail order business?
33:24
What's next on your radar?
33:27
Well, along this line, along this journey, we were acquiring property because when we're still in Victoria, I'd studied, picked up a book by some guy who did it, a property guru from America.
33:44
That makes a bit of sense.
33:46
So I set out a 40-year property plan back then and the idea was to turn, I think, $100,000 capital into $4 million in 40 years' time.
33:56
So we did that and we have focused on that all along the way.
34:00
That's a side business to our other businesses.
34:03
Could you see that?
34:04
You could see that areas of the Gold Coast were going to take off.
34:08
What gave you that confidence to know that?
34:11
You'd have to be blind, Freddie, not to see it happening on the Gold Coast because it was developing then.
34:15
But property is always a wonderful investment if you get the right stuff.
34:19
Even the wrong stuff at some point in time, it'll turn good.
34:22
Yeah.
34:23
And that's not just residential either, TM, is it?
34:25
It's commercial as well?
34:26
Oh, we had it.
34:27
Yeah.
34:27
We did a lot of land banking.
34:29
Okay.
34:30
Where you buy big, Ceramé's an example of our land bank.
34:33
Mm-hmm.
34:34
That's 500 acres between Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
34:39
That'll go into the urban footprint one day and probably produce 4,000 acres
34:44
House sites.
34:44
Yeah.
34:45
That's what that's become.
34:46
I can remember you very kindly taking me there in the early days and maybe even meeting the head winemaker or the chef and so on at the restaurant there.
34:57
That's...
34:59
That's an unbelievable legacy to him.
35:00
It is.
35:00
What that thing has become.
35:01
And I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, right?
35:04
Like concerts in the vines with massive names and all sorts of things, isn't it?
35:09
Yeah, it's been a terrific, wonderful journey.
35:11
The wine business has never been a brilliant business.
35:14
Mm-hmm.
35:14
But it's a way of preserving the agricultural entitlements for that particular piece of land.
35:22
Yeah, incredible.
35:24
The thing that I'm leading back into here now is motor racing and there are things that you have done when we come to the Formula Ford stuff.
35:33
I mean –
35:34
From memory, you ended up on the Formula Ford board, didn't you?
35:37
Yeah, I'm very passionate about that.
35:39
I think we called it a committee.
35:40
Committee, okay.
35:41
Sorry, I didn't articulate that right.
35:43
Margaret Hardy was the major principal, the major secretary in my time.
35:48
Yep.
35:49
What was it like at that stage of things?
35:50
Because it's this...
35:53
everyone lights up about it being such an important backbone of the sport in this country for emerging kids and so on.
35:59
And I know it's gone through some tough stuff in the last, call it decade or whatever it may have been.
36:04
What was it like back then?
36:04
It was great.
36:06
Was it?
36:06
Yeah.
36:07
Met some great people.
36:09
John Van Leeuwen from West Australia.
36:11
They had a really good committee, both all passionate about the sport.
36:16
You could see
36:17
Areas where it needed to grow or to be better or what… Ford Motor Company supported it very strongly in those days.
36:24
And that made it… They made it something and they had more clout than we as a committee had.
36:31
Yes.
36:31
But you used to work with them.
36:32
They had an executive whose job was to look… Part of his job was to look after Formula Ford.
36:38
Yeah.
36:39
You ran a team, I think there's a team here too, isn't there, from Troy Dunstan you're talking about there.
36:45
But there is a struggle in this point to get good engines and I think you do something about getting a dyno, don't you?
36:51
Is that right?
36:52
Troy's a qualified mechanic and one of the most dextrous persons I've ever seen with his hands.
36:58
His hand movements were incredible.
37:00
We said, well, we're doing this thing.
37:02
We want an edge in the engine department.
37:05
We'll get a dyno and let's do it.
37:07
And, yeah, the businesses were going well at that stage.
37:09
It was – the company was called Speed Tech and we did do that and Troy built some wonderful engines.
37:15
Excellent.
37:16
He built a good business making formula Ford engines at the back of Troy's mum and dad's property.
37:22
Love it.
37:22
They had quite a big property in the industrial area at Labrador.
37:26
Yep.
37:26
What cars were you running back then?
37:28
We were running Van Diemen's and Raynard's and then Michael Boylan come along and did the Spectrum.
37:34
Spectrum, yes.
37:36
And there was three or four of them.
37:38
The Van Diemen was the car to have at that stage.
37:41
The fields were awesome back then too, weren't they?
37:45
In the same way that you're passionate about some of the young guys that have come through Norwell now, there was this unbelievable melting pot of...
37:52
good young racers, wasn't it?
37:54
Oh, it's just to change the subject a bit.
37:56
I watched the Formula Ford races at QR last meeting there and the TA2 meeting.
38:05
Yeah.
38:05
And that was some of the best Formula Ford racing I've ever seen.
38:08
That's excellent.
38:09
Incredible.
38:10
Paul tells me you've become very good at looking at Natsoft and it tells you...
38:17
the story you want to know.
38:18
Like you can immediately see if someone's... Oh, yeah, yeah.
38:22
It's better than watching the television.
38:24
You know more about what's going on.
38:26
I love that.
38:27
But the subplot to that is that you're also keeping an eye on some of the good young kids that have come through.
38:32
Yeah, of course.
38:33
Well, aren't you?
38:33
Yeah.
38:34
He's done amazingly well with that.
38:36
Oh, it's a wonderful thing for Australian motorsport.
38:38
Yeah.
38:39
You're proud of that...
38:41
I think too because it's Paul's and what Paul has done there.
38:46
Yeah, of course I am, yes.
38:48
I'm very proud of what he achieved there.
38:50
He's created a successful business here.
38:52
Yeah.
38:53
But Frank Gardner and Tony had it for a long time and it had to rely on sponsorship.
38:58
Yes, absolutely.
38:59
Paul, using his business acumen, has created a terrific business and also created a fantastic result for young Australians who want to go motor racing.
39:08
It's even bigger than just Australians.
39:10
There's young Kiwis that are coming through there now.
39:12
I mean, arguably, from a Southern Hemisphere perspective, it is the university, isn't it?
39:17
I think he's done an incredible job.
39:20
I love that and the respect that he's garnered from that.
39:23
Can I come to a funny yarn if you don't mind me sharing this here?
39:26
It depends on how you feel.
39:28
Around the Formula Ford period, maybe we're venturing into other kinds of raising it, but I think it's Formula Ford.
39:36
Paul says the VN Commodore was the staple rental car of the day.
39:41
And you were infamous for single peg burnouts and rally stages.
39:46
Is this true or false?
39:47
And you may have filled the foyer at Warby Lodge in Wangaratta with tyre smoke one time to get the troops up and at them one morning.
39:54
Is this true?
39:57
It must have been my twin brother.
40:01
I love that.
40:01
We'll come to your one-liners because you are very good with one-liners.
40:04
That's excellent.
40:06
You have always kind of been, though, where I'm leading to there in a more serious sense is that you've always been one of the first to rise no matter how big the celebration was the night before or how long the team were out.
40:18
What is your secret to that?
40:20
My twin brother was out the night before.
40:22
I've got to meet at this twin brother.
40:23
He's obviously got some very good stories.
40:25
We've covered Queensland Gemini Rookie of the Year.
40:28
It was 1990.
40:29
I'd forgotten that you were a real front runner in the series.
40:31
I don't undersell that.
40:33
A year later,
40:35
There is a class win at Bathurst in a Toyota Corolla for... Jeff Fulham.
40:41
Yeah, Paul.
40:42
And I can't remember how.
40:44
I was 21 then, TM.
40:46
So I can remember it.
40:47
I can remember the podium that day and so on and how young Paul looked.
40:52
What were you doing over that race weekend?
40:54
What are your memories of that and so on?
40:56
Oh, I was there in the pits and helping out, and I think I might have helped the victory.
41:03
The factory Corollas were having trouble with their batteries.
41:08
Yes.
41:08
So I said to our guys, let's put another spare battery in the car and have some leads.
41:13
If something goes wrong, we can just whip the leads over and we're not going to have a problem.
41:18
The boats boys...
41:20
They lost five laps because their car wouldn't start under its battery.
41:24
So they had to switch it all over.
41:27
And you saw that.
41:28
Well, it was just common sense.
41:31
How do you fix a problem?
41:33
You don't let the problem happen if you're aware of what's going on.
41:36
Yeah.
41:37
Is there then something that perhaps extends from that?
41:40
Maybe it's a separate story.
41:41
I don't know.
41:41
Just around, was there an advertising dispute and there was kind of, what happened there?
41:48
I'm glad you've let up.
41:49
We ended up winning the class, which is a terrific thing.
41:52
Yes.
41:54
After it, there's a full page ad showing the factory car saying it's won Bathurst.
42:01
So I got onto the founder, I think, Breen, his name.
42:04
Michael Breen.
42:04
Yeah, Mike Breen.
42:05
You owe us some money, mate.
42:06
You're using our victory for advertising your car.
42:10
That's not fair.
42:11
And what did he say?
42:14
He didn't say much.
42:15
So I had to speak to him again and we ended up settling.
42:18
Did you?
42:18
I think we got 50,000 of them.
42:21
I just want to jump in here for a moment.
42:23
This is Terry's pod and both he and Paul, for that matter, recall this story with the same detail.
42:29
I'm not going to question that.
42:30
I have no reason to.
42:32
I thought it right for balance to get in touch with Mike Breen and ask for his recollections only because I hadn't heard about this dispute before.
42:40
Mike retired in 2017 after 30 years with Toyota.
42:44
He recalls that the ad
42:45
had been prepared ahead of the race, which often happened back then, to help ensure it made the Sunday deadline for Monday's paper if they won.
42:55
Sounds like the agency or another department hit the go button without a final check for correctness.
43:00
As Terry said, it wasn't the right car or team promoted in the ad as the class winners.
43:07
Mike recalls Jeff Full getting in touch and coming to his office to try and iron the matter out.
43:12
Breen recalls a payout, but he doesn't remember it being as much as 50 grand.
43:17
He thought it was less than half that.
43:19
The most important thing is that the record books show the right winners on that day 35 years ago, Paul and Jeff.
43:27
And we now know about another win after the chequered flag for this team too.
43:31
Let's get back to the convo.
43:34
The win, I mean, in itself must have meant a lot.
43:37
To go one of the greatest races, I know it's a class win, but that's a very significant moment.
43:42
Wonderful.
43:42
Yeah.
43:43
Yeah, Frank Gardner come up to me afterwards and said, that's a terrific effort, getting a podium at that stage.
43:50
And I used to sit next to Frank on the planes going to different Formula Ford meetings and got to know him a bit.
43:56
Yeah.
43:57
He thought that was a good deal.
43:58
And I thought Frank thinking it was a good deal.
44:00
Was a good deal.
44:01
Yeah.
44:02
Well, I mean, you've raised something really cool there, right?
44:05
I mean, I can remember him being at Norwell.
44:07
I remember him being a...
44:10
a very straight shooting human being.
44:12
Did you guys get on well?
44:15
What was it like with Frank?
44:17
Yeah, Frank, we become very close friends.
44:21
Glory used to dine with us quite often.
44:23
Lovely.
44:24
I always admired his ability as a driver and his thinking and skills.
44:29
I thought Frank was a real credit to himself.
44:32
He must have had some great stories from back in the day, did he, from the UK?
44:35
Yeah.
44:40
Yeah.
44:41
But in the same breath, I mean, you know, a young Tony Longhurst and what was he like at managing the drivers and their personalities and things like that?
44:50
Tony's pretty hard to manage.
44:51
Was he?
44:52
No, Tony was Tony.
44:53
He's a fart in a bottle.
44:55
Incredible energy.
44:56
Yeah.
44:57
You have to admire Tony's attitude to life.
45:00
He had great one-liners, Frank, and there was some gun internationals that they would bring out.
45:05
I mean, Alan Jones was in the mix there.
45:08
Paul, obviously, I could vividly remember the B&H cars and then Diet Coke, Beamers and so on.
45:13
That was a pretty cool chapter.
45:16
Yeah, the respect that...
45:17
Frank was held by the international community, it was probably more so than the respect he was held in Australia.
45:23
Really?
45:24
Yeah, well, Sid Watkins, the eminent...
45:26
Yes, Professor.
45:27
Yeah.
45:28
Jackie Stewart would never have come to Australia unless he spent some time with Frank.
45:32
Sterling Moss thought the world of Frank.
45:35
Anyone you met from overseas, Eric Broadley, Patrick Head, I was introduced to him and he said,
45:51
Is it around this time that you begin to do a bit of things with the CAMS Commission too?
45:54
Is that – or did that come a bit later?
45:56
No, it was the Super 2 champion.
46:00
Was it?
46:00
Super 2 ring?
46:01
Super 2 ring, yeah.
46:02
Okay.
46:02
Before I talk CAMS Commission, how did the Super 2 ring thing actually come about?
46:07
Okay.
46:08
Well, the Motorsport Australia, they wanted to have –
46:16
They were wanting to go the V8 route.
46:18
Yes.
46:19
So they then reset the rules and penalised the BMWs on their two-litre engines against the V8s.
46:25
So you had no chance of winning.
46:31
So the two-litre manufacturers got together under the auspices of Ron Meacham from BMW to set up a different championship.
46:40
Yep.
46:41
And then, I mean, some heavy hitters, Terry, Alan Gow, Peter Aditon.
46:48
You're in.
46:48
The three of us.
46:50
Peter Aditon was keen to do something and I was and then Alan Gow because he was Aussie and he became, the three of us become shareholders as Peter Gow, our group, and Alan Gow become the owners of Super Touring Australia.
47:06
I can vividly remember at its zenith, you know, Tony Cochran and Peter McKay, and I get on well with both of those guys, and Peter had a very significant journalist with columns in the Sydney Morning Herald and so on.
47:20
I mean, the war at its peak was pretty intense.
47:22
What was it like navigating all of that?
47:26
Yeah, well, Peter McKay was anti-Cochran.
47:31
I know he was anti-V8s and whatnot, but they didn't hit him.
47:35
Tony's not a hard bloke to have an argument with.
47:39
Yeah.
47:40
He just had to deal.
47:42
But Tony was a great salesman.
47:44
Yes.
47:44
Yes.
47:46
And he didn't take any prisoners.
47:48
No.
47:49
The sport opened doors for different people.
47:55
I think immediately of Lee Diffie.
47:57
Yes.
47:58
You have a wonderful, to this day, relationship with him.
48:02
If I'm right, TM, he, during his period with IndyCar, I think for six straight years, would call you from the track on the morning of the Indy 500 and talk to you and Paul.
48:13
And he's just one of those guys who vividly remembers the door that was opened for him by you.
48:19
Yeah, we got it on mobility, of course, but Paul orchestrated that, not me.
48:25
But what you did do though, I mean, when the opportunity came up for him to ultimately go to supercars, he spent a wonderful period with you guys, but there was a chance for him to go to supercars with Channel 10 and so on.
48:38
I think he was very nervous about that and he
48:40
He had a lunch with you and Paul.
48:42
Oh, no, we wished him all the best.
48:45
That was, which I think was amazing.
48:47
You immediately, you know, a lot of people could have seen that as a defection and being quite… His natural ability, how could you hold that talent back?
48:59
I love that.
49:00
I think that's true.
49:01
I mean, and then I would later on…
49:04
I think in that conversation, I'm paraphrasing here, but you may have even expressed to him that that opens an opportunity for someone else and I was very lucky to benefit from a bit of that.
49:12
I probably, Mike Porter was very insistent on me wearing ties at that stage.
49:16
I probably could have done without the tie, TM, but anyway, that's it.
49:19
That is another story.
49:20
Yeah.
49:21
Well, I mean, I think, you know, even in your, the stuff you're talking about with property before, I think you gave him a bit of guidance around that stuff.
49:29
Yes, yeah.
49:30
I mean, he was heavily involved from the, I can remember him walking in with the leather satchel that would have been full of press releases and he'd have the sunnies on and he was kind of the PR guy of that era, wasn't he?
49:43
He was great.
49:45
He was very passionate.
49:46
His attention to detail was incredible.
49:48
Yeah.
49:48
And he knew how to get the column inches, which was important in those days.
49:51
Those days, yeah.
49:52
Ex-journalist.
49:53
You brought together for that period lots of good people.
49:57
I mean, Kelvin O'Reilly running, helping to run the, you know, I think a young Michael Massey was floating around in the background at the time, wasn't he?
50:03
Yeah, he was a protege of Kelvin's.
50:05
Yeah.
50:05
Yeah.
50:05
So it was a great chapter.
50:08
Can I come to a couple of little things if you don't mind me doing that?
50:11
I've spoken to different people for our podcast chat today and I want to come to your grandson.
50:16
I want to come to Nash here.
50:17
All right.
50:18
And I asked him for a little something that might be a conversation prompt.
50:22
He's got a beautiful relationship with you, I know.
50:25
He said, I've been thinking about something to chat about that I perhaps wasn't there for.
50:31
I've always been interested to hear the story of when Dad and Tony Longhurst had the incident at Winton.
50:37
In my head, I'm immediately thinking here of Darrell Eastlake going off in the commentary and things like that.
50:42
In the coverage, they actually show Pop almost walking out onto the track, and then he looks like he's talking to Tony Longhurst.
50:49
And I wonder what he remembers from that day, from the incident, perhaps even what he might have said to Tony.
50:55
It just looks like exactly what Pop's personality is.
50:59
His kid is getting punched in the head,
51:03
He looks very calm.
51:04
He's walking out there.
51:05
He even looks like he's got a smile on his face for some reason.
51:08
And that smile is something that is at the track to this day.
51:12
He is always smiling, even if it is after the worst day at the track.
51:17
What is your memory of that day?
51:18
I remember it pretty well.
51:19
Do you?
51:21
But I remember seeing the accident then.
51:24
When you were on the site, you didn't see the fight so much.
51:27
Yes.
51:28
But you knew something had happened and I walked over to get to the car, first of all, to make sure Paul was okay.
51:34
Yep.
51:35
But then Tony was coming the other way and I said, what's going on, Tony?
51:38
Tony.
51:43
And I thought that was funny.
51:48
I smiled, but an incredible experience, really.
51:51
The irony of it is those things created a bit of inertia around it, didn't they?
51:57
Everyone was talking about it, basically, weren't they?
51:59
Well, we were in partnership with Tony in the motorplex then.
52:03
Yeah.
52:04
And that partnership obviously had to be dissolved.
52:07
Okay.
52:07
And it was.
52:08
Yeah.
52:08
So we were then left being in partnership with Frank.
52:11
Okay.
52:12
Yeah.
52:13
From the TOCA board, you also help...
52:17
a young, the work that you're doing on the toker board is a separate thing.
52:22
Where I'm leading here is that in addition to that, you also kindly help a young Nigel Barclay, who's messaged me for this too.
52:29
Kiwi, who worked at Norwell for a good period of time there too.
52:32
He ran this Honda back then for Mark Gattat and it was a bit ragtag.
52:36
They had a truck that they sort of stitched together and so on.
52:39
And
52:40
At that stage of his life, he kind of really stuck his neck out and had a go, basically.
52:44
He says that you told him that you reckoned he had enough money to get in trouble, but not out of it.
52:52
He says, you were amazingly generous.
52:55
He described himself as an idiot.
52:57
He goes, he was amazingly generous to an idiot like me at that stage.
53:01
I asked him once why he supported me.
53:04
And Terry said, I reminded him of himself when he was younger.
53:09
And he really took that as a compliment.
53:11
Why?
53:12
Well, he wasn't.
53:13
Nigel was no obstacles.
53:15
Is that right?
53:16
Well, he'd come to a hurdle.
53:17
He'd find he'd go over it, under it or around it.
53:20
He's still doing that today, isn't he?
53:21
Exactly, yeah.
53:23
And you admire that in some, and I laughed.
53:26
He was cold at one time, and the meeting was over, and they had this old bloody ute or something, and he's over .05, and his mates are driving around, and hanging out the sides of it in the pits, and grinned all over their face, and I just couldn't stop laughing.
53:46
Laughing.
53:48
He, just in expanding or finishing that point, he says there was a lesson that I think you gave him around sort of decent sponsorship too.
53:58
And maybe this might have lent into the supercar side of things.
54:00
I can't remember whether this is super touring or not.
54:03
But I think the essence of what you said to him was...
54:07
that every dollar was worth $2 and you got to keep the dollar that you would have spent.
54:14
Is that right?
54:14
I'm maybe not phrasing that right.
54:16
Just explain what you may have meant around teaching him about how to maximize the sponsorship dollar perhaps or what you would have suggested.
54:25
It might have been on the taxation side of it.
54:27
Okay.
54:28
To complete the compliment, he says your words of wisdom today still resonate with the Formula Ford families that he's dealing with.
54:36
That's good, isn't it?
54:37
Yeah, I'm pleased to hear that.
54:39
He still uses that to this day.
54:41
That brings me to the bus, Lurl Catering.
54:46
I have gone in on a number of occasions, different iterations.
54:50
I don't know.
54:50
It could have been transporters or whatever, but the bus is the one that I immediately think of.
54:54
She's been unbelievable, hasn't she?
54:56
She's incredible.
54:56
She's incredible.
54:57
You know, like I've walked in here today and there's...
55:00
beautiful lemon slice or something along those lines.
55:02
I mean, she – and it wasn't unusual for us to do that, to sneak in and have a little glass of wine or something or other.
55:07
Yeah, she loved doing it.
55:09
It's tremendous, isn't it?
55:10
You know, that stuff, I reckon, made the motor racing in some ways.
55:15
It was good, wasn't it?
55:16
And that's naturally her, I think.
55:17
That's exactly it.
55:18
It's naturally her.
55:19
Yeah.
55:20
Yeah.
55:20
Does she get nervous at all around?
55:22
Oh, yeah, terribly.
55:23
Does she?
55:24
Oh, yeah.
55:24
She has to hide when Nash is racing now.
55:26
Does she?
55:26
Yeah.
55:27
Was she like that with Paul too?
55:28
Was it the same?
55:29
Yeah, yeah.
55:30
Has it got easier for her or not really?
55:32
Ask her.
55:35
I'll just give you an hint on the bus story.
55:38
She used to have a swear jar.
55:39
Oh, I forgot about that.
55:40
Yes.
55:41
The swear jar was there.
55:42
The most regular contributor was Darryl Beattie.
55:45
Was it?
55:46
Why doesn't that shock me, T.M.
55:47
?
55:49
And that would have come with a cheeky grin from him too and knowing that he probably had to make a contribution in the wake of all of that.
55:55
I can picture him doing that.
55:57
And Spears always stayed at a hotel and come to the race and he'd come to the bus for breakfast.
56:06
And he'd eat one of the least tasted sandwich and he'd say, these are seriously good.
56:14
That's the end of part one of my feature episode with Terry Morris.
56:17
Before he fires up the barbie for lunch, we're going to squeeze in a part two, which we'll release for you within 24 hours of this one.
56:24
And we'll tackle a nice mix of business and motorsport in that convo too, as well as his love of family.
56:30
Fire that up when you're ready, right here on Rusty's Garage.