🚁 EXCLUSIVE CHAT: Vic Lorusso

Our traffic reporter Vic Lorusso (who've been with us from the very beginning) joins Jonesy & Amanda for a chat to celebrate his 25th anniversary!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
My Heart podcasts here, more Gold one on one point
seven podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Playlists and listen live on the free iHeart app and Amanda.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Jam Nations The past our next guest. You know him,
you love him. He's one of Australia's most recognized TV
and radio voices. He's been bringing us the latest in
Sydney traffic for over twenty five years. We're talking about
the great Vic Laruso. Vic Hello here.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
He is a Jones Love you guys, and that is
our og traffic. I remember intro that we had for
you when you first started.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Do you remember that?

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yep? And people said to me, he said, what are
you playing that for it? I said, because it's always
banded down. That's what Vic Glaruso is doing.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
That'll be five am. You'd play that and everyone would
know and you'd get on air and that was where
we go.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
I was just talking to you before, just off air,
and you were saying that you started your whole run
here when you were doing your hscneen. You're in year
twelve nineteen and now you're the big boss of the
whole business. What an incredible right. Sydney traffic must have
changed enormously over.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
This time unbelievably changed, especially in Sydney Southwest Northwest. It's
just the expansion of the residential property market out in
those areas is really dictated where the government was spending
their money on expanding the roads that you look at
the M five out through now it's Picton and Bargo
where the traffic starts in the morning. So we've seen
the evolution of Sydney and how much it's grown over

(01:32):
those time. Definitely, I was lucky one time when I
first started here a thousand years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
You remember that, why don't you come up in the
choppera in the holidays? I'm yeah, rereaddy, I'll do that.
I had a raging hangover. I get into the chopp
with Vic. Vic sits in the back of the chopper,
so he's got all the stuff and I'm in the front.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
It's the negotiations. We take him up in the helicopter
and we have a chat with it.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
And for the first first forty minute it was great.
But after three hours, where.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Do you live, Jones, He will fly you over here.
I remember that day.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
And I zoomed it on my house. Yeah, I remember
with the camera, I looked like one of those siege houses.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Massive, it went for hours having is it a zero?

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Did you know when you're zoom in on a house
and the siege has been going for two hours now
and you can zoom in and out on the house.
It was pretty cool. But I'm going to sish we
have but the toilet.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Situation, well, that was going to ask you that.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Well, twenty two thousand hours of flying I have ha
a Sydney in a helicopter, so twenty two over twenty
twenty plus years. Yeah, we pretty much work it before
you take off, You go to the bathroom and you
kind of manage how much water you had before.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
I bet have you ever been taken ill in the chopper?

Speaker 3 (02:40):
No, but we've had reporters that have come up for
a fly and to learn the shift, and it's been
messy in the machine.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yes. My youngest son, Jack is in his final year
of UNI. He's doing media and he's working at Are
you going to.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Say, absolutely amazing, that's a fantastic reporter.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
He gets up very early on a Saturday morning. That
shows you how hard.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
That's very very keen. So he sounds great. I'll put
him on replacing me'd.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Be great, you're wear in his suit. There's never got out.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
But your favorite road in Sydney, what is it? You know,
there have to be one that you really love.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
I think the M four expansion, that the M four
East that's connected you know, every every part of Sydney
and you've got orbit or you've got them. Every link
in Sydney at the moment is working, so you still
get your bottlenecks on the M five out through Campbelltown
in the morning. But I think my favorite corridor of
traffic would have to be at the moment the M
one from Gospord to Sydney. I think the expansion of

(03:36):
the M one's working well, which is the old F three? Yep?

Speaker 2 (03:39):
What about that raid King George's.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
That's your favorite?

Speaker 2 (03:42):
King Now? Well, when we were at North right after
you have to go on those those the eternal road works.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
It's near the just to tie up up just north
of the King Georgie's Road, Roselands area.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, just there near Herstville. It just goes. It's been
going for what five years forever, but.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
They're expanding the roads, they're making it better.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Jones given they employed the Romans to do it like
they would have had it done by now.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Well, everyone in Sydney thinks traffic's getting worse. You're you're
here to say you don't think it is.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
I think there's a lot of Esmond into the road
infrastructure across Sydney at the moment. And there's parts that
roadworks go on like you just mentioned there and you're
pulling your hair out, like the freeway, a freeway where
your traffic's off. But once it's done, go through a
bit of pain and it'll be fine if.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
You could get rid of one piece piece of infrastructure.
And it's the Waycers Parkway versus the orderly weir. Well,
if a spit of rain they both closed, are orderly
we has got to be worse, surely, definitely when it
rains both both of the same, they're on par sprinkle
of rain on the beaches.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
The Wakers parkways done for days.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Do you have friends that say, I'm going out to
blah blah today, tell me the.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Traffic and they blame me if they're stucking Always I
love working with you guys twenty years. I remember the
day too when Gray Midwood's the old the program floating
that he that he employed Jonesy out from Triple M
and then he was even more excited when he signed
A man.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
It was like Planet of the Apes here. When I
first came here, I said, oh God, look at this place.
So I planeted the apes and then I got a
Manda to come along and join.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
The Apes were part of this company. Is so lucky
to have you. They really are going to drive. Next
year is going to be so exciting for Sydney really is.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
And the Promised Land that's where we're going to, the
fruited fields.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
Absolutely, and this medium being radio, you guys are just
nailing it. So local, so intimate. Got together just as a.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, thank you, thank you, Vic, and thank you for
bringing the most delicious donuts the screen.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Speaking of kissing an ape.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
What eating a donut?

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Vic?

Speaker 3 (05:33):
It's always great to talk to you, you guys. Thank
you