Tim Ross joins us to talk classic Aussie car culture...plus how he almost died in the UK

In this episode we are joined by Tim 'Rosso' Ross - he's a podcaster, veteran radio guy, author and all round car head. We chat wild adventures with old cars in the UK to drunk-purchasing old iconic cars. Its a fun chat, plus you have the chance to win a copy of his book 'Chuck a U-ey"! 

 

Also if you'd like to sponsor the podcast, let us know!

 

If you haven't done so - subscribe to the show on your favourite podcast platform and hit us up at [e-mail] if you have any questions you want us to read out on the show!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Driver's Show podcast is looking for a sponsor.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
You can help Paul and Gordy realize their dream of
rebooting the Layland p six love it Keane, drop us
a line at contact to The Driver's Show Podcast dot com.
Dote you send us a DM on our Instagram page.
We'd love to work with you.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
I bought a brain drover, had a few fumes. Didn't
take long for the kids to fall asleep in the back.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
The Driver's Show with Paul Marrick and Gordy Waters.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
We've got a pretty exciting guest on Rosso.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yeah, Tim had a book that was probably one of
the first books I read outside high school. But it
was with It was with Merrick, and it was literally
called Eric and Rosso the Book, and it was very
much a picture book, but it was very funny. It
was very funny that.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
One sold all right in America and Rosso the book
and then and then we went from Triple Jade and
Nova and the buggers at ABC Books cracked it, and yeah,
they stopped. They wouldn't reprint it, so it was out
of print. Collectors on them you can get them Monday
for about four dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
To turn the book. Yeah, the shop for about three.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
You know. The worst thing is is I learnt very
early on that when someone asked you to write something,
you know, so can you sign this to my brother?
And then can you say that? And then you're right,
all right, dear Graham, why don't you yeah, yeah, so
it's so funny. And then my brother, right, he was
in an op shop one day and he saw one of.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
My books, opens it up.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
But it's like, dear Graham, why did you go? You
got to be so when people say to me, now,
can you you know, I would not do that because
I'd like to think that people keep my books forever.
But they don't cost a living crisis. They just go
get rid of it.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
I got this beautiful Bert Newton autobiography from the seventies, right, and.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
He had the watermelon on the front.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
He did a few It was just his yeah, it
was just his head, and it was called Bert. And
I was reading it at UNI. I was obsessed with that,
sort of like late night TV back in the day,
like it was such a great era that Channel nine studios,
you know, Don Lane and all this. I loved it,
all right, And so I was a massive Burt Newton fan,
and I was reading it at UNI and we were
in Burke Road, Camberwell, I feel like it was George

(02:25):
O's or something. Anyway, I'm there with a couple of
my mates and who was to walk in but Burt
and Patty Yuton. Yeah, and I'm like, oh my god,
I've got the Burt book in the car and I can't. Yeah,
I went, I went, and I went and got it.
And he was so great. He wrote in my book,
dear Gordie, thanks for buying the book in brackets thirty cents,

(02:48):
best wishes Burt Newton or something like that. And I
sat with them for a good fifteen twenty minutes. That's
pushing it, but well it's good, good, good fifteen seconds. No,
but I was. I sat with him for a while
and she was like, she.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Is like just lovely Jim. She was doing the Apprentice
or something like that, and you know, they someone I
don't know, dick out or something rings up and guds.
I were trying to get as many people down here,
can you come down? I oh, fuck to go. And
she was there and I had my son, who was
like a year old or something at the time. She's
so sweet and you go, oh my god, this those

(03:23):
old fashioned showbies people nic people, and you're right, you know,
of course he's gonna say yes, and of course he's
gonna sit down and let you sit down and whatever.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
That's the thing. Like I look back on that and
go the audacity of me. He was like in a
cafe having having some time with his wife and I
just come up and go ome and he's like, oh yeah,
come and see sit down, sit down, And the whole cafe,
I didn't realize, was looking at me like Patty's just gone, oh,
You've got a bit of an audience. I'm like thanks, yeah,

(03:52):
And like the whole crowd was like damn. And they
were just so lovely, like they were just genuinely nice people.
I'll never forget that moment.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
I saw Johnny Young al it's cool at an island
in Fiji smoking a dart and having a Fiji bit
of it.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
That's the only way I would want to meet Johnny.
Did he have a Hawaiian shirt.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
And he literally just had his speed days on his
gut hanging out the front that he was like at
the beach bart in the sand. It is so good.
And I was like, oh my god, what are you doing?
Like like he was eating that dart. You know some
people like, oh they smoke like a Frenchman.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
He's like all smoking.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
He's like sucking his like Speen and the duneies, and
he thinks geography teacher's going to come in.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
He's sucking that back like seventy show beers should That's
what he's doing. That is so good. He would put
that between two bits of bread and needle like a
sandwich would be good.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Oh I loved it. Yeah, so Johnny Farnham wants to
get into it. So I was like grade one, We're
on a school excursion to Captain Cook's cottage in Melbourne.
Yeah right, and like this guy Simon who went to
primary school with, He's had a spew. He did a
yogo spew down the steps upon Captain Cook's cottage. So

(05:12):
we had to evacuate. Everyone went out of the front.
I went out the back, bumped into John Farnham and
I said okay, Johnny, and he said god I and
he waved at me. And to this day, no one
went to primary school with. Remember, none of them believed
that I saw him that you like, it was the
hugest actually there though.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Like it was like because this film he was actually
in Captain Cook's That's where he lived.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
And now, of course they don't call it Captain cook Scottage.
It's so so it's like it's called it's called Cook's Cottage.
So you go wonder if fucking Maggie Beer's in there.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
May Beer and Simon just a TV show from the
early two thousands. Oh yeah, what are you cooking today?
You just wore all these like twelve year old kids
go in there and they just see, like, what are
you cooking today, Maggie? Because I'm cooking a nice mate
trout with a bit of an orange glaze.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
How many episodes you reckon? They would punch it out
in a day of that show.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
I don't know, but I like to think she was
like Johnny Young somewhere in Fiji with a tit out
sack and back of dart just one tip. Yeah, I
don't know. That was a great show though.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
She was an exceptional show.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
It was a great show. Four teams walked into not
a great show.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
I was just going to say, this is the exact opposite.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
We wanted to get you in basically because obviously you're
a massive curR enthusiast Massive car podcast as well, and
obviously the book Chuck a Yueie. You've got a whole
heap of stuff, and congrats on that new pod you're
doing with Kevin McLeod as well, So that's easy.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
He's more of a car up than I am. Is
he mad? Mad? He's got like never would have picked that.
Oh he's got he's got quite the collection. He's got
this thing a Mirandez like nineteen twenties thing. Right, it's
like an quite obscure nineteen twenties Italian. Maybe it's English,
you'll find out in a second camera. And he was.

(07:06):
We were going through the French countryside one day, as
you do, and he had this. I wish I could
remember them all. I'll get a photo up and you can.
You could, guys and alpha. He had a like a
seventies jag, a bunch of different cars.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Was he leaning towards any particular type, like like UK guy,
like a real UK.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Cars people types? But he I think he was just
interested in what he'd call old bangers.

Speaker 4 (07:32):
Yeah, because when I tried looking for it, it keeps
coming up with cars at the Menendez Brothers and I remember,
I can't.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
I'll show you the photo and then you can. I can.
I never remember. I'm useless with this stuff because like
I'm not as that much of a cur enthusiast as
some people. That's the Kanson, Yeah, that's it Kenson. Yep. Anyway,
I had all these cars fantastic and this Moran the
old people are far up about it when they work
it out. So we were having this trip with his family.

(08:03):
We went from Germany back to the UK. It's amazing, right,
that's cool. And we're going on the final day, We're
going through these rolling hills in France and this nineteen
twenties car and like literally it was one of those
cars that if someone was twenty meters in front of
you and they walked out, you just have to get
out the ride because like you can't stop the car.

(08:26):
Yeah that's it. Yeah, it's made of wood, right.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, he's Fred Flintstone, just to start it.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
Yeah. And so we're having this amazing day. We're like
we're side by side. It's very tight, really beautiful, right, friends,
it was picturesque. I got us a bit lost, and
he didn't get angry about it.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
Can I bought you for a second? Was that a
cool moment that you became friends with that guy, because
I imagine like there would have been a time before
you knew each other. You kind of like, was it
a fanboy moment in a way, because he's a pretty
cool dude anything.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
I was close enough to sit next to him in
a vintage car, but probably before that when I first
met him. Yeah, I mean I really like what he
did on the telly, still do. But we just hit
it off. I suppose it's one of those things shared interests.
So we like the sun setting. Everyone's already back at
the hotel before us because I got us lost, and
we come up around the corner and this cyclist pulls

(09:23):
out of somewhere and then we swerve a little bit
and there's cars coming straight towards us, right and I
thought we were going to die, like literally, because the
cars may somehow along the way. You know, it's like
a small This is a really small street. I think
the road's there. It's got cobbled walls on either side. Somehow,

(09:45):
I don't know how keV maneuvers the car. It goes
completely sideways and then he gets it back. The car
goes to the side, doesn't hit us. Cheez, and then
we get back to the whole tell and we don't
tell anyone and then like we never mentioned it ever again. Yeah,

(10:07):
Like I literally like I literally thought I was going
to die, and I thought, and I'm going to be
the really small byline here. Yes, it was just like
keeping McLoud killed.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
With Australian Yahoo.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
So that's for me, Like I admire people who like
wooden cars.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Having said that that wouldn't be a ship way to die.
I mean, there'd be worse ways to die, you know.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
This thing, like I look at there's this worth having
a look at. Right, there's an extraordinary video that the
National Film and Sound and arch I did where they
put this sort of all this footage of cars from
back in the day together. Right, it goes for about
nine minutes. And I saw it at this exhibition in
Coffs Harbor, and there was these blokes coming in. They
heard about it. They just come in and watch and

(10:53):
they'd watch nine minutes, wouldn't have got any of the
other exhibition, and then they would leave. But you know
when you see those old shots of those cars and
they were there back in the day to make it
look like this is the sportiest car in the world.
You look at him and you think that you're going
to die, Like if something just slightly you would go
to a tree and that would be it. But you

(11:14):
just died all the time.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
It's funny because I like, I'd jump in one of
those old cars now, like it could be an iconic,
it could be a testaoster or something like that, and
at the time you think that is the pinnacle of
automotive coolness, engineering, design, the lot. And then you get
in it and it can be somewhat When you finally
drive something like that, sometimes it can be a little

(11:37):
bit underwhelming because you're like, no, this just drives like
nineteen ninety one, you.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Know what I mean, And you want it to be something.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, you want it to be like if you want
to feel like James Bond a little bit more like it.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
Just I had a DS right, and I loved that car,
but it wasn't very like it was really cheap and
it wasn't a great condition, and I sold it someone
when my kids came along, well the first my kids
came along, and this guy came and took it away,
and I think his daughter was using it to bush
bashing or some sort of rally driving garden. I don't

(12:09):
know where it's turned up. It certainly hasn't turned up anywhay.
Not that I look at online all the time for
these cars, but then I looked at more recently and
I took one for a test drive. And this my
car that I bought was maybe two thousand dollars back
in the day, you know, only two thousands of two
thousand and seven or something, right two thousand and six,

(12:30):
And then I was looking at one that was fifty
four and it didn't drive any differently. Yeah, well, there
you go, like you can't magically make it any better.

Speaker 4 (12:39):
It doesn't help today as well, because car prices have
gone through the roof. COVID drove up all these classic cars,
and you genuinely will overpay for something today, drive it
and go.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Back off a little bit, but a little bit still is.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
There's still some crazy COVID prices.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
Yeah, but I don't know that there's something about just
sitting in a car that you know back then, were
you know, like a GT. You knew that was the
fastest four dorsidan on the planet at that time, And
to think some of the speeds that people were doing
like this. That iconic shot of it was motoring journalist
that was driving the GT flat.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
I should know this because I put in that's a robbo,
is it? No, it was someone else, but he was.

Speaker 4 (13:19):
It was off the dial basically, and it's like just
a slight side wind, a cross wind or something like that.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Would finish him. But that was just the thing back then.

Speaker 4 (13:28):
And today you've got the Chinese the it's called the
yang wang U nine genuinely its name. It just set
a speed record of five hundred and something kilometers an hour.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
They're the derivative of B I D.

Speaker 4 (13:40):
Yeah, it's a quad electric motor. And it's like, surely
in ten years time we're not going to have twenty
thirty years times. It's going to be a car that's
doing a thousand kilometers an hour. And that seems slow
and old and dat.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
There's a point where I don't know. I'm not an engineer,
and I should say that there's a point you could
only go as fast as the robots can do whatever
we want them to do. And well, the nostalgia for cars,
I think is really interesting. And I had this, got
this amazing email from this guy, tell me this beautiful
story about how he saw a falcon like his dad's

(14:12):
at a motor show and he sort of went, this
is like, it's amazing. That's like my old family car
is exactly the same color, the same color and teria.
And he goes up to the guy whose car it
was and he said, you know, my dad used to
have one of these, you know, which it would be
okay if I sit in the car. He said, yeah,
go for it. And he opened up the driver's door

(14:33):
and he said, no, no, no, I don't want to sit there.
I want to sit in the back when he was
a kid. But here you go, beautiful we ever know. Yeah,
it's like sat there like just sort of tears streaming
down his face, you know, nostalgic about the car. And
that's I think that that's what drives said, you know,
the people to go and buy buy those cars that
you either dad always wanted, your dad had, or you

(14:56):
yearn for or whatever. And then you know, obviously no
one's yearning for nineteen twenties cars because they went around.
But that's like I think when I did the Chucky
Yueie book, yep, and so I was on the ab Cent,
I was doing all this talk back and they were like,
the amount of people who would call in, who rang up,
who learned how to drive in the nineteen sixties and
nineteen twenties and thirties cars is quite extraordinary, isn't that interesting? Wow?

(15:18):
And then they go, yeah, we used to have this
car and it used to crank it up, and now
I'd learn how to drive a nine to fifty five
and a twenty year old cow, which makes sense exactly.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
It's funny with the small things that you remember about
those sorts of cars, like the old cars, like the
fin steering wheel of the way, like it was so
bloody clunky to change gears or seat belt yeah yeah,
and they were like those seatbelts that were just like clicking,
almost like an aeroplane sort of thing. Just these little
tiny bits that I just remember of old cars and

(15:47):
neighbors cars and all that. I remember going to a
car show and this old dude sitting next to some
sort of ferrari and he was there just in the
bloody sun on a deck chair just like and he
had like a sandwich board in front of his car.
And he's like one owner such and such a put
the pieces together. I'm like, oh, you bought that. He goes, yeah,
there's my first car back in you know, nineteen seventy

(16:10):
two whatever. I was like, your first car was a Ferrari.
He's like yeah, and he did the whole well, you know,
it was either buy a house or buy a car,
and you can't drive a house. And he's had that
car ever since and he's still just prays proudly, yes, yeah,
it was Trevor Long. He's just like washing himself with
a class in the boot. But he was sitting he

(16:32):
was sitting there just proudly, and I thought that's awesome,
Like that's that's really cool. And there's something about old.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
Cars don't have that.

Speaker 4 (16:41):
No one sits proudly next to their tesla and goes,
this is my tesla and have a look at it.
It's I can make it fat and flash lights and stuff.
I just don't think we're gonna we just won't have that.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah, it isn't that idea. I think we talked about
this another time, about how no one runs out of
the front of it your house when you get a
new car any more. Yeap, how you knew everyone in
the street, who's yea someone Graham next door it's got
a new car and you don't.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
It'd be like it'd be like an event, you know
what I mean, it would be like a proper even
when you saw and I feel like that now, when
you see like an old car driving pass, it's like
it's a thing. It's like, oh, check it out. But
when you see like a modern ev it's.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Just like, I mean, the romance of automobiles has changed dramatically.
You know. I wonder where the price has got something
to do with that as well.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
Yeah, and you've got competing priorities like a house today,
especially here in Sydney. I mean, you can have a
house and be under enormous mortgage pressure, or you can
rent and have a new car.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
Like you're talking about, like you can't have both.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
And I think that is And also kids like my
cousin he's like almost forty. He still lives at home,
but he never got a license, has no interest in driving.
And I'm like, this is the new kids that are
growing up now. They just don't want to drive. They'll
catch you UBA's places, they'll get lifts with friends, they
just don't want to get a license. And I think

(18:04):
that is part of it as well, there's just no
want for it.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, I mean freedom is easier now. Yeah. So you know,
like as a suburban nation and arguably the world's first
suburban nation, the reliance of the automobile is huge, and
so what they represent is freedom. But freedom comes in
all sorts of different ways, and you don't they're not
places to have recreational sex anymore, which were just sex.
It doesn't have to be recreational.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
It's very personal to the point there is nothing recreational
about my sex.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
So they they they of course, you know, there's always
going to be you know, car culture in some shape
or form, but it's not as widespread in the same
way because they don't the cars aren't as representative of
that because you want to go somewhere and you go, oh,
I'll just get mum to drive, and you don't care,
you're not embarrassed. But they Barbara is taking us. Oh yeah,

(18:57):
all right, there's no thing. No thanks to live missus Johnson.
That shit's gone, you know, like it's like, oh yeah,
she's probably coming to the nightclub too.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
She probably should probably supply the bag.

Speaker 4 (19:11):
Yeah, you know, where the culture is shifting now.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
We spoke about the Melbourne four by four show.

Speaker 4 (19:18):
I went there and I was not expecting much, but
there was shitloads of people there.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
And now if you go.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
Outside the cities, you go regional people love their fall
whel drives and it's almost like manufacturing in Australia ends.
People then migrate to four wheel drives to go access
a lifestyle that they didn't previously. They're modifying them, they're
lifting them. Regionally, everyone's still driving toyotas. You know, you
go to the to Burke or to Broken Hill, they're
all in land cruises and highluxes. So it's almost like

(19:45):
that the Australian culture has evolved into these dual cab
uts and enormous vehicles.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Now, isn't that interesting? Of course that makes sense. And
when you look at the history of cars and the
one thing that always surprise me I never realized at
the time, but that window when the Sandman was huge,
it's really small. Yeah, like it's three years or four
years Dice. Isn't that crazy? And in terms of it's
it's it's play packed, it's place and its impact many

(20:13):
a strain psyche is huge in pop culture. But yeah,
this sort of small window in time, there's probably cars
that you know that probably talk about the impact of
what's happening now what you're talking about with full of drives,
we'll go for a much longer period of time the Sandman.

Speaker 4 (20:28):
But well, you know, it's it's funny, there's on a
slightly sort of tangential topic they've got at the moment
that there's the amount of Commodore's getting stolen is insane,
and this is late model Commodos. They've got a tool
basically off the internet that will allow you to clone
keys on the car, and they've figured out how to
disable alarms so you don't hear it going off. So
there's now a market for people to take these parts

(20:51):
that they're buying for cheap because thieves are stealing the car,
stripping them down, dumping shells in the middle of nowhere,
and then these cars will go overseas and they'll they'll
put LA threes and lsays in all.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
These different things.

Speaker 4 (21:02):
So it's it's weird that this the last little bit
of connection that we have is now getting.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Stolen by the thieves. It's crazy. It's say nothing is
nothing is safe these days. It's part yeah, it's it
really is disappointing.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
And it's these thieves that ironically a younger kids who
have no real interesting cars and are doing it for
whatever their reasons are.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
But these cars have such sentimental value.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
This one dude that emailed me, he had a club
sport LSA that he drove to Chadstone. He knew about
all of these thefts happening. He drove it to Chadstone
to take his wife out for her birthday lunch. He
was in there for an hour and the car was
gone and this guy right.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
Take it, Chaddy.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, yeah, how do I do want to say anything?
But like, what are you doing taking in a bloody
gold class.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
It's a pancake, parlancake.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
There is a my brother. When I was down in
Melbourne recently, my brother took me to there's like a
new wing of Chadstene.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
And it's very fancy.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
My brother was going, oh, yeah, you know when we
when we finished all the bloody construction on this this
oyster bar, hear me and blah blah blah. We had
all you know, we're here for five six hours and
all the oysters and champagne. It was like Don Perry
and I thought, yeah, but you're still getting pissed in
a shopping center. Yeah, it's still fucking chatty. What are
you doing?

Speaker 3 (22:19):
What do you want to do?

Speaker 1 (22:20):
You get pissed and go to times? What are you doing?
How weird anyway, But it's it's there's a there's a
posh section, there's a hotel there. Now people who stay there.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
I stayed at the hotel.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
It's my was it with your wife or someone else?

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Someone's across the road was the Oakley Motel. Yeah, first
motels in the country, and so the idea was that
because on Danning Long Road there was the where they
had the nineteen fifty six Olympics marathon. Really, so it's there. Well,
the idea was that it was going to be on
the halfway mark to the nineteen for fifty six Olympics,
so people could stay in the motel and then come

(22:55):
out the front and then watch everyone run past because
astraight and get it finished till nine fifty.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Remember when Chadsten was just like that, the Maya section,
it's just like that square, kind of brown brown.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
One of the great one of the great modernists. Yeah,
shopping centers in the country. Yeah, like the motel, it
was like the future had come to the suburbs.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and now.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
It still has the actual subburbtimes.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
The suburb is a shopping center now, yeah, it's it's wild. Hey.
When Merrick came on the podcast, he told a great
story of you guys would quite often on a Friday
get stuck into the beers and just buy random cars.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
I don't know where there was in the afternoon. It
was probably about yeah, yes, I mean neither of us.
You know, Look, the truth is somewhere in between, you
know when it happened. My version of events and his
quite often different with these stuff. The one truth was
is that there was always a copy in our office

(24:01):
of unique Car. I love it. And so whenever a
program director would come in, and it was mostly means
to be honest, he would turn his back but just
and he'd have his notes out and his glasses off.
And then yeah, we occasionally we bought a bunch of
different things. But the famous ones we bought was a
Lalan P seventy six. Yes, we bought a one eighty b's.

(24:23):
Oh he didn't pay for that as a station car.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
That's cool. Did you buy a car from two hands?

Speaker 3 (24:28):
And then the two hands car that used to that's
a long degree of Jordan. We were just a shop
it's being that shopping somewhere at Fox Studios, and he
drove past. He was trying to sell out to someone.
And then we had like a four sort of van
like Captain's chairs that we had, oh cool or something. Yeah,
it was like I had it was but it was
a really bad job job and worse conversion. And we

(24:51):
ended up giving it to a producer of ours, I
don't know, and she couldn't get it registered. I was
just I don't know what happened to it, but it
was like it was our vision of the eighteen van
basically when we're doing a TV show. And then I
left it out in the front of my house like
I had that the out an eh at the time,
and then I had the Citron and then they rang
the counsel on me trying to get rid of it. Yeah,

(25:14):
but there was I think it was. We would be
quite bored and think, you know. And they were always
just cheap bangers. Nothing was expensive, like we bought the
Blalan's I think maybe two eight grand or something off
the same some dude in coeensland Mark here, you know,
we'll take them.

Speaker 5 (25:33):
Both by its like you can literally and the blokes
just on the other other end of the phone.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
Cool, Are you taking a piss right now? I'm in
the bar toilets?

Speaker 3 (25:48):
But how you buy these things? I bought my eh.
I was in Tasmania and I was going for a
walk and I saw it there. I wrote down it's
before phones with cameras, and I wrote down phone number
for it, and it was cheap, and I thought, I
was just like, I'm going to buy this, and then
I lost the piece of paper. I put it an

(26:08):
ad in the Mercury saying if you were selling a
Kalgaroley Brown nineteen sixty three ah old, and I'd like
to buy it. I've lost your details. Can you give
me a good how'd you go? So good? And then
he and then he emailed me, I rang me or
something I bought at his sensational and then he wanted
to buy it back off. Yeah, isn't it funny?

Speaker 4 (26:31):
Like I know, Gordy, you're in radio, but for me
on the outside looking in, it seems it was a
bit of wild West. Back then, you kind of do
whatever you wanted. You guys were kind of stars of
the show you can get away with murder? Is there
sort of stuff that you were told no, no, you
can't do that.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
I mean that stuff was they were when we bought
the one, ad By were well, they paid for the
one ady b It was more than I think that
stuff was just like how money just doing what we want,
you know, like just because we like it was just
fun and I think you got a bit of money
for you. I mean, I don't know investments. But the

(27:11):
best thing was was we said we had the peel
me great purple one. That's the one the station took.
They put the details on it looked great and we
said them, I'll lease it to you and then if
anything goes wrong, we'll we'll repair it. We want to
buy it, we want to buy it, and like literally
it spent all its time in the shop because they
were using as a street car driving it out.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
I was going to say they used to do really cool.
Nova used to like, oh man, they used to do
really cool things when they launched in Melbourne. And I'm
not sure if they did do this in Sydney. I
suspect they did, but they had like the Nova ambos
in Melbourne and they were old retired ambulance and they
used to just deck them out and use them as
the road cars. Like they had this really fresh, different
approach to making radio. I loved it.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
It was in the shop as well.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah, really, I could imagine that would kill.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
Those ambos great. And you know, they got these super
attractive young guys and girls and outfits getting around and
people like that as well. But they don't. They don't
have station vehicles anymore, do they.

Speaker 4 (28:10):
I think some of them they still have a k
Rock car because I'm from Geelong.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
They had a k Rock caravan when I was there
and I was director, was probably fucking living in it.

Speaker 4 (28:20):
But what did they have for No, I've just quickly
pulled this up while you were while we were talking,
and in the background of one of these pictures down here,
I can actually see a fuel station and you can
actually just see the price of fuel sixty eight point
five cents a leader for unleaded and that would have
been two thousand and one.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Maybe I don't know when that photo shirt was for
me's in them?

Speaker 4 (28:48):
Yeah, yeah, but it's is it not crazy that when
you look look at stuff like where these cars have
evolved and fuel prices and stuff.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
It is funny. Fuel prices kept.

Speaker 4 (28:59):
Going up, and with the advent here of electric cars,
I feel like fuel prices haven't gone up for like
five years about the same price that they were were
five years ago. Because they're trying to make it sound
more attractive than the rising electricity costs.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
But it used to be cheap to run a car
like that, like you know, but then you think one
of the strange things about this country is that no
one ever thought feel was.

Speaker 4 (29:21):
Cheap and they still don't. Which you go to Europe
or the UK, they're paying double the price. Yeah, America's
like America is expensive now as well.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
Yeah, like people have always complained. I mean the budgets
were all around petrol price. Yeah booze smokes, that is
it's the only thing we ever cared about. Yeah, it
was like SIGs up petrol up the country. Fuck yeah,
like that.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Was the criteria.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
One of the most amazing archive footage in this country
is people when they brought in random breath testing and
how people responded to that, how outrageously really, that's next,
Why can't I drive home pissed? Incredible because like it
was a national sport. Yeah, absolutely, but you.

Speaker 4 (30:08):
Know, we need to be more like the South Africans.
They had tolling booths for you it to go give money.
They rolled out electronic toll gantries and started sending notices
to people who didn't pay. No one paid, and now
there's all these gantries that are switched off because they
just stopped the system because no one. They all just
got together and said no, no, fuck that, we're not
doing that. If you want me to pay, you're going

(30:29):
to come and accept my money, so that it's South
Africa for you.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
We need to need more like that.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
So I've got a few fines like that I just
have not paid because I can't tell if they're like
a scam or like linked T who's that?

Speaker 3 (30:40):
Well that's real. Yeah, yeah, probably pay that.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
There's a warrant out for my arrest with that, but it.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
Could still be Yeah, I do something about it.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Do you have a favorite like, do you have a
favorite car that you've owned or that you are yet
to own that you would love.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
It's an interesting thing because I look at cars all
the time and then I don't. Someone asked me that,
and I quite like slightly idea of looking at something
and go I like that, and then I don't I
don't need to own anything anymore because I don't need
the drama. I like my last car, older car. I
bought a Range Drover two. Yep, it was. It was

(31:16):
a really good car. And then it got done in
the floods and the noise and that sort of broke
my heart. It was it was a good car, and
it's like I had a few fumes, so you know,
it didn't take long for the kids to fall asleep
in the back had to plus and the girl the

(31:37):
mates go, I love your car. Can we go in
your dad's car? Yeah, no worries and then a bit back.

Speaker 6 (31:43):
Jeez, I love you done sleep that sort of both,
and then I sort of after that, I thought, oh,
you know, no, no, maybe maybe.

Speaker 4 (31:53):
But it's hard when you get kids because you need
something that is reliable. Last thing you need is a
car fucking breaking down somewhere.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
With kids, you just don't want another house and it's
hard to find it. I feel like I'm constantly searching
for a family car that I enjoy it, and I
just don't think there's any family cars really and yet
to to have an old Ranger. So maybe that could
be one but I'm just yet to find.

Speaker 4 (32:16):
But even imagine the middle of summer you go to
go for a drive somewhere and they think overheats at
the lights and yeah, your wife cracks the shits at you,
the kids do that save you.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
Then you'll get it. But it's as it is for me.
It's actually that's it's the old ones in the fumes
that I can't cop like it. It's just it's too
much for me. Obviously didn't mind back in the day.
I don't know how we didn't notice it back then,
but like and then you think, oh, maybe something maybe
late nineties, and then they're not it kind of just
tails off of it. Yeah, they're just there's a commitment

(32:46):
to it. You know. You see people and go, oh god,
I wouldn't want one of those old little three series
wagon like you know, i'd like that. And then I
just go, no, I don't care. Yeah, which is really
disappointing anyone selling a car and not buying it. But otherwise,
and I think people always and people who like cars
always trying to talk you into it. You should get it,
should get it. Well, what are you driving as a

(33:09):
family car? Now we've got a land drover Discovery. That's brave,
and that goes all right, it's been a good car.
What year is that Disco four? It's two twenty something around, yes,
And then I've got I've had a McCarn for five
years and that's been the best car.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
Mccarne is just so good that the new one, if
you don't know, the V one is fully electric and
it is like, whoever made that decision needs to get
a bonk on the head because.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
They had they rush a pet one back, haven't they.
I think I saw that well, but they're not going
to call it a McCann.

Speaker 4 (33:44):
So basically they said McCann is dead, it is ev
only now forever, and we're going to bring back an
internal combustion one, but it won't be called a McCarn.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
So it'll no doubt be this'll it'll be a botched.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
Platform share because they're rushing it in that that last
McCarn was the best car they ever made because you
had a great variety of engines, the tech inside was
modern enough for its time, and it drove like a
Porschit like it just wasn't.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
It didn't drive like an There's.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
The reason why they're so popular because they.

Speaker 4 (34:13):
Hold their value. Yeah, because people just want them. And
they also you can buy a five or six year
old one and it looks like the one that was
last last year.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
You know, it didn't change myself, but I just I
think it might. It's probably been my last good car.
And then I'll just start buying silly things like just
to put shit in the back and whatever. And then
I've also got Michelle didn't get around of selling our
old X five and we've still got that line around yep.
And that's the one I'm really nostalgic about. Ye and
it's done three hundred and fifty. I love an older

(34:45):
and it's a cracker and it's like it is but
anyway it gets. It's been getting over the pits most years,
and so and I sort of, you know, we are.
It's one of those things. Go sell it and someone
like it's got to scratch down the side and I just,
you know, use it for holidays and put gear in
the back and yeah, because it's I don't know, I'm

(35:05):
just feel I feel super connected to it. Yeah. Yeah,
they just don't make them, like the new X five
is nice. But BMW went through phases with their cars
where they don't make any sense to me, and that
in w today it's just like fusing if you I
always I had a three Series touring Wagon Want two
thousand and eight or something. That wasn't a bad car
in the South African. It wasn't liked anyway. They had

(35:28):
a few issues, but like anyway I got, I got,
I got to where I needed with it, had it
for quite some time. But after that, I would just like,
they just don't look like BMW's, they don't feel like BMW's.
They look like they're cars for Americans, and so they
have no appeal. Whereas for me, my uncle had a
three Series when I was a kid, and I just
loved it. It's green, beautiful, yeah, and I just and

(35:51):
I'd always wanted one, And so we went to sho
you went to get my wife a car. She was like,
where's my cars because and then she at the time,
I think she was driving a Golf which was that
was a good car as well. And I was a
Folkswagen ambassador for a few years, and so we had

(36:14):
I had all of them. I liked those cars as well.
And then she was looking for new one and she
couldn't make up her mind. Just be confusing her. Yeah,
what about that one or clever? And then she went
and then she just without she just went out and
bought that X five without asking me because she knew
my keys.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
She just know that's good.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
Oh but what about this fun just like I have
a look at that.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Oh I should have a.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
Look at that one, Panda, that's what that is, okay.
So that so that is the only car that I want.
And this if I had been thinking that I might
get one in the UK, leave it at KEM to
lock up and then I can drive it when I'm
in the UK. It's a fucking stupid it's a great eye.

(37:00):
Did all fit in in the UKK? Yeah, Like I
don't need one here? Yeah, but that then like i'll
drive it once a year, yeah, when I'm there for work.
But you know, that's that's a weird obsession of mine.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, it's good though that especially the older ones made
the same with the Citron as well, made such quirky
really cool in.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
Quirki engines as well.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
I'm just trying to look here that they offered that
car with aer point nine liter two cylinder engine, amongst others.
But it's it's the quirky type of random. It'd run
your cappuccino machine.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
I'll get one of those. Yeah, there's none of them here.
You can't find them here. They did the Panda for
a little bit, but they weren't very popular.

Speaker 4 (37:40):
And I just shudder at the thought of owning a
feet in Australia because it would be expensive to repair
and random shit like that where they don't have any parts.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
It's just not worth is in the UK that would
be time. It doesn't Killer who used to live we
used to share a house with Fladden, a band with
our Killer and he had one two koiller and he
had to do all the work himself and then people
used to take parts off it and stuff out in
the front of the house. But he's the best and
he went out went out and bought it off. This
guy in Ringwood's retired and Benny just like Kill his

(38:12):
nickname is, but Bennie used to he liked to think
that he could get a good deal and so he
goes out there. This guy is like retiring, just wants
to get rid of it. His wife wants him to
move on this car, so he beats him down on
the price and then he asked him to go and
fill it up with fuel and then makes him throw

(38:33):
in the driving gloves.

Speaker 6 (38:34):
Oh my god, he had killer has huge hands, so
they didn't.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
Even fit him.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
And he's like and a little round tin of barley
sugars too, and I'll take those collection of drawing out.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
That thing. But I actually died by the same I remember, god,
the one after the DS, the c X and I
went out to the suburbs and it was this beautiful car.
The guy would let me drive it? Oh was he
that wead to do it? Yeah, And I'm not. I'm
not buying a car that you want to drive around.
I don't get to drive it. Like that's stupid. I

(39:10):
just turned up. I was immobility stage at that's that stage.
I think it turned up in a pair of thole
as he went, I'm not letting this car drive.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
You know, you go into like a really good classic
car dealership, now, like you go into like have you
ever been a throttle classic? I mean you walk around
that place. One of the cars are phenomenally overpriced, but
shout out to you guys, you do a great job.
But it is it is like walking in an art
gallery and you just stand there.

Speaker 4 (39:41):
That's that's an issue for me because if I musted
up enough money to buy one of those, I'd never
drive it because I'd be concerned about hurting the thing
or having someone run into it. I just want something
that's a little bit weathered but still. Yeah, you know,
I just don't feel bad someone you know, puts a
shopping trolley into it or whatever.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
Yeah. Their ability to to sell something that's not really
that collectible is pretty amazing. You got some of the
shit in there. I'm just like, what, who's going to
buy that? But then it just moves. Yeah, it's strange. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yeah, they had they had a Cayman are in there,
and which is a great great yeah, but they wanted
one hundred and ten. Don't do that, Like, don't do that? Well,
what others are there in the market. I had a
look and there was like a fluoro purple looking wrap
and it was around about the stad they've priced them
both at the same price. I'm like, okay, whatever. Some

(40:33):
of their cars, though, like you look at them and
you go, these are pristine, and there's a lot of
a lot of them. Doesn't do it, you know, they
all sort of do it around the country. But I
just find when I walk in there, you just kind
of take a quiet moment and you're like, someone's really
brought this car back to something special and it's you
don't really need to say anything.

Speaker 3 (40:52):
You just like look at it.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
Yeah, I mean so many tie Kick is literally in
that going into that place. But it always feels to
me that that's that's where when people get rich and
they think they need to buy a car, they go
and buy one there because they feel safe and it
feels like a proper car show room. You know, they're
nice guys and and they're good salespeople, and you know

(41:16):
they've always got quality cars there. And then they take
it home and then they have them for five years
and they never drive them, and then they sell them
when they get divorced. That's bad.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
Keep them in a secret warehouse. I've seen that. By
the way. There's there's there's warehouses stacked with the rare
G two three RS's and they're like the special edition
and ones that you know go up as soon as
you drive them out and they're like, no, no, these
are this is our divorce money, right Because they can't
trace it, they don't know.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
Where it is crazy future planning.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Yes, glad some of us can do it.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
Let's talk about Chucky eweie you.

Speaker 4 (42:01):
We were sort of talking a little off air regarding
the book and how it all came about. Run Us
through the History and has it been a success.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Yeah. So I've done a book on motels with images
of Austraians on holidays and that went really well, and
i'd sort of I've done the I've done the series
one of the cars that made Australia, and so they
had all these images around and I've been talking to
the National Archives and I thought, oh, maybe I'll just
punch out a book for Christmas, as you do. And

(42:32):
so I got a hundred images or something, and they're
pretty most a lot of them in Canberra, and you know,
there was there was someone didn't know what they were
and I was like, oh, what's this one? And then
so there's a few random people I know on Instagram
what's this this one here? One of them was like
the god, it's a French car that's made by General Motors,

(42:53):
that was assembled here by Nissan. No, anyway, it doesn't
really matter. I can't remember it off the top of
me head. But it was one of those really obscure ones.
And so yeah, like I popped it out at Christmas
time and people really liked us a good gift and
made it sort of look retro with a sort of
cover that was like, yes, I love it, and just
people bought it for their husbands and their dads and

(43:15):
it's just sort of kept selling ever since. And it's
not my highest selling book, but it's pretty close. And
like it's self published. I've reprinted it like five times.
And it's not just for car nuts. It's just because
you can open it up and go nothing. There's a
whole bunch of Volkswagens on the back of a truck

(43:37):
from nineteen seventy eight or something like that. They take
us back in time and they take us to those
places and memories. And I suppose over the years, I've
been interested in the exploration of cars and connection to
us in terms of what manufacturing meant to us, what
it meant to capture that idea of dad excitement and
when you came home and mom or Dad had a

(43:58):
new car and you know that when that happened to us,
it was huge. Or the neighbors, as we spoke about before,
and what does it mean to us when we don't
make cars here? And I think obviously there's the part
of the story that we look at and go, Okay,
we liked Holden's and Fords and that was important. But

(44:18):
ultimately the thing that saddens me the most was that
all these clever, clever people that were working on putting
these cars together, some of them they're using all those
skills now to make shopping trolleys. It's inside and how
we lost all those people and lots of them went
to America, particularly the designers, and obviously they're working on

(44:38):
other things, but our ability, you know, the story of
Australian made cars to be competitive with it, to have
cars that in the end, particularly the Commodore sold so
well overseas and was a great car and it was
really the only the Australian dollar going up that really
made a mess of it. We should be incredibly proud

(44:59):
of that. And it goes beyond just because we could
do it here and that tarifs made it a possible
for us. So I think there's something deeply sad that
we couldn't We can't think that that's possible for us. Again, well,
we could you're like, I would imagine. I don't know
what you guys think about this idea that imagine if
we had some sort of incentive where you could take

(45:20):
your car and get it turned into an electric car,
and there's all these places around there that could do this, yep,
and then there's a tax advantage for that, or there's
a rebait to do it, and then you'd have all
this extraordinary you know, there'd be people doing it in
the backyards and wherever it was, as long as it's safe,
I reckon. There would be amazing people who could do
that absolutely well.

Speaker 4 (45:41):
You know there's this company called Jaunt and yeah, they
basically do classic land drivers. You take them an old
ship box. They will take all the old crap out
of it, turn it into an electric one. And their
thing is that you can have a beatina land crew
as land rover that just looks like it's an old
shitter that's driving down the road, but it is fully electric.
It's not gonna overheat at the lights like and you

(46:02):
know the other thing as well, at manufacturing. I mean
we do a little bit of manufacturing now with a
lot of the big pickup trucks that are converted left
hand drive to right hand drives, the big industry around that,
but gone is the innovation that came from designing a
car from the ground out.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
Like the Commodore at.

Speaker 4 (46:19):
Its finale, was basically a car that was done all
in Australia and it was such a good car that
we wasted so much talent on and that to me
is a great disappointment. Also a great disappointment is that
there was just like in Holden's case, no materials left.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
GM just said, now, fuck it, we're closing that. Just
delete all that shit. We do all of our filming.

Speaker 4 (46:41):
At the proving ground and the guys there don't have
anything left.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
GM just took it all away.

Speaker 4 (46:47):
No one knows where any of the photos and all
of that nostalgic material went.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
It's insane, it really. They didn't try. They don't know.
No one knows, and I've tried finding whether they have
archives of this stuff, but it's just nothing around.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
Do they still have the Ford thing in Geelong there.

Speaker 4 (47:05):
But they had the Ford Discovery Center and I've literally
found pictures from when I was a kid. I went
in there and took all these photos and stuff.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
And that's all gone.

Speaker 4 (47:13):
Like Ford thankfully has a much richer history and they've
they've got a decent archive of stuff. But you know
Ford as well. I mean they do still a lot
of engineering work at the Yu Yang's for Australia and
other markets. But you read the tea leaves, all that
stuff is going to change eventually. And on the topic
of OSSI's that made it to the to the big time,
Mike Simcoe was Holden's lead designer. He ended up retiring

(47:37):
earlier this year, but it was the chief designer for GM.
He made it as top as he could to that tree,
so there's a lot to be proud of.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
Michael Simco also designed you know the blue Eski brig
yes that you put in Young Industrial because I mean
all those guys came out through r M I T. Yeah,
that's it. Yeah, And they were all like extraordinary and
if you if you're really into this, particularly the drawings

(48:06):
in r MIT design in museum is extraordinary and they're
all online you can just check it. And like those
renders of all those cars are extraordinary. They're so beautiful,
absolutely beautiful. Luckily though they survive and they are to
remind us of when we do strive to do something.

Speaker 4 (48:23):
But you have a look at the government and how
fuck parts of it are we have. You know, the
world's one of the world's biggest supplies of lithium. So
what we do is we let companies mind lithium. They
send it over to China, they turn it into batteries,
they send it back to us in electric cars. Would
you not think, let's take this resource that we have,
create the batteries ourselves, ship them all over the world

(48:46):
wherever it needs to go. There are so many industries
that we could tap into. Google Maps famously, Google bought
an Australian company that basically created Google Maps in Sydney.
I mean, how do we not have this? How do
we not nurture this? I think we need to do
so much better.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
It's easier just to dig it up offloaded. I mean,
all that's how all our wealth has been made, and.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
They would have manufacturing that, right.

Speaker 3 (49:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (49:09):
But ultimately, you've got to stand for something, and we
can't just stand for digging shit out of the ground
and making a few, you know, only a very few
companies rich.

Speaker 3 (49:18):
That's all that happens. What about those military vehicles that
we make here, so that they're making.

Speaker 4 (49:23):
How yeah, they do some of those, so they tend
to do well. And now actually military spending and investment
in military has gone through the roof, so there is
a big industry there and I can't talk about that,
but there's other military stuff that's that's coming soon in
Victoria as well.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Do you know that. I don't know if you've met
my friend shift some army secrets.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
But it's it is disappointing.

Speaker 4 (49:53):
And to me, my my dad worked at Forward for
like almost thirty years, so I have a real connection
with Australian manuf actoring and one of my mates lost
their jobs because I grew up with I went to
union with a lot of the engineers that got jobs
there and now are literally, like you said, designing garbage
struck some shopping trolleys.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
So yeah, it's just a sad thing. I know it
couldn't necessarily last forever, but the fact that we couldn't
say we're not going to do that, but you guys
shall do this. So we did keep one part of it.
The luxury car text is still there.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
That's still that to me makes no sense.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
It's a hole that they don't need to have in
a budget, which.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Time was to import a luxury car from say New Zealand,
where like say a Porsche is really bloody cheap. I've
still got the amount of dicking around and tax I've
got to pay on that when it's a short trip
over the.

Speaker 3 (50:45):
Philip Adams told me this great story about Malcolm Fraser
back in the day and they wanted when Philip Adams
had his advertising agency, and he said, look, I Philip,
we want you to do a campaign because we don't
want to tell a strands that you know, buying the
States is just as good as getting a Mercedes, you know,
can you do that? Phillips says, well, they're not. You

(51:07):
can fucking tell it didn't didn't take on the campaign,
which is it is smart.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
Yeah, I haven't curious to know if you ever been
to like I just I love that you have this
love and of just nostalgia, all things nostalgia, and especially
like that Australiana kind of feel about it. But there's
a really good pub here in Sydney and it's called
Hawk's Brewery. I don't know if you've been there, but

(51:37):
it's a cool place because it's these guys who back
in the day started a beer and I guess named
it after I don't know that.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
Yeah, they had with Bob Hawk, and he has a
state has an involvement in it.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Yeah, and and so that this brewery is kind of
like a shrine to him, and it's a fantastic place,
like it's like a museum. But they've got like a
really old style, very fake but like an old style
Chinese takeaway kind of thing like you would have had
in the seventies and eighties. The fried rice there is
amazing as it's a frontos but they've got like Hawks
like Australia flag jacket you go and take a pierce

(52:13):
and stuff, and they've got you're like, what's that sound?
And they've got Richie commentating the cricket in the like
it's really cool. It's just and apparently his house. You
would have obviously seen it, but apparently it's just like
this beautiful shrine to the to the eighties, like from
the color scheme to just everything.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
In Hawks house.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
Yeah, they auctioned everything off. Oh and yeah, people were
buying all sorts of stuff from him, all those old
couches and stuff. Yeah it's n scouches, but I mean,
what's interesting with those guys. Is that you know, they
felt like what they were tapping into is their their
personal feeling was the optimism. Optimism of the nineteen eighties. Yeah,

(52:51):
and so, which is really important to think about that time.
It comes up the back of the nineteen seventies. So
you see this increase in national pride, cars, films, music,
You've got the rise of World Series, cricket, you know,
this whole sort of that sort of superpowers into the
nineteen eighties, and then you've got the supercharged economy and

(53:12):
then as ken doone put it right, first generation of
Australians men who haven't gone to war, so they're like
they haven't lost five years their life, they've got no trauma,
they're boomers. They've got like mega Megamega positivity and they
feel like they can take on the world. Absolutely extraordinary.

(53:33):
And then you add isolation, so you can do anything here.
You can manufacture here, like people were manufacturing a lot
here in the nineteen eighties. They often think about the
nineteen sixties and seventies being a golden year of manufacturing.
It is actually the nineteen eighties we were making everything here,
still making tellies and they're making VCR players you know, dishwashers.
Everything was being made and there was lots of money
around and then those guys, whether it's Hoagues or ken

(53:57):
Doon or Greek Norman, like, we can take this to
the world extraordinary. So America's cut a great example of that.
So there's this feeling that they're tapping into is like
anything is possible. You know, we go back to nineteen
eighty four, eighty three, eighty five, like there is absolutely
no doubt in anyone's mind that you know, this idea

(54:19):
of Australian flavor of the month or whatever it is,
we're rolling around in colors of the bullshit everything the
way you do whatever week want. So when you fast
forward today and if you grew up through that time,
that sits there like a baggage going, oh what did
that happen? You know, it's like why everything was possible?

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Don't you find it interesting how national pride means and
feels so much different now than it did.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
Back then That idea of innovation went out of fashion,
and so really once we get into the nineteen nineties
into the two thousands, in the Howard years, like it's
pretty much just sport and the Anzac Clinchen. So the
idea of things that we can create, even the arts
and even music goes down PEG and those two tenets

(55:05):
of two things that Howard taps into, and those things
are really important to us, but they're not everything. So
a more rounded view of things that we should be
proud of, which are sport, innovation, technology, what we manufacture,
what we create, the arts, makes up a much broader
idea and so I think people forget that or standing

(55:27):
up for Australian made can also be seen as something
that's sort of a new nationalism that's not particularly healthy
as well.

Speaker 4 (55:36):
Which disappoints me because as an immigrant, we came to
Australia with nothing, and to me, Australia is everything and
I'm very proud to be Australian because of the opportunities
that gave me and my family. So that's why I
get so disappointed when people a sort of not anti Australian,
but anti celebrating Australia. Like, I understand, there's a lot

(55:56):
of shit things going on at the moment, but to me,
it's that history, innovation and creating opportunity that is what
Australia is to me.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
And when I can't celebrate that. I find that disappointing. Yeah,
like eighty six, Yeah, you put it add in a
magazine and work, and you could go and if you
wanted someone to buy you had a brochure. You put
an add in a magazine like in the Bulletin magazine
or Penthouse or Playboy or something like that, and you go.

(56:27):
If you want a brochure for whatever I'm making, send
a stamp step self stamp dressd anvelope with a check
for five dollars to cover for the postage and then
to get the things so you can buy something off them.
It was as much easier world to actually marketing was
a lot easier. It was more expensive, but it was
a lot easier. The Internet really has fuck things, hasn't it.

(56:48):
It's yeah, the Internet's been amazing. But yes, just but
you know that. But we also write this is incredibly
important to think about this in terms of how it's
changed and how we see world as a nation. We
were also starved for choice. Things are expensive, so tariffs
to protect our local manufacturing meant that if you wanted

(57:09):
a pair of Nikes, they gost you twice as much.
So people would go When I was a kid. They'd
go to someone who goes to America and can you
get me a pair of to America? Yeah, and you
save half the money. So that's so when the when
the tariffs disappeared, our manufacturing base disappeared, and we're not
just talking about cards, we're talking about shoes and all
sorts of things, right, and really particularly hit Victoria worse

(57:31):
than ever because Victoria was always the sort of cradle
of manufacturing in this country. So then suddenly we can
get stuff things really expensive. Suddenly everything's cheaper. So globalization
kicks in. Tarifts disappeared, so suddenly we can get stuff
that we could never get before. And so we go
from a nation of people who fixed things to a
nation of people who buy ship off the internet in

(57:52):
a very society, and where people will go, I don't
know where the screwdriver is easier to get one off Amazon.
That's the end of civilization.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
By the way, I can get it, I can get
it by lunchtime, drives to my house and gives it
to me instead of me getting off my arse.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
And looking for it in the laundry. Yeah, it's fucked, yeah, yeah,
oh yeah, oh yeah, we've we've done it. We've done
a number.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
And that is why Australia in a nutshell as you've
just joined us the grunge gear Sigma Pablo. Yeah, yeah, look,
it's an interesting one, but you know it's thanks to
your books, like the Water Ripper book with the water
with a really cool the I remember just looking at
even the front cover where you've got the was it

(58:43):
called the fridge the fridge thing, I think it's on
the front.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
It's just it's just brilliant.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
Yes, yeah, that's it. And it's just just this brilliant
appreciation of the b grade stars of Australia.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
And these are strange design icons. Yeah, they're every day
Like I did. This book's got sixty every day items
and it's very similar to what we've been talking about.
Things that were designed or manufactured here that somehow, like
our cars, just sort of found a way into their
hearts to tell a story about who we are. Like
Guy designed the Dolphin torch, you know, not far from

(59:18):
where we are here in North Sydney in the early
nineteen seventies. That torch was the highest selling torch, not
just here in Australia but across the world for fourteen years.
Cool like and but when you know when the dolphin torch,
you know it clicked, the sound of it, you know
what it feels like? Yeah, yeah, here go Yeah yeah.
So all the in the and so it's in terms
of a cultural touchstone, in terms of no One, you know,

(59:41):
playing spotlight with your brothers and sisters when you're a kid,
of being in the caravan park. They tell a great
story about our lifestyle. And because we have more choices now,
those cultural touchstones are fuel and far between. So they
talk about the stack at is it another classic? Like
no One? My kids couldn't tell you what brand thereby
school helmet is. They had one for my whole life

(01:00:03):
and the kids.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
At least more from Amazon.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
Yeah, it's like Bangle's. I doesn't like that one anymore, Dad,
what are you doing nothing?

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Amazons? Get a screwdriver for dab too. I think these
books are important and highly recommend getting or get them all,
getting some if if you're.

Speaker 4 (01:00:27):
Just having a look at the illustrations the house. So
I've got them all lined up here. The illustrations are fantastic.
They're just all so unique in their own way.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Yeah, even like the God I keep forgetting it. What
a rip a book. It's so weird that when you
look at some of these items, it automatically takes you,
like just to a quick flash in somewhere in my childhood,
like I go, oh, that that that bloody fridge. I
remember Arnie Kay had one when we were in Paul
mcquarie or you know, Port Arlington, and that that thing

(01:00:55):
over there. God, that was sitting in our shoe box
outside for years and gathering, gathering, Just this.

Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
Weird little they're important. I mean. The other thing is
is that we don't realize is that we're quite happily
saying you know, most of us watch Netflix this week
and it's great, but it doesn't reflect our lives. It
doesn't tell us. There are no stories about who we
are Netflix exactly, and people are craving it without realizing,

(01:01:21):
which is really interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
I can say. Barry Humphreyes did a great series years
and years ago called Flashbacks. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was really good, Like you'd be fantastic with carrying
that on or something, because he just told the story.
Each episode was like Australia in the sixties, Australia in
the seventies, eighties, nineties, and two thousands. But it was

(01:01:43):
just his brilliant take and just a really good reminder
of what Australia was, where it went and where it
is now and why as well, or why we became
the way we are.

Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
Because it's the idea of looking back right and there
there will always be people, you know, and we can
look through it through rose colored glasses and we did this,
and we did that and that, and so you don't
want to go back? What you what were the ideas there?
What was the spirit of that? That's important? And how's that?
How can that spirit be rekindled for a modern Australia

(01:02:19):
And that's that's what we need. It's a shame they
don't manufactured machetes in Victoria because that would be a
booming business at the moment. Like it's a.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
Way to end on a positive comedy. This episode has
been brought to you by Bunnings where machetes are now
on zale.

Speaker 4 (01:02:39):
We're going to give away a few copies of Chucky.
So yeah, contact at the Drivers Show dot com dot au.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
Well we'll run something on Insta as well. We'll put
all the deats up there.

Speaker 4 (01:02:51):
Yeah, because I think it's definitely something that you've got
to have have at home and enjoy.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Let's give them away. I'll sign them, send them to
your house.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Not yeah, Jonathan, go fuck your sol mate. Thank you
for coming in, pleasure, thanks so much, genuinely really appreciate
you coming in and be great and thanks for sharing,
Oh pleadure.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
The Driver's Show Podcast is looking for a sponsor. If
you'd like to help Paul and Gordy fulfill their lifelong
dream of reviving the world's greatest car brand, the you go.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Let's face it, who doesn't want to see that happen.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
Here's your opportunity.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Drop us a line at contact at The Driver's Show
Podcast dot com, dot a you or send us a
DM on our Instagram page. We'd love to work with you.