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Garry Rush · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:14
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:28
  In this episode, I'm in Blacktown in Sydney's west at the massive pick-and-pay-less self-serve wrecking yard and auto parts business run by Speedway icon Gary Rush.
• 0:38
  The man they call the Master Blaster won a staggering 10 Australian sprint car titles while dominating the sport in the 70s and 80s.
• 0:47
  His decorated career actually spans more than 40 years, and at the height of it, he had a 60% podium strike rate.
• 0:55
  That is just staggering when you think about it.
• 0:57
  He raced in other categories too, and you may be surprised to learn that at one point, he had serious Formula One ambitions, which seems like the absolute antithesis of the dirt and clay ovals where he became famous.
• 1:09
  Now retired from driving, the Australian Motorsport Hall of Famer still loves the sport.
• 1:14
  A dream that began on the other side of the track fence, watching on in the stands.
• 1:19
  Back in them days, it was probably 1963.
• 1:22
  We were typical young guys with their first cars and their early model Holdens, lowered and black wheels and some super exhaust on them, a Myers exhaust system.
• 1:37
  And we were there one Sunday afternoon with a mate of mine called John Price and looking at the Westmead Speedway and we were Holden fans.
• 1:48
  And all these Fords were out there winning all these races on the Speedway dirt at Westmead, and that's where the Westmead Hospital is there.
• 1:56
  Yeah.
• 1:56
  A lot of people don't know that.
• 1:57
  That's where Westmead Speedway was.
• 2:00
  And we... Well, gee, why ain't there no Holdens here?
• 2:05
  Yeah.
• 2:07
  So the next week we went to the local wreckers at Old Guildford, where we lived, and asked him, would he give us an old Holden car and we're going to take it to Westmeas for your own race.
• 2:18
  So you literally built the thing yourself?
• 2:21
  We put some bar work in it and we put a...
• 2:24
  We had a hot Holden engine with triple SU carburetors on it and all that hot stuff.
• 2:30
  And we took it to Westmead Spurway and they were standing starts them days.
• 2:35
  Were they?
• 2:36
  Yep.
• 2:37
  And the Holden, nothing could come close to it as far as acceleration, been mile forwards, the old V8 forwards.
• 2:44
  But...
• 2:45
  They didn't see which way the Holden went until we got to the first corner, and that was a problem.
• 2:52
  The Holden suspension wasn't built to race on dirt.
• 2:55
  It was built to race on bitumen roads, and their mile forwards were built back in the 1930s, and that's all they had was dirt tracks.
• 3:04
  And so over the next few months, their mile forwards become the glamour car to have.
• 3:10
  The Holdens didn't steer on dirt.
• 3:12
  Was the class called Stockrods?
• 3:14
  Stockrods.
• 3:14
  Exactly.
• 3:15
  That's what it was.
• 3:15
  And I remember the gun stockrod driver of the day was Maxi Hugo.
• 3:21
  And I think Steve Brazier's dad, Stan, he was a gun driver up there.
• 3:26
  That's the Brazier family.
• 3:28
  And they're still in Speedway.
• 3:30
  We call them nowadays a speed car, but a purist knows them as a midget.
• 3:37
  When did the, I mean, when you look at your career timeline, it seems like a relatively short period from all of a sudden you were in stock rods to the next thing you were getting opportunities in midgets.
• 3:48
  Back in them days, to go to the Sydney Showground as a young guy, never driven before, you have to go in the Encourage race.
• 3:55
  Okay.
• 3:56
  They're called Encourage race.
• 3:58
  And they were a demo derby.
• 4:01
  To get through there, it's a lot of luck.
• 4:04
  I was lucky enough never have to race in an Encourage race.
• 4:07
  Okay.
• 4:08
  Because my luck come about is I got into a midget at Westmead.
• 4:12
  So the midgets used to race at Westmead on a Sunday afternoon in winter and they used to race the Sydney Showground in summer.
• 4:18
  Well, my midget career started at Westmead in winter.
• 4:23
  And I was lucky enough to, I got into a couple of half-decent cars and do a little bit.
• 4:30
  And then the Higgins brothers come along and they had a very good midget, number 30.
• 4:35
  And they asked me would I drive it.
• 4:37
  And that was when the people that run the midgets decided, let's go American type of qualifying system.
• 4:47
  And lucky enough, I shot my bum in Kevin's car and Paul's car and I was quick enough to be an A grader off the bat.
• 4:58
  Amazing.
• 4:59
  So I never had to go to Sydney Showground and go for encourage races.
• 5:04
  Because of the American qualifying system, I was virtually a back marker within a short period.
• 5:09
  Cars now are modern-day midget.
• 5:11
  You're talking probably, you know, 300 horsepower, fundamentally four-cylinder engine sitting in front of you, weapon car.
• 5:19
  But I would imagine from a driving point of view, they're a joyous thing when they're in full flight.
• 5:24
  Back then, though, they were also a dangerous thing in the sense of safety in your career.
• 5:29
  Yeah, they came a long way, didn't they?
• 5:31
  Yeah, before cages.
• 5:34
  I remember when I started racing Sydney Showground, and by this time I was racing for...
• 5:40
  Kevin Higgins and maybe the Dark family.
• 5:43
  I'm not sure which car I was racing, but, you know, and I'd turn up at the Sydney showground and there were all the guns there, the Johnny Stewarts and the McGavins, and I was just a young kid.
• 5:56
  I walked into the gents' toilet one day and they were all having their nervous.
• 6:01
  You name it, they were having it.
• 6:04
  And that's, you know, it's just a pretty deadly sport back in them days.
• 6:08
  What were the early learnings for you?
• 6:09
  Because it's, for those that are listening that don't know Speedway intimately, I think it's a beautiful sport because a bit like basketball or baseball in America, it all happens in front of you.
• 6:20
  You can't miss it.
• 6:21
  It's this wonderful cauldron of action right in front of you.
• 6:25
  But as a driver, you have to learn where to place the car at certain moments.
• 6:30
  Were there people that taught you that?
• 6:31
  How did you learn that sort of stuff?
• 6:33
  You teach yourself, mate.
• 6:34
  Do you?
• 6:35
  And there's no such thing as practice.
• 6:36
  The practice is in the race.
• 6:39
  No, you just, you know, you think back.
• 6:43
  But when you're fast, you know the quick way around.
• 6:45
  And after, you know, Greg, I've sat in the infield looking at my wrecked car and said if I only would have waited.
• 6:54
  I've done that many, many times.
• 6:56
  And you learn by those experiences.
• 6:57
  Yeah.
• 6:58
  I think you crashed one time at Liverpool.
• 7:01
  Your dad, or my dad rather, has done some business with you over time.
• 7:05
  And for a little bit of preparation for this, I was talking to him and he could vividly recall a crash at Liverpool, I think it was, in Sydney, where you'd climbed maybe the rear wheel of Steve Kintz's car.
• 7:15
  a legend of uh speedway racing and you had quite a big crash and in the interview might have even been with mike or steve raymond afterwards you said well i've now got some very good parts for left over for my next race car and things like that yeah that particular night i got up into the lights at liverpool squareway yeah it was um it was uh it was a good crash yeah
• 7:34
  It wasn't the biggest one that you would have.
• 7:37
  I'm jumping all over the place here.
• 7:38
  The one that fans kind of, and probably you, think of is 79 Ascot in America.
• 7:46
  You were driving a wingless sprint car.
• 7:49
  What happened that day and, you know, how did you...
• 7:53
  We went over for the Nationals, Eldora, the big race at Eldora Speedway, and then go to Knoxville for the Nationals.
• 8:02
  And we run seventh at the Nationals, which was, back in them days, it was pretty decent just to make the main event.
• 8:09
  But since then, there's been a couple of young Australians who've gone very well over there.
• 8:15
  And we're on the way home, we're going to put the car in a container at LA and
• 8:20
  And we thought, oh, typical Speedway guys, you know, I had a few people, Ivan Walk and John Barrett, they were all, and we thought, let's go to Ascot Park.
• 8:29
  Let's go.
• 8:30
  We'll do one last race, then we'll put it in a container tomorrow, right?
• 8:33
  That's what we thought.
• 8:35
  Well, lucky enough, I made the trophy dash.
• 8:38
  And I was on the front row of the trophy dash and I went into turn one and that's all I remember about it.
• 8:46
  I woke up two days later in hospital.
• 8:49
  Yeah.
• 8:51
  Were you in a coma for that length of time?
• 8:53
  Yeah, yeah, I hit my head pretty hard.
• 8:57
  I smashed all my helmet, but yeah.
• 9:01
  But I got over.
• 9:02
  It took me 12 months to get over that one.
• 9:03
  Sometimes doctors, you can meet a couple of good doctors in motor racing that understand the game and are supportive in that regard, but often doctors you meet when it comes to motor racing will say, hey, that's enough.
• 9:17
  Or, you know, were you ever told to stop at that stage?
• 9:20
  No, I remember when I raced for the McGee family at Sydney Shagrin, I was lucky enough to race in one of their cars for a couple of years.
• 9:31
  And I remember Headley, he was like an advisor, great man.
• 9:38
  Almost a mentor?
• 9:40
  Yeah, yeah, he used to, you know, he used to keep your feet on the ground a bit, he did.
• 9:46
  And he introduced me to a doctor because his workshop was just down the road from St Vincent's Hospital.
• 9:52
  And the doctors used to call in there and talk racing with him and things like that.
• 9:56
  And he introduced me to a doctor once.
• 9:58
  And that doctor, he said, mate, down the road there, we can just about fix anything except the head.
• 10:04
  And he said, you know...
• 10:06
  You damage it, we'll fix it.
• 10:08
  But we can't fix anything up here.
• 10:11
  We don't know enough about that yet.
• 10:13
  You mentioned a moment ago Sydney Showground Speedway.
• 10:16
  These days it is television studios.
• 10:19
  It's not what it once was, but it was an incredible track back in the day.
• 10:25
  You guys would command a decent amount of space in the papers for news on Speedway.
• 10:31
  I mean, it was a...
• 10:32
  Thanks to the Romans.
• 10:33
  Yeah, well, that was my next question.
• 10:36
  Yeah, Mike and Steve, you know, the sport owes them a lot.
• 10:41
  You know, they really, really kept us up there.
• 10:45
  You know, Mike's got a hell of a history and so has Steve as far as what they've done for the sport.
• 10:51
  And I hope people realise that because they're, like, I'm getting elderly, but they're getting elderly and I think people realise what they've done for the sport.
• 11:00
  I certainly do.
• 11:02
  I do too.
• 11:02
  From an aspiring kind of commentator standpoint, you look at what they've done.
• 11:07
  Out of the blue one night, I was reading news on a radio station in Sydney and the phone rang after a bulletin I did and it was Steve.
• 11:14
  And all he wanted to do was say, hey, mate, great job, keep pressing on and sort of encouragement for a young bloke.
• 11:19
  And I always remember that very, very fondly, but I'm acutely aware, as you say, of what they've done for the sport.
• 11:26
  But come back to the Sydney showground, it was...
• 11:29
  a phenomenal place wasn't it and there's so many great races competed there there'll never be another sydney speedway not in people like yourselves and your dad you know what we remember how the sydney speedway was there it'll never go closer you know i had an interesting night a very interesting night only a few months ago um the a few of the people around sydney had a surprise birthday party for dennis newland fantastic
• 11:56
  right?
• 11:57
  And someone rang me midweek and said, would you be interested in going to a surprise party for Dennis Newland?
• 12:03
  And I said, yeah, that'd be good.
• 12:07
  And at about that time, there's about 25 people going.
• 12:10
  Apparently every Tuesday night, I think it's Tuesday night, he goes out and has dinner with a friend of his at Warwick Farm at a hotel at Warwick Farm.
• 12:20
  And so anyway, that was going to be the surprise birthday party for him.
• 12:24
  70 people turned up.
• 12:26
  And only word of mouth.
• 12:28
  Word of mouth.
• 12:29
  And it was just the best night because we got the sale out of a lot of people we hadn't seen, but then we got Dennis Newland up there.
• 12:38
  And you know Dennis.
• 12:39
  He's just a quite unassuming type of bloke.
• 12:43
  And he took questions off the floor.
• 12:45
  The guy's like a cyclopaedia.
• 12:48
  He knows every race that was run at the Sydney Show.
• 12:52
  He can tell you who won it, who runs second and third, and what times they took to run the race.
• 12:56
  He's a phenomenal... And we sat there in awe listening to Dennis Newland.
• 13:00
  And people like him are just phenomenal.
• 13:03
  He's a part of the framework, a long-time journalist and a guy who's been immersed in the sport, as you rightly point out.
• 13:10
  Let's take a little sidetrack here for a moment because throughout your career there was some circuit racing and you, in 1971, contested the Formula Ford Driver to Europe Series.
• 13:23
  Larry Perkins won the championship that year.
• 13:25
  You won the Phillip Island round and finished top three in the championship, I reckon.
• 13:29
  I'm not sure if I don't want a round, but...
• 13:31
  It was the year before.
• 13:33
  Larry come the second year.
• 13:34
  Okay.
• 13:35
  The first year was funny.
• 13:36
  There's some good stories about the first year in Form of the Forge Australia.
• 13:39
  Oh, well, we all read the rule book and I went to Waggots and I give the rule book to the Waggots engineering because they're the gun people doing engines.
• 13:53
  And the bloke, Dougie Tyment, used to race sidecars.
• 13:57
  He's a cam grinder over at Waggots.
• 13:59
  He said, yeah, we could build an engine for you.
• 14:03
  We all turned up at Sandown Park.
• 14:07
  I think every competitor got the rule book wrong.
• 14:10
  They were hot engines, you name it.
• 14:13
  One particular guy, he worked for a Mercedes dealer.
• 14:16
  He worked for a Mercedes dealer and the guy racing the Formula Ford, he was the boss.
• 14:23
  He said to his mechanic, I'll give you a dollar, what was it, a dollar per horsepower per week.
• 14:32
  And we could only ever get 86 horsepower.
• 14:36
  I think it was 86 horsepower out of our Formula Ford engine.
• 14:40
  But everyone was talking 100 horsepower.
• 14:43
  And this bloke said, oh, I want $100 a week.
• 14:46
  That was his wages, right?
• 14:48
  So he got his boss $100.
• 14:50
  Horsepower right, but we went to the second race at Sandown and he went past us going down the straight like we were going out of sight.
• 14:57
  They pulled him down.
• 14:58
  He had a hot motor in there.
• 15:00
  There's some good stories the first, second year.
• 15:01
  But Larry come along in the second year.
• 15:04
  Richard Knight won the first Formula Four championship and went to England.
• 15:09
  I don't think anyone's ever heard of him before.
• 15:12
  Well, there's another story there because I followed him over to England.
• 15:16
  Yes.
• 15:16
  But Larry come along in the second year, the Coanje kid, and mate, he was a gun.
• 15:21
  Did you get on OK?
• 15:24
  Larry and I did.
• 15:25
  Larry, yeah, we did.
• 15:28
  Larry, you know, back in them days we had a few offs and different opinions with different drivers and cams had hauled in and Larry went and gave evidence on my behalf and a few instances I got involved with.
• 15:43
  Yeah.
• 15:43
  Fantastic.
• 15:44
  It is 180 of the kind of racing that we know you for and for the great things that you've done in Speedway, mate.
• 15:53
  So did you enjoy the whole circuit racing thing?
• 15:56
  And what was the spark that made you think, Roddo, I'm going to go and give Formula 4 a crack?
• 16:01
  Why did that come about?
• 16:02
  Well, I was a young bloke.
• 16:04
  I wanted to be World Motor Racing Champion.
• 16:05
  So to follow Jack Brabham and kind of go to Formula 1?
• 16:08
  I read all the books and said, I can do that.
• 16:12
  And I think every driver that gets into a racing car at that certain age thinks he's going to be world champion, right?
• 16:19
  And I read enough to where if you want to be world champion, you better go to England and get in a former Ford.
• 16:25
  And when Richard Knight won the world's first series, I followed him over.
• 16:31
  I think I run...
• 16:34
  I might have run third or fourth in the series, I think.
• 16:37
  I might have run.
• 16:38
  I'm not sure.
• 16:38
  Okay.
• 16:39
  But I still had the belief that I was as good as anyone in the world.
• 16:44
  And I read about this particular Formula Ford.
• 16:48
  It was a Merlin Formula Ford that...
• 16:54
  Tim Schenken, I think, drove.
• 16:57
  Okay.
• 16:58
  And someone else drove it.
• 17:00
  And I think they both won Formula Ford Series in England in this particular car, and I seen it for sale.
• 17:07
  I said, I'm going to England to buy that car.
• 17:09
  That's the car I have to have, you know, because I was a motor mechanic.
• 17:13
  I'm going to England to buy that car.
• 17:15
  So, and I had a wife and a couple of young kids at that stage, but I had enough money to save up to get on a plane.
• 17:24
  I went over there, but before I got there, Jodie Schechter had bought the car and he won the Formula Ford Series.
• 17:34
  He won the Formula 4 Series in that same Merlin car.
• 17:39
  So anyway, what happened was I got off at Heathrow.
• 17:45
  This is quite a funny story I'm told too.
• 17:47
  Well, Richard Knight's supposed to have met me there.
• 17:49
  I've never been to England and it was summer here and it was summer here and it was bloody cold over there and I got off a plane with a T-shirt on.
• 18:00
  Anyway...
• 18:02
  Richard Knight wasn't there, so I had an address.
• 18:05
  I got into a taxi and he drove around for a half hour and charged me 20 quid.
• 18:11
  And I said, oh, okay, and that's the address, so that's where Richard's supposed to be staying in that house there.
• 18:16
  And I seen this plane go across the top and I said, where is that?
• 18:20
  You were still at Heathrow.
• 18:21
  I was still on the other side of Heathrow after 20 quid.
• 18:25
  So anyway, I got the first Taste of England.
• 18:28
  I got ripped off for 20 quid.
• 18:29
  But anyway, Richard opened the door and said, oh, Gary, I'm sorry, I forgot to meet you.
• 18:37
  And then he said, well, oh, gee, I had a room for you, but that's taken, but I know another place I can put you in.
• 18:50
  So he took me down the road.
• 18:51
  I think I stayed with Richard the first night.
• 18:53
  The next day he put me down the road and put me in this convent in England.
• 18:58
  It's a church and a convent and it was full of expats, Australians and Kiwis that didn't have a cent to bless and so forth and they couldn't get home.
• 19:09
  And I had a bit of money in my kick and...
• 19:16
  Anyway, long story short, Richard Knight had just bought a Formula Ford and he wasn't a modern mechanic so I helped him.
• 19:23
  I helped him put it together and so I worked there for a few days and then going home to this horrible place to live at night time and I met Vern Shupin.
• 19:40
  He was the boss of...
• 19:43
  a Formula Ford manufacturer building palaces, I think that's the name pronounced, palaces, racing cars, and Vern was the boss.
• 19:54
  And you'd walk in there and you'd see 50 Formula Fords getting built with all these blokes that want to be world motor racing champion, and Richard Knight was one of them.
• 20:03
  But...
• 20:05
  So that was interesting.
• 20:07
  And then I just happened to ring a friend of mine from California, Larry Burton.
• 20:14
  He'd raced here and he's like a big brother to me.
• 20:18
  And...
• 20:20
  I rang him and he said, where are you at?
• 20:22
  I said, London.
• 20:23
  He said, what are you doing there?
• 20:25
  I said, freezing to death.
• 20:26
  He says, oh, it's 105 degrees here at Roseville, California today and that sounded good to me.
• 20:31
  He said, you better get over here.
• 20:34
  And by this time I'd spent about four or five days there and my plans because the car had been sold and I remember going to a racetrack with Richard Knight.
• 20:45
  Yeah.
• 20:46
  just before he raced his car, a place called Fruxton.
• 20:50
  Yes.
• 20:51
  And here I was changing gears in the back of his Formula Ford in the snow.
• 20:56
  So things weren't going too well for me, I tell you.
• 20:59
  But anyway, I remember going to Richard's first race at Bran's Hatch, Bran's Hatch, and I think Richard got punted in the first corner.
• 21:12
  But we had to get there at five in the morning.
• 21:15
  Five in the morning.
• 21:16
  In the dark?
• 21:17
  Yeah.
• 21:18
  I remember stepping out of the, he had this old Volkswagen combi there with the Formula 4 in the back and I remember getting out of the car and next thing I'm on ice, I slip way over Turkey.
• 21:30
  There's ice on the ground.
• 21:32
  That was London and when you come from Sydney with this beautiful weather we have here in Sydney, snow and ice doesn't go down too well with me.
• 21:42
  That phone call to America, am I right in saying that because things perhaps hadn't gone as smoothly as you expected in that journey to the UK and the like, that you literally jumped on a plane and went to the States, did you?
• 22:01
  The next day, Vern was very good to meet you.
• 22:06
  Do you know Vern?
• 22:07
  He's a lovely bloke, him and his wife, Jan. And they could see I was kind of homesick and nothing was going right for me.
• 22:17
  And they said...
• 22:19
  Come home for dinner tonight, stay at our place.
• 22:21
  By this time I'd already booked my flight to America.
• 22:25
  But I did and it was a lovely, it was just lovely to stay with them that one night.
• 22:30
  And Vern run me to the airport the next day and on the way there stopped at Brabham's and showed me Brabham's factory and, you know, things were starting to turn around.
• 22:40
  I was only there for maybe five or six days and...
• 22:45
  Things were starting to turn around, but by that time I'd already made plans to go to the States and that's – you asked me how did my career turn.
• 22:56
  What happened was Larry Burton picked me up from San Francisco and I told him – by the way, Vernon won the first –
• 23:09
  Formula Atlantic race at Brands Hatch in a Palliser racing car.
• 23:14
  He, an Australian guy, won the first Formula Atlantic race at Brands Hatch, right?
• 23:21
  When I got there, I told Larry on the phone what Vern had done, right?
• 23:32
  He picked me up from the airport.
• 23:33
  We're driving up Highway 80 to Sacramento.
• 23:38
  And he said, Gary, I've got your sprint car ride at my track.
• 23:42
  He owned a racetrack in Roseville, California.
• 23:44
  He says, you're racing on Friday night.
• 23:46
  I said, really?
• 23:47
  He said, yeah, I've got a sprint car ride for you.
• 23:50
  And he said, I just thought I'd show you the local paper, the Sacramento Bee.
• 23:55
  It was the local paper.
• 23:58
  And he said, just happened to read the sports page.
• 23:59
  And there was a photo of me racing at Roseville, California, this Friday night, Gary Rush.
• 24:06
  Just beat Jackie Stewart in a Formula 2 race at Branch Hatch.
• 24:13
  I said, Larry, you can't say things like that.
• 24:17
  That's not true.
• 24:18
  He said, these dumb yanks wouldn't know the difference.
• 24:22
  Details.
• 24:24
  So that's, anyway, that's Larry Burton.
• 24:27
  Anyone that knows Larry would laugh what I just said and know how true, that's how Larry Burton was.
• 24:34
  Larry Burton was like a big brother to me and I always said if he wanted to be President of the United States, he could have been.
• 24:41
  Amazing.
• 24:43
  It was that type of bloke, you know.
• 24:44
  I love it.
• 24:44
  I love the side stories.
• 24:45
  And also, too, the journey to England there is something that people that listen to the podcast may not have been aware of.
• 24:52
  And we're going to get Vern on for a chat at some point.
• 24:55
  I mean, his own career has been remarkable, what he's achieved in world motorsport.
• 25:00
  Before we move into the whole American world,
• 25:05
  and significant sprint car chapter for you.
• 25:08
  I want to just touch on a couple of the midgets to begin with.
• 25:14
  Firstly, I reckon my dad can recall meeting you for the first time at a Caltex garage in Auburn in Sydney.
• 25:23
  My first place of business, yeah.
• 25:24
  Your first place of business.
• 25:25
  Tell me about that.
• 25:26
  Yeah.
• 25:27
  Well, I worked for Sutton's.
• 25:28
  Yeah.
• 25:29
  I served my time at Sutton's Holden.
• 25:31
  Prentice Motor Mechanic.
• 25:32
  Prentice Motor Mechanic, yeah.
• 25:33
  And after seven years, my old boss, Les Vag, who was just a beautiful man, he could see what type of person he'd worked me out.
• 25:47
  And he gave me the best advice I've ever had in my life.
• 25:52
  Which is good.
• 25:55
  I never grew up with Dad, you know, so my mum used to try to keep me on the straight and narrow, but Mr Vag, he said, Gary, after a few, you know, he said, we love you working here, but he said, you need to go and work for yourself.
• 26:11
  Wow.
• 26:12
  He said, you resent authority.
• 26:17
  And he said, now that you've just started a racing career, because they're my first sponsors.
• 26:22
  Okay.
• 26:22
  Only a little bit of money, but they're my first sponsors I ever had.
• 26:26
  And he said, now that you've started your racing career and you're starting to make a name for yourself, you're going to need more than wages.
• 26:33
  And that was, I went out and found a service station, a brand-new service station in Auburn, and that's my wife and I opened up there in business.
• 26:45
  Business, business.
• 26:45
  1967.
• 26:46
  1967.
• 26:47
  Dad says he was, I think, in his early 20s, and he walked past, and you had, I think, was a Joe Brandler speed car that you'd bought, and he recalls a bit of a kind of short, not terse, but a sort of short conversation with you.
• 27:01
  You damaged the front end the night before, and you're a bit filthy with yourself.
• 27:03
  You're a bit annoyed at yourself for damaging... You always are.
• 27:06
  You always are until you get it fixed.
• 27:09
  What was that car like?
• 27:10
  It was a beautiful little car.
• 27:12
  That was a time when I'm trying to think.
• 27:18
  You know, by that time I was an established midget driver and I wanted to do well and...
• 27:29
  I guess the Dark family come later.
• 27:33
  I must have left the Higgins brothers and I was looking for a better car to drive and that one was for sale so I went to Adelaide and bought it.
• 27:41
  Amazing.
• 27:42
  Did you enjoy, because you'd had that apprentice background, did you enjoy doing the prep on it yourself at that start?
• 27:47
  Yeah, I had some good people around me back in them two days or them early days was John Price.
• 27:54
  He was with you for a good 10 years or more, wasn't he?
• 27:58
  Yeah, well, he left Sutton's at the same time as I did to come and work with me.
• 28:02
  And we worked together for many, many years.
• 28:05
  And then John Barrett come along and took over from John Price.
• 28:08
  So I had two very good mechanics involved.
• 28:12
  doing all the hard work.
• 28:13
  Look, when you go racing, you need the good people around you, and I was very lucky to have that.
• 28:18
  I think when you look back over your career, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Barrett's a great friend, mate, in so many ways, isn't he?
• 28:26
  And he's been with you for such a long period.
• 28:28
  And when you would walk into the... You know, as a kid, when I was walking through Parramatta or now what it's called, Sydney Speedway there, he was a figure that was always a constant in your... You know, the group that were around your car, wasn't he?
• 28:40
  Well...
• 28:41
  I don't think there's many race car mechanics around that's got a winning record like John Barrett.
• 28:46
  You know, well, I had a pretty good record, but then he was, when Schatz was racing for us, you know, all them wins that he had, John's a very good, hard worker, good thinker, very good thinker.
• 29:00
  Ivan Walker was in the mix as well, and I reckon I saw one TV interview where someone asked him about you and he said, when it's going right, he's terrific, but if the nights go under custard, if it's not going well, you're a bit of a tough bastard too, aren't you?
• 29:14
  Is that a...
• 29:14
  It was always his fault.
• 29:18
  And any good race car driver, it's not going faster.
• 29:21
  It's the mechanics fault.
• 29:24
  He's going to have a sip of his cup of tea, which is great.
• 29:26
  The big powered sprint cars would be the most successful chapter of your career, mate.
• 29:34
  Yeah.
• 29:34
  And I want to try and get your recollections of the first drive of a sprint car that you had in the United States.
• 29:41
  And if memory serves, it was in the early 1970s.
• 29:44
  What was the track?
• 29:44
  What are your recollections?
• 29:46
  And was it Gary Patterson that was involved in helping to tee that up?
• 29:49
  When Burton took me to Roseville, he called a day and it was kind of, must have been on a Thursday or something.
• 29:58
  He said, I'm going to have a bloke come in because Larry had a bitumen track and a high bank quarter mile track.
• 30:04
  They used to do 10 seconds a lap or something, right?
• 30:07
  Crazy.
• 30:07
  And he said, I'll get... That is nuts.
• 30:10
  If you just stop and soak that in for a minute.
• 30:12
  Yeah.
• 30:13
  And anyway...
• 30:16
  He said, I'm going to have a guy come along and show you how you should drive these high bank tracks.
• 30:21
  Well, GP turned up and he said, right, that's good.
• 30:26
  And he had a long day down his two shoulders and a typical hippie.
• 30:32
  And he said, right, OK, we're going to show you how to drive.
• 30:37
  Who's got the beer around here?
• 30:40
  But anyway, he'd do a few laps, I'd do a few laps, and after a couple of hours I had it pretty down pat, you know.
• 30:46
  He's quite a character in the sense of a couple of things.
• 30:50
  I mean, he's very well educated, if that...
• 30:54
  I think his brother was a state senator.
• 30:55
  Amazing.
• 30:56
  He'd come from a very well-educated family, yeah.
• 30:59
  And yet he was the wayward one, wasn't he?
• 31:03
  Exactly, but if you knew GP, he's a nice bloke.
• 31:09
  To look at him, most people were scared to look at him.
• 31:13
  But no, he was a gentle soul.
• 31:15
  Describe for the audience what the sensation of driving the car was like.
• 31:19
  I mean, if you were to tell someone that doesn't know Speedway now about the cars, I mean, they're an amazingly addictive thing, I think, in the sense that you have nowadays, you know, what are we talking, sort of 800 horsepower or...
• 31:33
  They're heading towards 1,000 horsepower now.
• 31:36
  They're heading towards 1,000 horsepower now.
• 31:38
  950, 960 horsepower now.
• 31:40
  And you sit on it...
• 31:42
  you know, for a terrible description, but it's a bit like you're sitting on a dunny with the engine right in front of you, 900 to close to 1,000 horsepower nowadays.
• 31:51
  And you need the wing to work above you, don't you?
• 31:54
  Oh, yeah.
• 31:55
  Yeah, they don't work without a wing.
• 31:56
  They're designed around that wing.
• 31:58
  No, the best car.
• 32:00
  You asked me 20 minutes ago what turned my career around or what changed was driving a sprint car.
• 32:08
  Was it?
• 32:09
  Driving a sprint car in the States on a half-mile track.
• 32:11
  How did it feel?
• 32:12
  Give me a sense of their sensation.
• 32:13
  Sensational.
• 32:14
  Yeah.
• 32:15
  They built a driver under it, and they just...
• 32:20
  You know, I've taken, you know, see that photo on the wall there of Larry and Russell there standing there.
• 32:26
  I took them to Parramatta Speedway to try to get them to experience the joy of driving a sprint car.
• 32:32
  But unfortunately, on a daytime track, the track's never good enough to get that excitement.
• 32:39
  But driving a good sprint car on a good half-mile track or a good quarter-mile track is really...
• 32:48
  You haven't driven a race car until you drive a sprint car.
• 32:51
  The picture that you're referring to has Russell Ingle, who's been a Supercars champion and Bathurst winner, Larry Perkins, a legend, and yourself, you were all part of the Castrol family there, which was mega.
• 33:02
  So there's an example of two guys that have sampled it from a different area of motorsport, if you like.
• 33:09
  Greg Murphy, Stephen Richards, they've driven them.
• 33:11
  I know Neil Crompton and Wayne Gardner speak about it as well.
• 33:15
  And for circuit racing guys, when they drive them,
• 33:19
  They all talk about the way that, to begin with, when you first go out of pit lane or out of the pit area, I should say, at sort of low RPM and things, if you're not concentrating, it almost wants to fire you right into the wall.
• 33:33
  But the moment you unleash that throttle, it all comes to life and it wants to turn left and do what it was designed to do.
• 33:41
  They're amazing, aren't they?
• 33:42
  They don't steer good until they're going fast.
• 33:45
  Amazing.
• 33:45
  Yeah.
• 33:46
  No, they're good to drive.
• 33:48
  Seriously, you know, that particular fart you're talking about, I was a bit disappointed because I was trying to get Larry because Larry is an engineer, thinker and...
• 34:01
  You know, I would have loved to have him there on a night time when the track's right and then you'd feel the thrill of driving a sprint car.
• 34:10
  Yeah.
• 34:10
  You know, it's just a phenomenal race car they drive.
• 34:13
  They are.
• 34:15
  I just wish they still had our side.
• 34:16
  I'd still be racing one.
• 34:18
  Racing is about having all the elements perfect, right?
• 34:22
  And I think you once said in an interview that you kind of had the easy job, but it's about the team of people around you.
• 34:31
  I mean, we've talked about Price there a minute ago and Ivan Walker and John Barrett and things like that.
• 34:36
  But you all were renowned for the meticulous preparation, good engines, done right.
• 34:44
  That is your nature, Gary.
• 34:48
  You won't win unless you've got the best.
• 34:51
  And I think I had the best mechanic and I made sure we bought the best cars.
• 35:01
  I used to have a – if Steve Kinder races, that's good enough for me.
• 35:05
  And that's what we had.
• 35:09
  And if you haven't got a good engine builder, he's a very important part of our sprint car team.
• 35:16
  Am I right in saying that you were the first person to import a sprint car to Australia?
• 35:22
  The game was different here in the country at the time.
• 35:25
  I think was it kind of supermodifiers that were the main thing?
• 35:28
  Supermodifiers.
• 35:29
  And what happened, Mike, because he was promoting Liverpool at the time, you know, Mike was probably one of the best promoters around, you know, and he brought Johnny Anderson out in a sprint car.
• 35:42
  Yeah.
• 35:43
  with a cage on it and Johnny Anderson was just unbeatable.
• 35:50
  He made us look silly.
• 35:53
  And apparently Sid Hopping was going to buy the sprint car when Johnny finished.
• 36:01
  And one day I got a phone call from Mike and said, are you interested in buying an Anderson sprint car?
• 36:06
  And I said, what's Sid doing?
• 36:08
  And he says, it's not going to happen.
• 36:11
  And I said, yeah, I'll buy it.
• 36:13
  And that was, you know, that phone call from my, you know, done a lot for my career.
• 36:20
  And for the sport too.
• 36:21
  I mean, it was a game-changing moment for the country, wasn't it?
• 36:24
  It was.
• 36:25
  Don't get me wrong.
• 36:25
  It was just...
• 36:27
  Well, look at what sprint cars are like now in Australia.
• 36:31
  And that was the first one racing in Australia.
• 36:33
  But we had our, there's people against it.
• 36:36
  And naturally, that's what happens, you know.
• 36:38
  Because that's changed.
• 36:39
  They made me put a clutch in it.
• 36:41
  It was just horrible.
• 36:44
  It's like cutting a thoroughbred's leg off.
• 36:47
  You know, they made me put a clutch in it.
• 36:49
  I had to go and race at Adelaide and I had to show them that it had a clutch in it, which I did.
• 36:54
  We made a clutch for it.
• 36:56
  I built a clutch, designed a clutch and unfortunately I towed my car all the way to Perth to race over there and the clutch didn't hang on and I drove all the way to Perth for nothing.
• 37:08
  I did two laps.
• 37:09
  Amazing.
• 37:11
  But no, it was terrible what they, you know, they tried to stop it happening but you can't stop something like that.
• 37:17
  You mentioned about the service station before and, you know, the fact that promoters were eager for you in that example you gave to come into state and to race for them and things like that.
• 37:27
  What were the cars you were using to tow them back then?
• 37:29
  What were the family vehicles?
• 37:30
  Oh, haven't I got some stories about that?
• 37:32
  Go, tell us.
• 37:33
  Oh, I don't know if you haven't.
• 37:35
  Look, we were going to, they had the Craven A Midget Series.
• 37:40
  Yes.
• 37:41
  And the final was in Adelaide, the Raleigh Park.
• 37:46
  Yep.
• 37:47
  So we decided, it was Kevin Egan's car, 30, and we said, oh, well, let's go down for that race.
• 37:54
  And I said, yeah, right.
• 37:56
  Well, what are we going to tow it with?
• 37:58
  And back in them times, Johnny Stewart had a, what was the brand of car?
• 38:07
  Big V8.
• 38:09
  Oh, God, I've got a memory brand.
• 38:11
  Big V8 car that, and I said, oh, well, let's borrow.
• 38:15
  And one of my customers at the service station had one of these, what brand of car was it?
• 38:21
  Big V8 car it was.
• 38:22
  And I said, oh, yeah.
• 38:23
  Like a Judy H.O.
• 38:24
  or something?
• 38:24
  No, no, it wasn't that elaborate.
• 38:26
  It was something, the Studebaker.
• 38:28
  Studebaker Lark, was it?
• 38:30
  Studebaker Lark or something?
• 38:31
  And I asked my customer, I said, could you lend me your car?
• 38:35
  I wanted to tow a race car to Adelaide.
• 38:37
  He said, yes, of course you can have a lend of it.
• 38:39
  He said, but you'll need to put tyres on it.
• 38:41
  So we did.
• 38:42
  We put some tyres on it and we filled it up at my own service station and I hired a guy to run my service station for three days while we were away.
• 38:53
  So we fill her up.
• 38:57
  We're heading towards Adelaide.
• 38:58
  And we get the razor back, which the UMI way, the freeway wasn't in them days.
• 39:04
  We get the razor back and she's on empty.
• 39:07
  What's going on there?
• 39:10
  All the way to Adelaide, we're getting six miles to the gallop.
• 39:14
  And I was going broke.
• 39:16
  But anyway, so anyway, we stopped at Wadra and we said, there's something that can be wrong.
• 39:21
  We went to somewhere and see if they could tune this Judy Baker lark up and they couldn't find nothing wrong.
• 39:29
  Then we stopped at Barrow-Rannell and said, something has to be wrong.
• 39:33
  It was going for a few like...
• 39:36
  But anyway, we got to Adelaide.
• 39:38
  I was broke by the time we got to Adelaide.
• 39:40
  Anyway, we run, in the race we run fifth in a Cravenay State round, right?
• 39:52
  On the way home...
• 39:54
  What we found out why this duty baker wasn't, we put tyres on, but they're too tall a tyre and it's high-geared and it was labouring all the way to Adelaide.
• 40:04
  That's why I was using fuel because on the way home it started running so we backed off the throttle and all of a sudden we're getting half-decent economy again.
• 40:12
  But anyway, the crunch came when the cheque come in the mail.
• 40:19
  $1.20 only.
• 40:21
  Prize money check you took.
• 40:22
  The prize, $1.20 only.
• 40:27
  And I said, I'm not cashier this.
• 40:28
  This is a good story.
• 40:30
  So I kept it in my wallet.
• 40:32
  And I remember going to Brisbane...
• 40:35
  I don't know, a year or two later, sometime later, I'm not sure.
• 40:38
  And Frank Arthur was the promoter up there.
• 40:40
  And by this time I'd started to make a name for myself and they were starting to give me appearance monies and things like that.
• 40:47
  And I went to Frank Arthur's office to get my appearance money and...
• 40:55
  somehow I told him about my $1.20 only.
• 40:59
  I told him the story.
• 41:01
  He says, I'll give you $50 for that cheque.
• 41:06
  I said, what for?
• 41:06
  He says, because every time a competitor comes in here asking for more money, I'm going to tell him your story.
• 41:13
  That might be an example.
• 41:15
  I love it.
• 41:16
  I love it.
• 41:16
  Fantastic.
• 41:17
  No, I didn't sell it to him.
• 41:18
  I kept it and I figured what happened to him.
• 41:20
  We lost it somewhere.
• 41:34
  sprint cars weigh approximately 640 kilograms, including the driver.
• 41:39
  When combined with power outputs of over 900 horses, it gives them a power to weight ratio comparable with a Formula One car.
• 41:48
  But you drive them on the dirt and sideways.
• 41:53
  The achievements that you've had in sprint car racing are phenomenal statistically.
• 41:58
  I mean, just the- I'm very happy with it, yeah.
• 42:01
  You should be, I mean,
• 42:03
  When you first started out, clearly you enjoy the competitive element.
• 42:07
  And was there ever a moment of doubt for you that you couldn't make a career out of it at any point?
• 42:13
  Oh, when I first started, when I went to West B as a stock rod driver with a hold and I kept on rolling over all the time.
• 42:20
  These blokes got something that I haven't got.
• 42:22
  I really didn't think I had the ability until one day just –
• 42:27
  Donny Fortune and Clive Sevenoaks, they said, we're taking our supermodifieds out to this track out near Dural.
• 42:35
  We're going to run them around.
• 42:36
  And that was the first time I'd ever sat myself in a car that you'd put into the corner and it'd steer good.
• 42:43
  It'd control slide.
• 42:45
  You couldn't control the slide on an old FJ Holden, an early bottle Holden.
• 42:50
  And that's when I got that feeling with Speedway.
• 42:53
  That addiction that you like.
• 42:55
  The competitive side you really enjoy, don't you?
• 42:59
  It's life, isn't it?
• 43:01
  You know, you hang around with shots and he's a competitor.
• 43:05
  Yeah.
• 43:07
  And I think I was, oh, I wished I was good as him.
• 43:11
  Mate, he's one in a million, that bloke.
• 43:14
  But he hates the world.
• 43:19
  You're talking about Donnie Schultz, the American, who's an amazing racer.
• 43:23
  If you're competing against him, you're the enemy.
• 43:26
  You're the enemy.
• 43:28
  But, no, I, well, you race to win, mate.
• 43:35
  You know, when you look at Formula One today, it leaves me a little bit cold.
• 43:41
  You know, but Formula One's not a sport.
• 43:43
  I've been involved in the sport.
• 43:44
  Formula One's a business, I think.
• 43:46
  Yeah.
• 43:47
  It's, you know.
• 43:49
  I just, if you're going to do something, you can do it properly and try to do it as good as an ex-bloke.
• 43:57
  Were you an intense guy on race night?
• 43:59
  What was Gary Rush like?
• 44:02
  Yeah, I think I was, yeah.
• 44:04
  People, I used to worry.
• 44:11
  You can walk through the pits and if you said hello to everyone, everyone said, I looked at that big head.
• 44:18
  And then if you walked through the pits and said nothing, they'd say, look at you, you couldn't make them happy.
• 44:24
  So I used to say nothing.
• 44:26
  I used to get to the pits.
• 44:28
  You wouldn't see me walking around talking to other people at the pits because I just, you're there to race, you know, you're not there to socialise, you know.
• 44:40
  Is there a title in the many that you have won in your incredible career?
• 44:45
  Is there one that you have a soft spot for that is, you know, close to your heart?
• 44:51
  No, I've done everything I wanted to do and, you know, but it took me a while.
• 44:55
  It took me a long time before I won my first title.
• 44:58
  But Larry Burton used to keep my feet on the ground.
• 45:00
  He said, when you're ready, you'll win it.
• 45:03
  And when I did, I started winning it for you.
• 45:06
  But...
• 45:08
  No, nothing's – the World Series, it come along – I was quite instrumental in the early days of World Series.
• 45:22
  I –
• 45:27
  A guy in Victoria, I was at Warrnambool one year, and a guy in Victoria come and knocked on my motel room and said, can I talk?
• 45:35
  And I said, yeah, and I'm trying to think of his name.
• 45:38
  And he said, why haven't we got a sprint car series in Australia?
• 45:46
  And I said, I'm not sure.
• 45:47
  Hmm.
• 45:49
  I'll figure his name out.
• 45:52
  He's a bloke they should.
• 45:55
  David, I'll think of his name in a minute.
• 45:59
  And he said, and then anyway, I couldn't answer his question and then a few days later he called me at work and he said,
• 46:07
  If I call a meeting with all the influential people around Sydney or Australia to have a meeting in Sydney to discuss why isn't there a series, a race series for sprint cars in Australia, would you attend?
• 46:19
  And I said, yeah, I would.
• 46:23
  And sure enough, he put it together and we all met at a hotel at Sydney, Kings Cross, up there.
• 46:30
  And...
• 46:32
  We all sat around.
• 46:33
  You name it, they were all there.
• 46:34
  Bob Kelly from Queensland.
• 46:37
  Just everyone was there.
• 46:39
  The blokes that meant something in the sport.
• 46:44
  And that's how World Series was formed that day.
• 46:49
  And what happened was we discussed why we need a series and,
• 46:58
  And probably the only bloke that was against it was Mike Raymond because he knew he was going to lose all these drivers, stars.
• 47:05
  You know, he'd spent years building these stars to race at Liverpool and this series was going to take them stars away from his track.
• 47:15
  But anyway, we all agreed to put a series and I said, well, look, this is not the first meeting I've been to talking about the future of our sport.
• 47:27
  Mm-hmm.
• 47:29
  And what we do, we sit here and talk about it, but when we go back and go to work on Monday, we forget about it.
• 47:37
  We need to appoint a manager today, and his job on Monday morning is to start putting a series together.
• 47:48
  But first of all, you can't do that without money.
• 47:52
  And I said, and we'd sent it around the table and I think we put about 50, 60 grand together, just a show of hands.
• 48:01
  Yeah.
• 48:04
  I think there was $2,000 a share.
• 48:07
  And a good friend of mine had just got hurt in a sprint car in Victoria, in a coma in a hospital in Victoria, so I bought a share for him, Chris Taylor.
• 48:16
  I'm not sure if you remember Chris Taylor.
• 48:19
  I bought a share for him and we all put in about 60 grand and we said, right, who's going to run this?
• 48:29
  Right?
• 48:30
  That was a lot of money back in the days.
• 48:32
  Yeah.
• 48:34
  And John Hughes had just finished up as a co-promoter in Adelaide and he was sitting right beside me.
• 48:45
  I said, John, this is a good job for you.
• 48:49
  Put your hand up for this job.
• 48:51
  I hit him in the resume elbow and said, take this job.
• 48:54
  You're just a man to do it.
• 48:55
  I did it.
• 48:56
  That's how World Series started.
• 48:57
  Amazing.
• 48:59
  And John done a fantastic job, seriously.
• 49:03
  Him and I had a few disagreements, but I was the first driver to get fined for an infringement.
• 49:12
  Were you?
• 49:13
  I wasn't on the track.
• 49:13
  I was late to the pit meeting.
• 49:17
  He's very unlike you.
• 49:19
  Well, we were racing in Melbourne this particular night and we were in a motel near the airport.
• 49:25
  The track was further away and I was 20 minutes late for the driver's meeting and no one told me about it until after I finished my heats and I thought, I think I should be starting up pretty close in wherever I was starting.
• 49:39
  And I was down the back of something and I thought, what have they done to the points?
• 49:42
  They deducted points.
• 49:45
  I was trying to grab John's throat.
• 49:47
  But anyway, no, he done an excellent job.
• 49:50
  Promoting, as you know, mate, is a very difficult thing, isn't it?
• 49:54
  I mean, and as you and I sit here now, you know, we could both probably drink glass half full and wish motorsport generally well, but it has its challenges.
• 50:05
  And Speedway is, in so many ways, mate, it is like a best-kept secret.
• 50:10
  I wish things were better in many ways, and I know that's not an easy one to resolve or answer, is it?
• 50:16
  It is.
• 50:17
  Look, all my racing career I just wanted our sport to be recognised and, you know, to – but it is what it is.
• 50:30
  It's a –
• 50:34
  You know, the guys in Struggle Street, that's what we are.
• 50:37
  You know, we make up a small...
• 50:42
  But our venues are not as good as they should be.
• 50:46
  See, Perth.
• 50:47
  And Kwinana.
• 50:48
  Kwinana.
• 50:49
  When I first seen Kwinana, I think Kwinana's 20-year-old now, is it?
• 50:52
  Yeah, I can't remember.
• 50:53
  When I first seen Kwinana, I thought, if they can do it in Western Australia, we can do it in New South Wales.
• 51:01
  We need a good track like that in New South Wales.
• 51:04
  And that's why I got into the promotion business here because I believe to make our sport great, to better than it is, to get that recognition that we're talking about here is you need good venues, the venues and then the racing's fantastic.
• 51:24
  You take someone to the speedway and have a good sprint car race, you won't.
• 51:27
  That's racing.
• 51:29
  You know, you won't get more enjoyment than that.
• 51:33
  There were rumours, maybe I don't know how true they were, but there were rumours of you being involved in perhaps something that would be at Eastern Creek or in that precinct that would be like Kwinana.
• 51:43
  What can you tell us about that?
• 51:45
  Well, that's...
• 51:48
  You know, I've been around on this earth for a long time and you know that land is getting valuable.
• 51:54
  Yes.
• 51:55
  Parramatta's life, one day they can't afford to have a speedway there.
• 52:00
  It's, you know.
• 52:04
  We don't want that but you're thinking, yeah.
• 52:06
  The Lands Department control that land and one day that's too valuable to have a speedway there.
• 52:14
  The state government want all motorsport to be at Eastern Creek.
• 52:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 52:18
  And what happened was Brian Healy and his partner had Parramatta.
• 52:24
  They owned the lease.
• 52:27
  Unfortunately, Brian was a good mate of mine.
• 52:29
  I took him to the States in 1971 and that's where he fell in love and lived there many years after that.
• 52:37
  When he passed, I went and spoke to his partner, Bob Spence, a very successful businessman in California, and we negotiated a deal to buy Parramatta.
• 52:51
  So I went to the state government.
• 52:53
  And at the time it was a Labor government and Kevin Green was the sports minister and you wouldn't find a better bloke than him, a really good sports minister and a good bloke for the community.
• 53:06
  You know, I went to him and a mad Speedway fan too and he's very close to Skip Jackson and his family.
• 53:16
  He knows them very well and nice bloke.
• 53:19
  Yeah.
• 53:21
  I went to him and said, look, I need $3 million to buy the lease off this American businessman.
• 53:30
  And he come back and he said, Gary, I can't give you the $3 million.
• 53:36
  He said, but you go and get investors, raise $3 million, get that lease and I'll promise you a new speedway at Eastern Creek in two years.
• 53:49
  That's what he said to me.
• 53:50
  Wow.
• 53:51
  So I went around and I got, we got, there was first, there was four investors and then we made, Peter Addo was the fifth investor.
• 53:59
  And it was, and our whole point of none of the people, sure, making money is one thing, but the whole point of doing that was hoping we could get a new speed with Eastern Creek.
• 54:14
  That's what I'd done it for.
• 54:16
  And, um.
• 54:19
  Because I've seen how Jimmy Reid got the drag strip from the state government and what I found out is the guys who'd done all the hard work getting – don't get me wrong, Jimmy Reid done – drag racing owes Jimmy Reid a lot.
• 54:34
  That Western Sydney drag race.
• 54:35
  Yeah, yeah.
• 54:36
  If it wasn't for Jim, they wouldn't have one, right?
• 54:40
  But they –
• 54:44
  Jimmy, I've known Jimmy for years and years and he said the bloke that helped me get this drag strip was a guy called Byron Patching.
• 54:53
  And so I got in touch with Byron Patching.
• 54:57
  I said, you better get your bum into my office and we talk about let's get in the spreeway.
• 55:01
  So he kind of mapped out how you go about handling governments.
• 55:06
  And he said, right, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 55:09
  Anyway, yeah.
• 55:11
  Kevin Green, the sports minister, one day rang me and said, I said, could you and your partners come to an office, my office in Sydney?
• 55:23
  I want you to introduce you to a guy.
• 55:27
  So we went in there and he was the boss of the Lance Department, the boss.
• 55:35
  And he said, I want to buy a spreeway off you.
• 55:43
  And we all had, by this time, by this time we'd realised that, look, having four partners is not easy.
• 55:51
  Yes.
• 55:51
  It's not easy.
• 55:52
  Yeah.
• 55:54
  But it was going along good.
• 55:56
  This partnership was going along good but it was starting to get a bit, you know, having four or five different opinions is not good for any business.
• 56:03
  But anyway, he said, I want to buy the speedway off you.
• 56:09
  And we went, oh, beauty, good.
• 56:12
  And then I said, but we didn't buy the Spooway for financial gain.
• 56:16
  We bought the Spooway to get a new Spooway at Eastern Creek.
• 56:21
  He says, oh.
• 56:23
  He said, well, you know, I'll go and have a look into that.
• 56:27
  And he was going to look into moving us out of...
• 56:32
  Parramatta and putting us into a new, and we said we want to turn Key Speedway before we release the release at Parramatta.
• 56:40
  Yep.
• 56:41
  Turn Key Speedway.
• 56:42
  We want it finished everything.
• 56:44
  That was the deal.
• 56:45
  Finish one and start the next one.
• 56:47
  Yep.
• 56:48
  And he said, right, I'll start up.
• 56:53
  Let's make it happen.
• 56:53
  Yep.
• 56:55
  And what they did, they wanted to put an air ambulance, a helicopter, an air ambulance service at Parramatta Swayway and they're going to spend $300 million or something because...
• 57:09
  Central and, yeah.
• 57:11
  If an accident happens here, they want to get a helicopter, that accident, the traffic's, you know, and it's a...
• 57:16
  Very centrally located in Sydney.
• 57:18
  Yeah.
• 57:18
  And then they had that helicopter avenue, I think, the airwaves.
• 57:22
  Yep.
• 57:23
  Only helicopters can fly in certain parts of Sydney.
• 57:26
  And so they thought they were going to build, but we wanted a speedway at Eastern Creek.
• 57:32
  And it was that close.
• 57:35
  And... Why did it not go ahead?
• 57:40
  Unfortunately, the bloke was not a bad bloke either.
• 57:47
  He was on the front page of the newspaper, him and a government minister, and he had the decency to ring me and tell me, I'm sorry, very sorry, Gary, you obviously read the papers, but we... And that became a problem.
• 58:07
  So freakish timing just for you.
• 58:09
  And then the next state election, Labor got voted out and Kevin even lost his job.
• 58:15
  And we'd put about four or five years' work into it.
• 58:21
  Amazing.
• 58:22
  And, yeah, we were very close to getting a new speedway to Eastern Creek.
• 58:27
  Sad, sad.
• 58:28
  Let's talk rivals for a minute during your career.
• 58:31
  When you were driving, who were the guys that made you bristle?
• 58:38
  Oh, it was always George.
• 58:40
  George Tadnell?
• 58:40
  Yeah.
• 58:41
  He was a Hollywood sort of character.
• 58:43
  Oh, he's just that flamboyant type of bloke and, you know, the sport misses him.
• 58:49
  No sport needs blokes like him.
• 58:51
  You know, but as a rival, yeah, we had a lot of arguments, but I think he respected me and I respected him.
• 58:59
  This is Steve Brosey.
• 59:00
  He was my competitor.
• 59:03
  If you wanted to race in Perth, you'd better race against South Bob Geller.
• 59:07
  Yep.
• 59:07
  If you wanted to race in Brisbane, you had to race against the Kellys, who also I'm probably forgetting people.
• 59:13
  If you wanted to race in Adelaide, you'd better race against Bill Wigsall, you know, all great people, people that have done their bit for the sport, you know.
• 59:23
  Because of its kind of American origins, there are moments in Speedway where blokes have shaped up to one another to iron things out.
• 59:33
  It does happen.
• 59:34
  I've been sitting there, Vanneville.
• 59:35
  Well, that was my next question because it happened with you and Sid Moore and it ended up, I think, going to court, didn't it?
• 59:42
  Did it get settled?
• 59:43
  One of them got settled in court?
• 59:44
  That's one.
• 59:45
  There's two Sids, Sid Hopping and Sid Moore.
• 59:49
  Well, tell me, go one at a time.
• 59:51
  What happened with these?
• 59:52
  Well, Sid Hopping was the one, but because that was typical, Mike.
• 59:57
  When you went to Liverpool Sweeway, you had to beat Sid Hopping.
• 1:00:00
  And Sid's a lovely bloke.
• 1:00:02
  He really is a lovely bloke, but in the car he's just...
• 1:00:08
  Anyway, he's a lovely bloke.
• 1:00:10
  I can't imagine you shaping up to someone.
• 1:00:12
  Oh, well...
• 1:00:15
  Someone put you on ahead in the first turn, it wasn't deliberate, it was just stupidity.
• 1:00:20
  You get a bit angry.
• 1:00:22
  That's not the style of racing you enjoy.
• 1:00:24
  You enjoy the whole let's go wheel to wheel but not... Yeah, there's a photo getting around.
• 1:00:29
  It's the best Speedway photo you've ever seen, I believe, because I'm in it, George and I at the Sydney Showground.
• 1:00:38
  If you ever find that photo, go and have a look at it.
• 1:00:40
  If you don't think that's close racing, you know.
• 1:00:43
  What are you in there?
• 1:00:44
  Are you both in midgets there?
• 1:00:45
  Both in midgets, yeah.
• 1:00:46
  Yeah, no, very good.
• 1:00:47
  It's a good photo.
• 1:00:48
  Look it up.
• 1:00:48
  Will do.
• 1:00:49
  Righto.
• 1:00:49
  Sid Moore, what happened there?
• 1:00:51
  Because from what I can gather, you got off on, was it on the basis of the fight took place in the pits rather than the track or something or other?
• 1:00:59
  What happened there?
• 1:01:02
  I owe a lot to Sid Moore.
• 1:01:03
  Okay.
• 1:01:04
  I owe a lot to Sid Moore.
• 1:01:05
  He gave me my first Australian title.
• 1:01:08
  Yep.
• 1:01:09
  But anyone knows Sid, he can make you wild.
• 1:01:14
  He's just the way he is and no one's ever going to change him.
• 1:01:19
  Somehow or other I was racing for him.
• 1:01:23
  I was successful in his cars and then I left him and went to race for someone else, Jack Maggs in Victoria and I think Sid always held something against me.
• 1:01:37
  And one time in Adelaide,
• 1:01:41
  He deliberately tried to run into me, missed and hit the fence and rode himself off.
• 1:01:46
  And two weeks later, we were racing at Newcastle.
• 1:01:49
  He didn't miss me this time.
• 1:01:50
  He got me and I was in a brand new car and I wasn't happy about it.
• 1:01:53
  You did go and compete at Bathurst on more than one occasion.
• 1:01:57
  So let's talk a little bit about Bathurst.
• 1:01:59
  Was the first experience in a GDHO Falcon and what year was that?
• 1:02:04
  Phase two, 70, 1970.
• 1:02:06
  How was that whole experience?
• 1:02:09
  Excellent, yeah.
• 1:02:09
  It was pretty good.
• 1:02:12
  I'd met up with, well, here's my first Formula, he owned my first Formula Ford, Brian Burt.
• 1:02:17
  Yes, yeah.
• 1:02:19
  It was a good story.
• 1:02:20
  I was over at Waggots getting my engine done, my engine done, and Gary, oh, gee, he's a Mercedes-Benz dealer in Liverpool.
• 1:02:34
  He's got a tragic story to that too.
• 1:02:37
  This Gary, oh, gee, I always forget his name.
• 1:02:40
  He said, have you got a sponsor for this car yet?
• 1:02:43
  And because I own this Formula Ford, I was getting this Formula Ford built by Bowen's, this, Bowen's building Formula Fords.
• 1:02:51
  And he said, you got a sponsor of this car yet?
• 1:02:54
  And I said, no, I haven't.
• 1:02:56
  And I had about six or seven grand tied up in it as my worldly wolf.
• 1:03:01
  And he said, I think I know a bloke that might sponsor you on this.
• 1:03:05
  I said, really?
• 1:03:07
  Anyway, he rang me and said, here's a number.
• 1:03:11
  Give him a call.
• 1:03:12
  His name's Brian Burt.
• 1:03:13
  He's got a Ford dealership at Wollongong.
• 1:03:17
  And so I rang him and he said, oh, yeah, yeah, Gary.
• 1:03:21
  He says, yeah, no, would you like to come down and meet us?
• 1:03:28
  And I said, I'm leaving the office now.
• 1:03:31
  And he said, oh, it's a bit foggy down here today.
• 1:03:34
  Maybe you shouldn't.
• 1:03:35
  I said, that won't worry me.
• 1:03:36
  That won't worry me.
• 1:03:38
  And on the way down, on the way down, I was thinking to myself, now I've seen these sponsors before.
• 1:03:43
  All they want to give is a pint of oil or something.
• 1:03:46
  I said, there's no way he's going to get me.
• 1:03:49
  I've got all my money tied up in this car unless...
• 1:03:53
  If he buys me a spare engine, he's got me.
• 1:03:55
  Okay.
• 1:03:56
  He can put his name on the car.
• 1:03:57
  Yes.
• 1:03:58
  Well, I went down there and-
• 1:04:00
  And we met each other and he said, oh, well, and he showed me around his dealership and he said, we've done this.
• 1:04:09
  I've only been here a year, I think about a year or so in the dealership.
• 1:04:13
  I've done this and I'm doing this and I'm doing this.
• 1:04:16
  And, you know, as you do, you're kind of taking a mental adding up of how much money you spent.
• 1:04:23
  I went, jeez.
• 1:04:24
  Yeah.
• 1:04:25
  And then we went back to his office and he said, well,
• 1:04:28
  What does other people do in this case?
• 1:04:33
  And I said, well, there's a team in Victoria, Bibb Still, or Stillwell Ford, and Bibb Still was a famous Australian racing driver.
• 1:04:42
  He's got his own team and he's got a two-car team and he's got his own truck that pulls them around.
• 1:04:50
  And he said, well, why don't I buy your car off you?
• 1:04:55
  and we'll get that team going and you just come and drive for me.
• 1:04:59
  Fantastic.
• 1:05:01
  I'm driving home thinking, am I dreaming this?
• 1:05:06
  And that's how the relationship started with Brian Burt.
• 1:05:09
  And, you know, it was very good.
• 1:05:12
  It was very good.
• 1:05:13
  Iconic car to race at the mountain too.
• 1:05:14
  What were your first recollections about that?
• 1:05:16
  What happened was he bought my Formula Ford, but he'd raced a car at Baffist in 69 and that's what he got the bug.
• 1:05:27
  Okay.
• 1:05:28
  Right.
• 1:05:29
  He said, we raced the car at Bathurst last year.
• 1:05:31
  We really enjoyed it.
• 1:05:32
  We're going to race another one.
• 1:05:33
  And would you be interested in, you can race our Formula Ford for us now that I've bought it and now we'll go to Bathurst in the GT Falcon.
• 1:05:43
  And that's what we did.
• 1:05:44
  That was my first and then that was in 1970, the Phase 2 Falcon.
• 1:05:51
  Great era for the sport at that stage.
• 1:05:54
  Was the track for you, you know, it's an iconic thing now.
• 1:05:59
  It's a major sport.
• 1:06:00
  Yeah.
• 1:06:01
  It's a racing track.
• 1:06:02
  I mean, I've been to Bathurst, oh, I don't know, 10 times now probably.
• 1:06:07
  I don't know.
• 1:06:08
  I'm not sure how many times.
• 1:06:09
  It wouldn't be that many times.
• 1:06:11
  But you don't race the other blokes.
• 1:06:13
  You race the track.
• 1:06:14
  Yeah.
• 1:06:15
  And I think I've driven home from Baffist every time saying that track beat me again today.
• 1:06:21
  Really?
• 1:06:21
  Oh, yeah, it's a racing track.
• 1:06:23
  That and Phillip Island.
• 1:06:26
  You really have to know what you're doing.
• 1:06:28
  You had a top ten finish there and there was a point with the RS500 Sierra Cosworth where you were tempted, I think, if I'm right here, to maybe do a two-car team or you were going to get serious with it at one point.
• 1:06:40
  I got very serious with the Sierras.
• 1:06:42
  I was nearly going to buy one.
• 1:06:46
  I was lucky enough to...
• 1:06:50
  Valvoline, before Castrol come along, I got to know, we're buying a bit of oil off the Valvoline, and I got to know the boss of Valvoline, and somehow we struck a pretty good friendship going, and he, what happened?
• 1:07:08
  Ray Lintot...
• 1:07:10
  He was a Sydney car dealer at the time.
• 1:07:12
  I think he's gone to heaven now.
• 1:07:13
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:14
  I knew Ray as a car dealer.
• 1:07:18
  He got a Dick Johnson Sierra.
• 1:07:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:22
  And I think we put Valvoline sponsored it.
• 1:07:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:29
  And I think Valvoline put up 25 grand for me to have a drive.
• 1:07:34
  Fantastic.
• 1:07:37
  And Ray was in it, I was in it, and a good young bloke, a little bit younger than I was I suppose, he was very, very good.
• 1:07:45
  He was very fast around there, trying to think of his name.
• 1:07:48
  And he was quite a bit quicker than Ray and I.
• 1:07:52
  But when it come for me to drive it, I put it in the sand, I put it at the end of the pit straight, I put it in the sand bunker.
• 1:08:01
  But it was a fast car, but I wasn't that good in that.
• 1:08:05
  They're a really different machine in the way that they deliver their power and do things like that.
• 1:08:10
  I mean, it's 180 of a sprint car to begin with, isn't it?
• 1:08:14
  Yeah.
• 1:08:16
  I've always said the two fastest cars I've ever driven was a sprint car and one of them.
• 1:08:22
  Is that right?
• 1:08:22
  Yeah, they're a pretty fast car.
• 1:08:25
  In the early 80s, a bloke by the name of Steve Kinsert would come along that you would have a good friendship with and great racers with.
• 1:08:34
  In global terms, if you were to draw a parallel, I mean, his success is admittedly in a different field, but better than a Valentino Rossi.
• 1:08:43
  I mean, he's done some remarkable things over time.
• 1:08:47
  When you first came up against him, did you know straight away this guy is good?
• 1:08:53
  No, we didn't know.
• 1:08:54
  We arrived at Knoxville one day and I was with this famous mechanic over there, Ken Woodruff.
• 1:09:00
  He made his own name over there.
• 1:09:01
  Him and I went racing at Knoxville together and he said, hey, buddy, see that young blonde bloke over there?
• 1:09:09
  He's starting to make a name for himself.
• 1:09:11
  That's when we first bumped into Steve Kinzer.
• 1:09:14
  But in the next 25 years, he'd become the biggest, well, he's the greatest racing car driver that's ever lived in America, I think.
• 1:09:21
  Yeah.
• 1:09:22
  You know, there's no driver in the world who's got a winning record like him and the next bloke that's coming is going to follow him his shots.
• 1:09:31
  Yeah.
• 1:09:31
  You know, but Steve Kinzer was just, they call him the king and he was the king since 1980 until he only retired three years ago.
• 1:09:40
  That's a long time to be on top.
• 1:09:43
  Yeah.
• 1:09:44
  His record is remarkable.
• 1:09:46
  Yours in Australia, mate, is... Special talent, mate.
• 1:09:48
  Yeah, but I want to shine a little bit of a light on yours just for a moment because I'm not...
• 1:09:53
  There are days where I don't know if you fully...
• 1:09:57
  I know you know what you achieved and you worked enormously hard to do that, but the reaction still from fans to this day to what you did, I mean, does it...
• 1:10:06
  You power on at work here.
• 1:10:07
  We're sitting in your office as we record this and you're in your, you know, your 70s but you're working as hard as a young bloke from what I can see.
• 1:10:15
  Do you stop and take it in and think about what you would choose?
• 1:10:19
  I went to Warrnambool this year as a first time as a non-competitor.
• 1:10:24
  I really, really enjoyed it.
• 1:10:26
  Fantastic.
• 1:10:27
  I really, you know, I've always went there and there as a competitor.
• 1:10:31
  Yeah.
• 1:10:32
  And I really enjoyed it this year.
• 1:10:34
  I could sit back and I realised what a lovely town Warrnambool is.
• 1:10:39
  I've never seen that before.
• 1:10:40
  And I've been going there since 19-whatever.
• 1:10:44
  But some of the fans and some of the people I bumped into, they just sit back and say, gee,
• 1:10:58
  Wow.
• 1:10:59
  They, what you mean to them.
• 1:11:03
  Yes.
• 1:11:03
  I used to say that about Brock.
• 1:11:06
  Yeah.
• 1:11:06
  I only met Peter on two big times, times when we spent a bit of time together, and I come away thinking he doesn't realise what he means to people.
• 1:11:20
  You thought that really?
• 1:11:21
  Yeah.
• 1:11:21
  Yeah.
• 1:11:22
  He was just a normal bloke.
• 1:11:23
  Mm.
• 1:11:25
  But people idolised him.
• 1:11:26
  Mm.
• 1:11:28
  You know, probably people knew him a lot better than I did, but, mate, I can only speak very well of him.
• 1:11:35
  I'm pleased you stopped in that sense at Warrnambool and kind of took stock of it and understood.
• 1:11:41
  Yeah, I really enjoyed some of the people would, what I guess my career meant to them, you know.
• 1:11:49
  You...
• 1:11:50
  would eventually stop and, you know, we can recall the send-off coming in in a chopper and all that sort of stuff.
• 1:11:56
  But was it difficult to stop, Gary, and what was the ultimate reason?
• 1:12:00
  It took me six years, I believe six years.
• 1:12:03
  I've always said six years.
• 1:12:05
  Six years to get over it, to get it out of my system, yeah.
• 1:12:11
  I remember taking my son to Perth to race.
• 1:12:16
  And I remember getting in the race car to do a couple of laps after I retired and I'd done a few laps and I sat there and I would, and this might sound silly and I hope people don't think how stupid it sounds, I think I was put on an after-drive sprint car.
• 1:12:39
  Yeah.
• 1:12:40
  You know, I just loved it so much.
• 1:12:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:12:43
  Most people would agree with you, mate.
• 1:12:45
  I mean, it's, you know, I greatly admire in life people that latch onto a thing, whether it's golf clubs or tennis or whatever, and pursue it.
• 1:12:59
  I'm always amazed at the way they get to that point to find it.
• 1:13:03
  But when people like you find it, mate, and then go and have, you know, just the most massive career, and to know that you...
• 1:13:13
  clicked with the thing that you were meant, clearly meant to do, I think it's enormously special.
• 1:13:17
  Well, that's not enjoying England.
• 1:13:20
  I went to the States and drove a sprint car and that was when I drove.
• 1:13:27
  I drove on a bitumen track the first time.
• 1:13:29
  That wasn't that exciting.
• 1:13:30
  But once I got on a half-mile dirt track, that finished it.
• 1:13:35
  You haven't driven a race car until you drive it on one of them tracks.
• 1:13:39
  We'll talk in a minute about what you're doing now, and there's some phenomenal things that you've shown me around here today that you are doing in post-race life.
• 1:13:47
  But you did dabble briefly with NASCAR and the Thunderdome at Calder Park there.
• 1:13:55
  You have to correct me if I get this quote wrong, but I think at the time you said to John when you pulled up after the first laps in the car, you said words to the effect of, if this is motor racing, I don't want to be a part of it.
• 1:14:07
  Why was it, did the NASCAR not suit you?
• 1:14:12
  Was it a frightening thing to drive?
• 1:14:14
  What was it that you didn't perhaps like at the time?
• 1:14:15
  And correct me if I'm wrong there.
• 1:14:17
  Bob Jane built Calder.
• 1:14:20
  Yep.
• 1:14:21
  He wanted to make it successful.
• 1:14:25
  Yep.
• 1:14:26
  I had a high profile in Speedway.
• 1:14:31
  I think he asked John Shepard and I knew John Shepard from many years before when he worked for Ron Hodson.
• 1:14:39
  And John Shepard said, would you like to drive a NASCAR at the opening meeting at Calder?
• 1:14:46
  I said, why not?
• 1:14:50
  So they had a day, an outing, a day there and, oh, they treated like a king.
• 1:14:58
  They flee in a helicopter, you know.
• 1:15:01
  Big time.
• 1:15:01
  I was big time.
• 1:15:03
  But we went out there and drove a few laps and different things.
• 1:15:10
  But then they sent me a new car.
• 1:15:12
  And they said, right, we're going to send you up this car and you try to put it together and come down and race in the opening meeting.
• 1:15:22
  Well, I think, look, I've got no proof of this.
• 1:15:30
  I think Bob Jane said to Goodyear, send me all the old tyres, NASCAR tyres you have.
• 1:15:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:15:41
  and they probably had thousands of them.
• 1:15:44
  Yeah.
• 1:15:45
  We can't afford new ones.
• 1:15:47
  Sorry, we can't afford, you know, they're probably stocked up of NASCAR tyres that are probably two or three-year-old that they never use again, and so Bob Jane brought them to Australia and put them on all our cars.
• 1:16:01
  Well, they sent some guns out, a car,
• 1:16:08
  A couple of them trying to think of their drivers.
• 1:16:11
  The Americans.
• 1:16:12
  The Americans that won it.
• 1:16:16
  Gee, what's it?
• 1:16:17
  Neil Bonnet.
• 1:16:17
  Yep.
• 1:16:18
  Neil Bonnet and one of the two brothers that were here.
• 1:16:24
  Mate, on race day, they made us look silly.
• 1:16:27
  And I think they brought their own tyres.
• 1:16:29
  Oh, really?
• 1:16:30
  Because our tyres were two and three-year-old and they liked being on a skating ring.
• 1:16:35
  Mate, I...
• 1:16:38
  I had two spin-outs prior to the race, practice, and I kept it off the fence, I didn't bend the car.
• 1:16:48
  The second one, I was backing up to the fence and I left enough room for a car to get through.
• 1:16:57
  And thank God the bloke was coming at me, got through there.
• 1:17:02
  If it would have been anyone else, I reckon they would have went, drove straight through me, but it was Jim Richards.
• 1:17:09
  And he was the master.
• 1:17:10
  Yes.
• 1:17:12
  He got between me and the fence.
• 1:17:14
  I don't reckon anyone else could have done it.
• 1:17:16
  Wow.
• 1:17:17
  And that's the memory.
• 1:17:18
  And I come back into the pits and John Barrett said,
• 1:17:23
  You're white.
• 1:17:25
  I says, I'm scared.
• 1:17:26
  I'm scared to death.
• 1:17:28
  But these cars just don't handle.
• 1:17:31
  They just don't handle, right?
• 1:17:35
  We're scratching our heads and saying, oh, what do we do, what do we do, what do we do?
• 1:17:39
  So a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, he goes and gets Neil Bonnet.
• 1:17:45
  He goes and taps him on the shoulder and he said, mate, we're having trouble with this car down here.
• 1:17:51
  Could you come down and maybe give us some tips on what we're doing wrong?
• 1:17:56
  And Neil, and by this time, Neil Bonnet, he had busted bones, but he walked down with a limp.
• 1:18:03
  Nice bloke.
• 1:18:04
  And he said, what are you doing here?
• 1:18:05
  He said, oh, let's do this to this car, let's do this to this car, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah.
• 1:18:10
  And he said, mate, let me do a few laps in it.
• 1:18:14
  So he does a few laps and he has a spin out.
• 1:18:19
  And he comes back and he said, yeah, well, you could do this.
• 1:18:22
  I said, mate, you spun it out.
• 1:18:23
  He says, oh, just making you feel good.
• 1:18:27
  Just making you feel good.
• 1:18:32
  And then he said, I know of your name.
• 1:18:38
  You're a friend of Jack Hewitt's, ain't you?
• 1:18:41
  I said, yeah.
• 1:18:42
  He said, well, yeah, you're a sprint car driver.
• 1:18:46
  Yeah, well, everyone knows Jack Hewitt.
• 1:18:49
  Well, let me tell you about these cars.
• 1:18:52
  He says, compared to sprint cars, even when they're good, they're still shitty.
• 1:18:58
  Compared to sprint cars, and that's what he said.
• 1:19:01
  In the office where we sit here now, there is, I'm pleased to say, a bit of memorabilia from your career.
• 1:19:06
  I mean, you were inducted.
• 1:19:08
  Mine's up there.
• 1:19:08
  I'm pretty proud of it.
• 1:19:09
  You should be.
• 1:19:10
  Hall of Fame induction and all sorts of things from an incredible career.
• 1:19:16
  But you have a little bit like Marcus Ambrose, who I spoke to recently for the podcast series.
• 1:19:21
  I met him.
• 1:19:21
  Where did I meet him?
• 1:19:23
  Recently.
• 1:19:25
  Warrnambool.
• 1:19:26
  Yeah.
• 1:19:26
  He was at Warrnambool.
• 1:19:27
  Yeah.
• 1:19:27
  Yeah, that's where I met him.
• 1:19:29
  Yeah.
• 1:19:30
  He still enjoys it.
• 1:19:31
  But like you, he's, you know, given away some of the things either to charity and you've done some great things for like the Children's Hospital and stuff like that, mate, over time with your helmets and some of the memorabilia, haven't you?
• 1:19:45
  I was, my wife and my family were blessed to have twin girls with my daughter 21 years ago.
• 1:19:52
  And they were born three months premature at Penrith Hospital.
• 1:19:58
  And I know what Jodie went through prior to giving birth and moving around to...
• 1:20:08
  You know, one day she'd be in this hospital and another day she'd be in this hospital because they only had these humic ribs for babies.
• 1:20:17
  They only had so many of them.
• 1:20:18
  Wow.
• 1:20:19
  And they wouldn't – if they had a spare one there, that's where they'd send her.
• 1:20:25
  And all of a sudden that'd be taken and then she'd have to move to another one where there's a spare humi crib, right?
• 1:20:31
  And anyway, after my granddaughters were born, they were very tiny and miniature and I had a shed full of trophies.
• 1:20:46
  So we sent them to the SPIR, we auctioned them off and raised a lot of money and we donated that money to the... Half was to the Westmead Children's Hospital and half was to Penrith Nick Ward.
• 1:21:01
  Hold on.
• 1:21:01
  Just to see if we can get some money happening for the hospital, for these little humic ribs.
• 1:21:07
  Great initiative.
• 1:21:09
  We are at Pick and Pay Less in Western Sydney in Blacktown.
• 1:21:15
  In the podcast, we talk about cars and bikes and things that people that have either raced or owned are passionate about.
• 1:21:22
  But one thing I've never discussed is about what happens to cars at the end of their life if they're not restored or kept or something along those lines.
• 1:21:31
  Recycling is a massive thing, isn't it?
• 1:21:35
  Yeah.
• 1:21:36
  It's...
• 1:21:38
  Around the world.
• 1:21:39
  Yeah.
• 1:21:40
  You know, we sell a million new cars a year in Australia.
• 1:21:43
  Yeah.
• 1:21:44
  And we recycle 200,000 cars in New South Wales a year.
• 1:21:49
  That's amazing.
• 1:21:50
  Yeah.
• 1:21:51
  And the car life is, you know, when I come here 21 years ago, the average life of a car was 15 years.
• 1:21:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:22:00
  You know, you could drive around in a car 15 years old and not feel that bad.
• 1:22:04
  But now, you know, the average life of a car now would be under 10 years, I think.
• 1:22:09
  Okay.
• 1:22:09
  And so, you know, them cars are going to be ELVs, that's what the industry calls them, end-of-life vehicles, and it's a massive industry, mate.
• 1:22:18
  So you have here, if people want to come and repair their own car, you know, they can come and acquire parts from some of the wrecked cars to begin with, don't you?
• 1:22:27
  There's a massive stock, if you like, there's a lot of cars.
• 1:22:29
  We're in the western suburbs of Sydney and we have quite a large number of people come here every month repairing their own cars and we cater for them.
• 1:22:41
  But also we've just recently in the last three years branched out into recycling in a bigger way in as much as recycling in the scrap metal industry and spent a lot of money doing that.
• 1:22:54
  And it's never been done in Australia.
• 1:22:56
  What I'm doing here, it's never been done in Australia before.
• 1:22:59
  I've seen it happen in South Korea.
• 1:23:02
  There's one company over there in South Korea doing it and...
• 1:23:06
  similar to us but I don't want to retire at this stage my wife would like to well I think she'd like me home more days than I am but I still want to do things
• 1:23:21
  What you've done here is impressive, mate.
• 1:23:24
  Very, very impressive.
• 1:23:26
  And the thing that stands out for me is that you, in the green world that we now live, which is so important, particularly in the whole automotive industry, at the end of that car's life, you are able, through some very clever processes, to recapture lots of aspects of that car and separate it, put it into a reusable state, don't you?
• 1:23:49
  We've got recycling down to about here in Australia.
• 1:23:55
  It's probably 20% of it waste.
• 1:24:00
  I think in Japan they got it down to about 10%.
• 1:24:06
  But as this new company of mine grows, we'll get it down to that.
• 1:24:12
  There's equipment coming out all the time for recycling, just separation, separating all the plastics and all the metals from all the cars.
• 1:24:21
  We're not finished.
• 1:24:22
  We're only in the first stage of our recycling, but in another year or two's time it'll be a nice operation.
• 1:24:30
  For me there is a tiny little tie in here.
• 1:24:33
  My father worked in the hydraulic game.
• 1:24:35
  You did some work in this sort of area to begin with.
• 1:24:39
  He built a machine for Ron Monless and I back in the 80s.
• 1:24:42
  Wow.
• 1:24:44
  Like a crushing machine.
• 1:24:45
  A car baler.
• 1:24:46
  Wow.
• 1:24:47
  Yeah.
• 1:24:47
  Yes.
• 1:24:48
  I mean it's come in that timeframe since you've worked with Ron Wanlis.
• 1:24:52
  The whole industry and the scrap metal industry has become a hugely successful thing in this country, hasn't it?
• 1:25:00
  Huge.
• 1:25:01
  It's huge.
• 1:25:02
  It's run by the big companies but we're a little company.
• 1:25:05
  But I'm lucky enough I have a good partner in the scrap business and he's a very go-ahead person.
• 1:25:15
  guy that um he's he because of recycling he he knows about everything there's not many things he can sit at any table and talk about anything and uh he's very very well educated very interesting bloke to talk to the knowledge he has on anything you want to talk about and recycling has got into his blood too
• 1:25:39
  You have been flat out in your career, mate, and since the bug bit to the enormous amount of achievements that you've done both here in Australia and even the things you did in America I think are remarkable, will you slow down and if so, when will...
• 1:25:59
  Gary Rush, Slater.
• 1:26:01
  I enjoy very good health.
• 1:26:02
  I've been married for a long, long time and my wife looks after me very much and I owe my good health to her.
• 1:26:12
  She makes sure that I eat the right foods and I get the right sleep and, you know, I've been married 54 years now.
• 1:26:21
  Lovely.
• 1:26:22
  Yeah, I was very lucky.
• 1:26:24
  Congratulations.
• 1:26:24
  Thank you so much for spending some time and chatting with me.
• 1:26:27
  And I was chuffed to be at the very first Hall of Fame dinner and to...
• 1:26:34
  Someone reminded me very recently of this, that Mark Webber got up on stage that night and he's someone who really appreciates all different levels of motor racing.
• 1:26:44
  You and I nearly, we very nearly got him into a sprint car at one point at Sydney Speedway there at Parramatta.
• 1:26:50
  He loves it and he greatly appreciates what you've done.
• 1:26:53
  But I know he singled you out in the speech.
• 1:26:56
  I mean, you know...
• 1:26:57
  For the Webber family when they were growing up and watching Speedway, he was...
• 1:27:02
  In Canberra.
• 1:27:03
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:27:04
  And that, to me, underscores when the industry like that, not just because of you being inducted into the Hall of Fame, but when the constituents stop and say, hey, what this bloke's done is incredible.
• 1:27:19
  Yeah, it was good to hear that.
• 1:27:22
  It's good to hear that, yeah.
• 1:27:23
  But let me say something about you.
• 1:27:26
  You know, congratulations on your career too.
• 1:27:29
  You know, I knew your dad and he used to come to the speedway and I remember one Friday night he come along in the speedway and I reckon you were 15, if that, if that.
• 1:27:39
  And he introduced me to you and I said, what are you going to be?
• 1:27:42
  What are you going to do?
• 1:27:43
  I was expecting you to tell me I want to race a car but you said I want to be a motor racing commentator and here you are, one of the best.
• 1:27:52
  It's been awesome all these years later to walk down memory lane with you, to celebrate an incredible career, and well done on everything.
• 1:28:01
  Thank you very much.
• 1:28:01
  Cheers.
• 1:28:01
  Well done, Greg.
• 1:28:02
  Well done, mate.
• 1:28:08
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 1:28:12
  Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
• 1:28:15
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 1:28:25
  Listener.