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Australian.Story.S31E07
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00:15Hello. The Leyland Brothers were household names in Australia in the 1980s. Their folksy
00:22TV shows explored the country with their families in tow. Brothers Mike and Mel were as close
00:29as two people can be until a sad falling out at the height of their fame, one from which
00:35they never fully recovered. We first brought you Mel Leyland's story in 2015. 11 years on
00:42he's facing daunting challenges but with his adventurous spirit undimmed.
00:55Dad and I have always been very close. Dad's always been my hero.
01:07I am an only child so it's just me that has the responsibility of taking care of Dad now.
01:14How are you feeling today?
01:16Oh well it's a good day because I woke up and I'm still alive. That's a pretty good day when
01:20you get to this age, every day counts. The hardest thing has been watching this
01:26man that I idolised my whole life slowly disappear in front of my eyes. I could still have a
01:34conversation with him every single day but he doesn't remember it half an hour later.
01:40So it looks like you've got your bag and your hat out ready to go. You're going somewhere today?
01:44Oh I'm always ready to go. Always. Having dementia is interesting because
01:50it depends a little bit on what it affects. If you've got a good memory of the good things in
01:58life,
01:59the good things are far more important.
02:05Urgently need Land Rover Clutch Plate Series 2. Require water also if possible. And the
02:15signature Lowland Brothers. That's Lima Echo Yankee, Lima Alpha, November Delta Brothers.
02:22Travel all over the countryside. Ask the Lowlands, ask the Lowlands.
02:26Their travel documentaries over the past 30 years made the Lowland Brothers household names.
02:32Hundreds of hours of television, tens of thousands of kilometres over the countryside.
02:43A lot of people, when they're going to go on a road trip around Australia these days,
02:46say, I'm going to go and do a Leyland Brothers. And off they go on their trip. So they go
02:51exploring.
02:53Hey Dad, Frankie's ready. Oh, that's good. That was a good package. Yeah, me too.
03:00He's still aware that he is Mal Leyland from the Leyland Brothers. Yes, definitely.
03:06We've got the Wheels Across the World and a 60th anniversary trip, which we'll be doing this year.
03:12The main reason for what we wanted to do is to honour what my dad did,
03:18and for people to remember what he did and celebrate what he did.
03:32All right. Two, four, six, eight.
03:42Good. Thank you.
03:47In that way. Yeah.
04:02You did notice that we were gone.
04:04Do you know where we went?
04:06No.
04:06So a few times he would get lost
04:08and I always thought it'd be ironic that Mel Leyland,
04:11this person who explored a lot of Australia,
04:14you know, police are searching for Mel Leyland,
04:16who's lost in bushland,
04:18would probably not be very good headlines.
04:21I found a lot more stuff, Mel,
04:24for you to go through and have a look at and sort out.
04:27Oh, right, huh? Yeah.
04:29Well, there's a lot of it.
04:30By the time we actually finally got into the specialist,
04:32I wasn't surprised to hear that he had the dementia.
04:35That's out in Central Australia
04:38and it's Uluru, I think they call it.
04:41And I suggested to Carmen
04:43that, you know, maybe it was time that he came to live with us.
04:46We didn't think he was ready to go into a retirement village.
04:50All the memories, eh?
04:52At the moment, I'd say it's classified as moderate dementia.
04:57In so many different parts of the country.
04:59Accepting that Dad is going to get worse
05:01because he's hard.
05:03We're definitely dreading the day when it gets to the point
05:05where we realise that we can't take care of him anymore.
05:08I don't feel as though it's getting worse,
05:11but luckily I've got a lot of photographs,
05:13so I've got things to remind me of stuff that I've seen and done.
05:16So I can always look them up.
05:22A lot of people think of us as being a pair of Aussie blokes
05:26who just grew up in the suburbs of Australia.
05:29But in fact, we started out in England.
05:31So we're the original 10-pound POM family.
05:35I think the reason Mike and I ended up as close as we were
05:39was because Dad got into real estate
05:41and moved around from one suburb to the next.
05:45As a result, we changed schools so much
05:46that we didn't really get enough time to make good friends,
05:50so we became each other's best mate.
05:57His very first film we ever shot was at the Olympic Games.
06:00And that's how we got into shooting films.
06:03And we ended up filming little home movies
06:07of things that we did, you know, holiday trips and stuff like that.
06:14So I bought an old Land Rover
06:15and set off on a trip to Heirs Rock.
06:19These days, some people might think it offensive
06:21that we'd climbed the rock, but in 1961,
06:23not many people made the trip and everyone did it.
06:26We had fallen in love with the desert
06:28and become completely charmed by Heirs Rock.
06:32We'd made a movie too, an amateur movie,
06:35The Lure of the Centre.
06:37Mike showed Lure of the Centre to the news editor
06:39and landed the job of Channel 3's first news cameraman.
06:44For a while, Mike and I were rivals.
06:47Using this camera, I started work as a cadet photographer
06:50with the afternoon daily paper here, The Newcastle Sun.
06:54But the rivalry didn't last long.
06:56With only one year's professional experience,
06:58we joined forces to make our first commercial film.
07:02And all the books that I'd read said the secret to selling a documentary
07:05was to actually do something for the first time.
07:08So I picked up a map of Australia and thought,
07:11well, what can we do that's not going to be too expensive and too far away?
07:14I looked at New South Wales and there was this wriggly line going through it
07:18and it was the Darling River.
07:20And no-one had done it. It was 1,400 miles.
07:26We had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for.
07:30And so inexperienced were we, we never even had a pair of oars with us.
07:33We had an outboard motor only.
07:36And it gave us trouble.
07:38We kept breaking the propellers.
07:40Then we thought, well, if we get some baked bean tins
07:42and tip the baked beans out, we could flatten the tin out
07:44and cut it to some sort of shape resembling a propeller.
07:48We managed to sell our Down the Darling film to the Nine Network
07:52and the film became so popular it was repeated within two weeks
07:56and got huge audiences.
08:00There isn't any doubt that the success of Down the Darling
08:03prompted us to believe that we could make a living out of doing it.
08:07Adventurers who are actually going out and paying for their adventure
08:10by selling the film to a television station,
08:12it was just unique in those days.
08:15And they told me they used Super 8 film, they were doing it,
08:17almost home movie style, which everyone loved.
08:20There was a charm to it
08:21and it meant they could make really good money out of it.
08:24Five young Australians set out on an expedition never made before.
08:28A journey across a waterless continent.
08:32But we had to come up with something better,
08:34something that no one had done before.
08:36And that's when we decided we'll go right across Australia
08:40from one side to the other
08:41and on the way we had to cross the Simpson Desert.
08:43Ahead lies 300 miles of hard slogging over Simpson Sandhills
08:48with no water holes at all.
08:51I think the most spectacular, most impressive thing we saw
08:54was airdrop in the rain.
08:57We were there, we arrived on one day and it was bright and sunny
09:01and then the next day at port we had six inches of rain
09:04and this broke the eight year drought.
09:10One tourist in 100,000 has seen such water spilling from Ayers Rock
09:14and no cine cameraman has ever filmed it until now.
09:19Nobody had ever filmed an event like this before.
09:22Those pictures became the most famous ones I ever took.
09:26We decided we would road show the film.
09:29We'd take it around the country and hire town halls, cinemas if we could
09:35and advertise it ourselves and see how we went.
09:38Well to start with everybody said I was mad, you know,
09:40I was throwing the money down the drain advertising it and putting it on
09:42and in Newcastle the theatre manager said, you know, two days we'll finish it.
09:46And at the end of two-week season we'd recovered $15,000,
09:52enough money to buy three houses at the time.
09:55We've just come back from the Kimberleys,
09:56shooting a new series pulled off the beaten track.
09:59And that's when we started calling ourselves the Leyland Brothers.
10:02We had a bit of a rough time, didn't we?
10:04We had a few breakdowns and Land Rovers rolling over and things like this.
10:09But we've come now to sort of accept these as part of the business really,
10:12that's what makes our films interesting I think.
10:13Mike and Mal as brothers had the most strong relationship
10:20that I've ever seen between two people ever.
10:24We then moved on to make a new television series called Ask the Leyland Brothers.
10:27That was a program where viewers rode in and asked us to film anything,
10:31anywhere in Australia and we travelled there to film it.
10:34And we're going out to Rat's Nest Island in answer to this request.
10:44We travel with our wives now in two vehicles and we all work together as a team.
10:49Just Mike does all the camera work, I do the sound.
10:51Another good item is a well-equipped picnic set.
10:53Both of the wives were attractive girls and both Mike and Mal were a bit sexist.
11:00And so they used their wives as a draw card.
11:05Before we look at packing, consider saving weight in the food department.
11:09Dehydrated food is good, but only in areas where you can get lots of water.
11:13I got pushed in front of the camera, you know.
11:15Talk to these people. What about?
11:18But I learnt to start asking questions and that.
11:21And these days, portable gas can be acquired almost everywhere.
11:25It was just part of what the viewers started to like.
11:28But what I think was the secret to it was actually the fact that it was a family,
11:32an average family.
11:33We didn't do things that the ordinary bloke couldn't do.
11:40Of course, you do have to inflate the airbed each evening,
11:43but don't try blowing it up with your mouth.
11:45It's far better to save your lungs for breathing in the clean country air
11:49you've travelled so far to enjoy.
11:52When we went to sign up with Nine for the Isolated Brothers series,
11:55they said to make sure that we didn't make it too slick,
11:58because they want it to look like the boys next door.
12:01Sort of an amateur home movie look.
12:06The old saying about hard work not hurting anybody seems to be true.
12:10We discovered this when we were down here in Tasmania.
12:12The ratings were phenomenal.
12:14About 40% of the number of people that are watching TV on any one night
12:18watching our show.
12:19That amounts to about three and a half to four million people.
12:23If there's anything you want to know about this great continent of ours,
12:27then ask the Leyland Brothers.
12:30What do you reckon we are, I'm like?
12:33Buckety, why no?
12:35Two guys have disposed of their Kodak rappers properly all over Australia.
12:39I don't think Mike and Mal ever complained about the parodies and the put-downs.
12:45They were always put down as these amateurs and so forth.
12:47It just gave them more and more publicity.
12:49Look at that, the Leyland Brothers putting a smile across Australia.
12:52That's the kind of guys you are, eh?
12:55The biggest advantage was that they had a positive image, a very positive image.
13:00No one ever said no.
13:03As soon as you mentioned Leyland Brothers, it was, oh, oh yeah.
13:09Because they were almost seen as family and friends.
13:14In 1983, we decided to make a new direction for our career.
13:18Instead of just continuing with television, we wanted to get into tourism.
13:25Mike and I had looked at the idea of building a big tourist park for quite a few years.
13:29And then one day Mike confronted me with the idea that he thought that what we really needed was some
13:33really big thing to attract people.
13:35So instead of building our little timber building, we eventually decided to build a replica of Ayers Rock.
13:45And we ended up having to borrow a lot of money to do it.
13:51The next thing you know, the interest rates had gone up to 26%.
13:54And what we'd borrowed had just doubled and then it started to get like a big snowball.
14:01And it was a nightmare.
14:02It started out as a dream and it turned into a nightmare.
14:08Just before we opened Leyland Brothers World, we had about 26,000, I suppose, in cheques that hadn't been yet
14:16presented to the bank.
14:18And they fronted up and said that they weren't going to honour these cheques unless we provided additional security.
14:26Well, we didn't have any additional security.
14:27And then they said, oh, what about your houses?
14:30We said, well, no, those are always going to be protected.
14:33They're in the girls' names.
14:34And I said, it's my house.
14:37And they said, well, you can't open if you don't sign your house over.
14:43And I ended up doing the one thing I really regret.
14:46I talked her into it.
14:49So in the end, after much persuasion, I signed the house over and I said, well, that's my house gone.
14:55And it was.
14:57They took it.
15:00And we opened.
15:01We were making a lot of profit.
15:02It was going like a rocket.
15:03But things were getting a bit tense with Mike as well.
15:07Mistrust had crept into our relationship and it had never been there before.
15:13And inside, it's just like an outback town.
15:15Lorraine and I had done a trip to Central Australia, which was a private trip.
15:19And then later he accused me of putting all those expenses for that through the company.
15:23And I couldn't believe that he didn't trust me.
15:25Of all people, of all things, what we'd been through.
15:27And then he turned around and accused me of ripping him off.
15:33The partnership that Mike and I had for 29 years was crumbling before my eyes.
15:38And I knew it would never be the same again.
15:42Our relationship was damaged permanently after that.
15:45And it never really recovered.
15:51So the bank walked in, sent the receivers in, put new locks on.
15:55Give us 20 minutes to get off the place.
15:58And it was the most devastating day I reckon I've ever gone through.
16:02We were absolutely broke.
16:05To the point where I had to go bankrupt.
16:09That's the day my life collapsed.
16:12Everything we'd worked for, all our lives, everything was tied up in that one project.
16:17And on that day, the receivers walked in and took possession of the whole lot.
16:27I felt like shit, to be perfectly honest.
16:32In hindsight, Lone and Brothers World was a huge mistake.
16:36Biggest mistake we ever made.
16:40We walked away with $5,000.
16:43That's all we had.
16:45It was a lifetime's work and our personal estate was worth $6.5 million before we built the park.
16:51And I didn't really mind losing the money.
16:56I objected to being treated like a criminal because I lost the money.
17:00And that's what really hurt.
17:02The receivers, though, claim the Leylands are far from being down and out.
17:07They say that though totally legal, Mike and Mao transferred more than a million dollars of assets
17:13into their wives' names over an 18-month period.
17:17It was during that period that the media started chasing us.
17:22Who's come off worse, Leylands, that still live in their big houses, or the people?
17:26The bank.
17:27The local people that have lost their jobs.
17:28It's a big joke it is.
17:30Our main house was in her name, but the bank took that anyhow.
17:34Apart from that, we had another terrace house in Newcastle, which had a debt on it, but that was sold.
17:41We all had this impression of people who go bad in an industry that they've got it all away somewhere
17:49in their wife's name and they haven't really lost anything.
17:52Well, they did.
17:54You know, it wasn't that they walked away and were still wealthy people.
17:59They had absolutely nothing.
18:01They'd lost it all.
18:07Mike and I had our differences prior to that.
18:12And since there was now nothing left that we jointly owned, there was no need for us to stay together
18:17in partnership.
18:18So, for the first time, we went our separate ways.
18:21This is Mike and Mao, two young Australians who've become legends in their own country.
18:28For a while, we didn't communicate with each other at all.
18:32I said, look, forget the what ifs. That's all finished. Look ahead. That's the only way you can go.
18:37And then I realised that times were very difficult when Mike wrote a book and Mal told me he wasn't
18:44going to read it.
18:45And I realised then that there'd obviously been a complete split up, which was very, very sad.
18:51Yeah, well, Mike came out of it financially better than me in several ways.
18:54He went into a couple of different business ventures, all of which were very successful.
19:04Well, Lorraine and I ended up with very little money, but we had enough to buy a little bit of
19:07land.
19:08And we moved on to 25 acres of pretty rugged, poor quality bushland, just out from Glen Innes.
19:15We had nothing. We had to start from the ground up.
19:19Lorraine and I were living in a couple of shipping containers.
19:22Look, I was shocked when I went up to see Mal and Lorraine.
19:26It was absolutely clear to me that they were in a terribly desperate financial situation.
19:31And I'd gone from being very, very wealthy, being multimillionaires in a period of about 15 years to being close
19:39to destitute.
19:40And then a week later, I went to the mailbox out in the road and there was a letter from
19:48Dick.
19:48I opened it up and inside was a cheque for $10,000.
19:52I thought it won the lottery. I couldn't believe it.
19:55And he just said on it, to help with your project.
20:04The place Mal had built at Glen Innes was absolutely indicative of his attitude to life.
20:10He just got out and went back to basics.
20:13And with whatever little money he had, they started to build the place literally with his own hands.
20:19He bought a mill, he cut the trees down on the property, he milled the timber, he built the building.
20:26He did it all.
20:28It's a big, big effort.
20:30And I'm not 100% fit, so I have to time myself and pace myself very slowly.
20:38Well, not long after the collapse of Leyland Brothers World, I discovered I had cancer in the bladder.
20:47I had a huge tumour, which required surgery to be removed.
20:53I've had some success with potatoes already.
20:56And that's encouraged us to think the soil here is probably pretty good for us.
21:00I think growing our own food and living off what we grew ourselves, getting rid of all the chemicals out
21:08of our lives, made a huge difference to my health.
21:11And I defied the odds.
21:20I wanted to get together with Mike and bury the hatchet a bit.
21:26I hadn't seen Mike for a few years, probably four years or so.
21:32One time we were home, I was out in the kitchen and I heard this, hello, hello, and I thought,
21:37who's that?
21:38And I heard a car pull up and there was, Margie got out of the car and started walking towards
21:47us and there was this old man behind him who I didn't recognise.
21:52And I got a shock when he got closer and I realised it was Mike.
21:56He was all stooped over.
21:58He looked ill.
22:01And one side of his face was sort of drooping.
22:04And that's when we found out he had Parkinson's disease.
22:08And he knew he didn't have long to go.
22:11And he wanted to come and see me before he did.
22:14He wasn't aware of people much.
22:17Well, you know, it's terrible to see him like that.
22:23Some time later I got a call to say we should come down and see him because he wouldn't have
22:28long to go.
22:30He was sitting in his chair and I said, how would you like to do one more trip?
22:34And this little glint came in his eye and one side of his face moved.
22:38And he mouthed the only two words he said while I was there.
22:42He said, one more.
22:45I tell you, that really, that really, really hit me.
22:51And I just turned around and I said, I've got to go.
22:55And I did this thumbs up thing like that that we used to do to the camera together.
22:59You know, I just did that.
23:01And he tried to raise his arm to do it.
23:04And I knew it was the last time I'd see him.
23:07So I just said, I've got to go now, mate.
23:10I can't stay any longer.
23:11And it was the last time I saw him alive.
23:15And then I got a phone call a few months later saying he'd died.
23:22Mal just about collapsed.
23:27And unfortunately, it meant that I couldn't have the discussion with Mike that I wanted to have.
23:33I wanted Mike to know that I had never been that dishonest person he thought I was.
23:38I want him to understand that that wasn't what had happened.
23:42I wanted to bury the hatchet on that.
23:44I wanted that to be gone and dealt with.
23:50It was something I never got the chance to do.
23:55G'day, I'm Mal Leland.
23:56My wife, Lorraine, our daughter, Carmen, have already completed one full circuit of Australia on a caravan and camping odyssey
24:03that most people only dream of.
24:05I often get asked the question of what's it like growing up with, you know, the Leyland brothers or one
24:10of them as your father.
24:11A great feature of the Tokyo Mall area is that they not only have beautiful strawberries, but you also get
24:17the chance to pick your own.
24:18For me, I grew up with a camera in my face.
24:21I grew up travelling and apparently I would run around as a two year old and go, shh, we're filming.
24:32It was 2018 when mum passed away.
24:37Dad really, really struggled to move on with his life.
24:40He felt very lost. My mum was the centre of his life.
24:45He had many ideas of getting back and filming and doing what he loves.
24:50But one way or another, it just didn't come to fruition.
24:54Over here we've got copies of Mal's books and a lot of his old bits and pieces that he used
25:02for all the filming.
25:03He definitely remembers the past.
25:06He has talked a lot about one particular trip, Wheels Across a Wilderness,
25:10which is when they went from Steak Point, the most westerly point of Australia, all the way across to Cape
25:16Byron.
25:17It seems incredible, but these five people have succeeded in crossing for the first time the Australian continent at its
25:24widest point.
25:25So it was only recently that my husband and I realised that the 60th anniversary of that Wheels Across a
25:31Wilderness journey is coming up soon.
25:34And we went, wow, what an opportunity to recreate that trip 60 years on.
25:41So we've got Where Dead Men Lie, which is your original book.
25:45And, of course, you've got in here the map that you originally followed roughly.
25:50We're planning to follow the original route as closely as possible, going to all the places that they stopped at.
25:57Up through here, up to the border and then you cross over and you end up at Birdsville.
26:05A big town. We thought it was a big town because it had a pub.
26:11Still does.
26:12So we're hoping to go in the middle of the year, around the same time that Dad did the original
26:17trip back in 66.
26:19A trip like this is a real eye-opener to anyone who's never done it.
26:23You realise what a great country we live in.
26:24Yeah, definitely.
26:26So we have managed to get 10 vehicles that are prepared to come along with us and they have paid
26:32to tag along.
26:36The money that we raise from that trip is going towards creating a photographic museum and gallery in Cairns.
26:43So this is the space that you were looking at. I think it'll be perfect to do what you are
26:49looking for.
26:50We're currently looking for possible venues.
26:52So it will have a museum element to it where people can hear the story of both my Dad and
27:00my Mum.
27:01We're going to have a cafe in the back of it called Lyra's Cafe, because my Mum was a passionate
27:06cook and always wanted a little cafe.
27:07You could put the cafe along the back wall bay and the gallery would all fit out here.
27:14It was always my Dad's dream to open up a gallery and showcase his work.
27:20Because he's actually a still photographer by trade, but everyone knows him as a documentary filmmaker.
27:26I would hate to think how many photos there are.
27:29I think it's great. I mean, it's got plenty of room and it'd be very nice to see a lot
27:36of the old stuff on display and people coming in and appreciating it.
27:41It's like ginger.
27:47We're really hoping that Dad will be well enough to come on the trip.
27:50We are involving him as much as we can in the planning.
27:55I mean, as far as his physical health is concerned, 100% he's ready to go.
27:59It's just, we'll see where he's at with his dementia at the time, but hopefully he doesn't decline any further.
28:08Well, it's better in there than it does then.
28:13Although he won't necessarily remember the trip at the end, he will enjoy the trip in that moment and that's
28:19what's important to us.
28:21I like this one here because it's got that little, it's sticking out of it.
28:26Maybe it'll be my last trip, I don't know, but I think one day there will be our last trip,
28:33I suppose.
28:34Because one day I'm going to fall off my perch.
28:39I think I've had a pretty good run, I think my life has been full of ups and downs a
28:44bit, but I think I'd like to be remembered as a person who was a traveller, photographer and lover of
28:54life.
28:57Yeah, one more trip would be pretty good, yeah.
29:11I remember the wonderful time I had with Lorraine, my wife.
29:14The best thing that ever happened to me was meeting her and marrying her and living with her.
29:19It was wonderful.
29:21I sometimes have dreams with her in it and I feel like she's basically there, you know, and you wake
29:26up and you realise of course it's a dream.
29:29Meeting her was the highlight of my life.
29:32She was the highlight of my life and in my memory she still is.
29:36Meeting her was the highlight of the varias church.
29:37Pilgr cảmothen is indeed terrible, and it doesn't represent all opportunities.
29:40It'sventional to it as utter and fears, but it's stressful.
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