- 14 hours ago
Australian.Story.S31E07
Category
📺
TVTranscript
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.
04:03I think you're in that way. Yeah.
04:05Do you know where we went? No.
04:06So a few times he would get lost, and I always thought it'd be ironic that Mel Leyland,
04:11this person who explored a lot of Australia, you know, police are searching for Mel Leyland,
04:16who's lost in bushland, would probably not be very good headlines.
04:21I found a lot more stuff, Mel, for you to go through and have a look at and sort out.
04:27All 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, and it's Uluru, I think they call it.
04:41And I suggested to Carmen that, 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.
04:57So many different parts of the country.
04:59Accepting that dad is going to get worse is hard.
05:03We're definitely dreading the day when it gets to the point where we realise that
05:06we can't take care of him anymore.
05:08I don't feel as though it's getting worse, but 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.
05:17I can always look them up.
05:22A lot of people think of us as being a pair of Aussie blokes who just grew up in the
05:27suburbs
05:28of Australia, but 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 was because dad got into real
05:41estate
05:42and moved around from one suburb to the next. As a result, we changed schools so much
05:47that we didn't really get enough time to make good friends, so we became each other's best mate.
05:57And his very first film we ever shot was at the Olympic Games.
06:00And that's how we got into shooting films. And we ended up filming little home movies of things
06:07that we did, you know, holiday trips and stuff like that.
06:14So I bought an old Land Rover and sat off on a trip to Ayers Rock.
06:19These days, some people might think it offensive that we climbed the rock,
06:22but in 1961, not many people made the trip and everyone did it.
06:26We had fallen in love with the desert and become completely charmed by Ayers Rock.
06:31We'd made a movie too, an amateur movie, The 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. Using this camera, I started work as a cadet photographer
06:50with the afternoon daily paper here, the Newcastle Sun. But the rivalry didn't last long.
06:55With only one year's professional experience, we 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. So I picked up a map of Australia,
07:11and thought, well, what can we do that's not going to be too expensive and too far away,
07:14and looked at New South Wales, and there was this wriggly line going through it,
07:18and it was the Darling River. And no-one had done it. It was 1,400 miles.
07:26We had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for. And so inexperienced were we,
07:31we never even had a pair of oars with us. We had an outboard motor only.
07:36And it gave us trouble. We kept breaking the propellers.
07:40Then we thought, well, if we get some baked bean tins and tip the baked beans out,
07:43we could flatten the tin out and cut it to some sort of shape resembling a propeller.
07:48We managed to sell our Down the Darling film to the Nine network, and the film became so popular,
07:54it was repeated within two weeks, and got huge audiences.
08:00There isn't any doubt that the success of Down the Darling prompted us to believe that we could
08:04make a living out of doing it. Adventurers are actually going out and paying for their adventure
08:10by selling the film to a television station. It was just unique in those days. And they told me they
08:16used Super 8 film. They were doing it almost home movie style, which everyone loved. There was a charm to
08:21it, and it meant they could make really good money out of it. Five young Australians set out on an
08:26expedition never made before. A journey across a waterless continent. But we had to come up with
08:33something better, something that no one had done before. And that's when we decided we'll go right
08:39across Australia from one side to the other, and then the way we had to cross the Simpson desert.
08:44Ahead lies 300 miles of hard slogging over Simpson Sandhills, with no water holes at all.
08:51I think the most spectacular, most impressive thing we saw was Ayers Rock in the rain.
08:58We were there, we arrived on one day, and it was bright and sunny. And then the next day at
09:03port,
09:03we had six inches of rain, and this broke the eight year drought.
09:11One tourist in a hundred thousand has seen such water spilling from Ayers Rock,
09:15and no cine cameraman has ever filmed it until now.
09:19Nobody had ever filmed an event like this before. Those pictures became the most famous ones I ever took.
09:26We decided we would roadshow the film. We'd take it around the country and hire town halls,
09:33cinemas if we could, and advertise it ourselves and see how we went.
09:38Well, to start with, everybody said I was mad. You know, I was throwing the money down the drain,
09:41advertising it and putting it on. And 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, enough money to buy three houses at the
09:54time.
09:54We've just come back from the Kimberleys, uh, shooting a new series one off the beaten track.
09:59And that's when we started calling ourselves the Leyland Brothers.
10:02You know, we had a bit of a rough time, didn't we?
10:04You know, we had a few breakdowns and Land Rovers rolling over and things like this.
10:09But, uh, 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, um, that 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 programme where viewers wrote in and asked us to film anything, anywhere in Australia,
10:32and we travelled there to film it. And we're going out to Rad'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. Just Mike does
10:50all the
10:50camera work. I do the sound. Another good item is a well-equipped picnic set.
10:54Both of the wives were attractive girls. And, uh, both Mike and Mal were a bit sexist. And,
11:01uh, so they used their wives, uh, as a draw card. Before we look at packing,
11:06consider saving weight in the food department. Dehydrated food is good, but only in areas where
11:12you can get lots of water. I got pushed in front of the camera, you know. Talk to these people.
11:16What about? But 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. But what I think was the secret to it
11:30was actually the fact that it was a family, an average family. We didn't do things that
11:35the ordinary bloke couldn't do.
11:40Of course, you do have to inflate the airbed each evening, but don't try blowing it up with your
11:44mouth. It's far better to save your lungs for breathing in the clean country air you've traveled
11:49so far to enjoy. When we went to sign up with Nine for the Isolated Brothers series, they said to
11:56make
11:56sure that we didn't make it too slick, because they want it to look like the boys next door. Sort
12:01of an
12:01amateur home movie look. The 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. About 40% of the number of people that are watching TV on any one
12:17night watching our show. That 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, then ask the Leyland
12:29Brothers. What do you reckon we are, Mike?
12:33Buckety wine over it. Two 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. They were
12:45always put down as these amateurs and so forth, and it just gave them more and more publicity.
12:49Look at that, the Leyland Brothers putting a smile across Australia. That's the kind of
12:53guys you are. The biggest advantage was that they had a positive image, a very positive image.
13:01No one ever said no. As soon as you mentioned Leyland Brothers, it was, oh, oh yeah, because
13:10they were almost seen as family and friends. In 1983, we decided to make a new direction for our
13:17career. Instead 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. So instead of building our little timber building, we eventually
13:39decided to build a replica of Ayers Rock. And we ended up having to borrow a lot of money to
13:47do it.
13:51The next thing you know, the interest rates had gone up to 26%, and what we'd borrowed had just
13:56doubled, and then it started to get like a big snowball.
14:01And it was a nightmare. It 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 checks that hadn't
14:16been yet presented to the bank. And they fronted up and said that they weren't going to honour these
14:22checks unless we provided additional security. Well, we didn't have any additional security. And then
14:28they said, oh, what about your houses? We said, well, no, those are always going to be protected. They're
14:33in the girls' names. And I said, it's my house. And they said, well, you can't open if you don't
14:40sign
14:40your house over. And I ended up doing the one thing I really regret. I 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. They took it.
15:00We opened. We were making a lot of profit. It was going like a rocket. But things were getting
15:05a bit tense with Mike as well. Mistrust had crept into our relationship, and it had never been there
15:12before. And inside, it's just like an outback town. Lorraine and I had done a trip to Central
15:17Australia, which was a private trip. And then later, he accused me of putting all those expenses
15:21for that through the company. And I couldn't believe that he didn't trust me. Of all people,
15:26of all things, what we'd been through. And then he turned around, accused me of ripping him off.
15:33The partnership that Mike and I had for 29 years was crumbling before my eyes. And I knew it would
15:40never be the same again. Our relationship was damaged permanently after that. And it never really recovered.
15:52So the bank walked in, sent the receivers in, put new locks on,
15:56give us 20 minutes to get off the place. And it was the most devastating day I reckon I've ever
16:00gone
16:01through. We were absolutely broke to the point where I had to go bankrupt.
16:09That's the day my life collapsed. Everything we'd worked for, all our lives, everything was tied up
16:15in that one project. And 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. Biggest mistake we ever made.
16:40We walked away with $5,000. That'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. I objected to being treated like a criminal because
16:59I lost the money. And that's what really hurt. The receivers though claim the Leylands are far
17:05from being down and out. They say that though totally legal, Mike and Mal transferred more than
17:12a million dollars of assets into their wives' names over an 18-month period. It was during that period
17:18that the media started chasing us. Who's come off worse, Leylands, that still live in their big
17:24houses or the people? The bank. The local people that have lost their jobs. It's a big joke it is.
17:30Our main house was in her name but the bank took that anyhow. Apart from that we had another
17:36terrace 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. Well, they did.
17:54You know, it wasn't that they walked away and were still wealthy people.
17:59They had absolutely nothing. They had lost it all.
18:07Mike and I had our differences prior to that and since there was now nothing left that we
18:15jointly owned there was no need for us to stay together in partnership. So for the first time
18:19we went our separate ways. For 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. And I realised then that there'd obviously been a complete split up which was very,
18:49very sad. Yeah, well, Mike came out of it financially better than me in several ways.
18:55He 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. Lorraine and I were living in a couple of
19:20shipping containers. Look, I was shocked when I went up to see Mal and Lorraine. It was absolutely
19:27clear to me that they were in a terribly desperate financial situation. They'd gone from being very,
19:34very wealthy, being multi-millionaires in a period of about 15 years to being close to destitute.
19:41And then a week later I went to the mailbox out on the road and there was a letter from
19:48Dick. I
19:48opened it up and inside was a cheque for $10,000. I thought it won the lotto. I couldn't believe
19:55it.
19:55And he just sat 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 and with whatever little money he had, they started to build
20:16the place literally with his own hands. He bought a mill, he cut the trees down on the property, he
20:23milled
20:23the timber, he built the building, he did it all. It's a big, big effort. And I'm not 100%
20:32fit,
20:33so I have to time myself and pace myself very slowly. Well, not long after the collapse of
20:40Leyland Brothers World, I discovered I had cancer in the bladder. I had a huge tumour,
20:50which required surgery to be removed. I've had some success with potatoes already and that's
20:57encouraged us to think the soil here is probably pretty good for us. I think growing our own food
21:04and living off what we grew ourselves, getting rid of all the chemicals out of our lives, made a huge
21:10difference to my health. And 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? And I heard a car pull up and there was, Margie got out of the car
21:45and started walking towards us and then 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. He looked ill. And 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. And he wanted to come and see me before he did.
22:14He wasn't aware of people much. You know, it was 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. He was sitting in his chair and I said, how would you like to do one more
22:33trip?
22:34And this little glint come in his eye and one side of his face moved. And he mouthed the only
22:40two
22:40words he said while I was there. He said, one more. I'll tell you, that really, that really,
22:49really hit me. And I just turned around and I said, I've got to go. And I did this
22:56thumbs up thing like that, that we used to do to the camera together. You know, I just did that.
23:01And he tried to raise his arm to do it. And I knew it was the last time I'd see
23:07him. So I just
23:08said, I've got to go now, mate. I can't stay any longer. And it was the last time I saw
23:13him 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. I want him
23:39to
23:39understand that that wasn't what had happened. I wanted to bury the hatchet on that. I wanted that
23:45to be gone and dealt with. It was something I never got the chance to do.
23:55G'day, I'm Mel Leyland. My wife, Lorraine, our daughter, Carmen, have already completed one full
24:00circuit of Australia on a caravan and camping odyssey that most people only dream of.
24:04I often get asked the question of what's it like growing up with, you know, the Leyland brothers,
24:10or one of them as your father. A great feature of the Tokamool area is that they not only have
24:15beautiful strawberries, but you also get the chance to pick your own. For me, I grew up with a camera
24:20in
24:20my face. I grew up travelling and apparently I would run around as a two-year-old and go,
24:27shh, we're filming.
24:32It was 2018 when Mum passed away.
24:37Dad really, really struggled to move on with his life. He felt very lost. My mum was the centre of
24:42his
24:44life. He had many ideas of getting back and filming and doing what he loves. But one way or another,
24:52it just didn't come to fruition. Over here, we've got copies of Mel's books and a lot of his old
25:00bits
25:01and pieces that he used for all the filming. He definitely remembers the past. He has talked a lot
25:07about one particular trip, Wheels Across a Wilderness, which is when they went from Steak Point,
25:13the most westerly point of Australia, all the way across to Cape Byron.
25:17It seems incredible, but these five people have succeeded in crossing for the first time
25:22the Australian continent at its widest point.
25:25So it was only recently that my husband and I realised that the 60th anniversary of that
25:30Wheels Across a Wilderness journey is coming up soon. And we went, wow, what an opportunity to
25:38recreate that trip 60 years on.
25:41So we've got Where Dead Men Lie, which is your original book. And of course, you've got in here
25:47the map that you originally followed roughly.
25:50We're planning to follow the original route as closely as possible, going to all the places
25:56that they stopped at. Up through here, up to the border, and then you cross over.
26:02And you end up at Birdsville, a big town. We thought it was a big town because it had a
26:10pub.
26:11It still does.
26:12So we're hoping to go in the middle of the year, around the same time that Dad did the
26:17original trip back in 66.
26:18The trip like this is a real eye opener to anyone who's never done it.
26:22You 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,
26:31and they have paid to tag along.
26:36The money that we raise from that trip is going towards creating a photographic museum
26:42and gallery in Cairns. We're currently looking for possible venues. So it will have a museum element
26:55to it where people can hear the story of both my dad and my mum. We're going to have a
27:02cafe in the back
27:03book called Lyra's Cafe because my mum was a passionate cook and always wanted a little cafe.
27:08You 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
27:36stuff 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. It's just,
28:00we'll see where he's like, where he's at with his dementia at the time,
28:03but hopefully he doesn't decline any further.
28:08Well, looks better in there than it does then.
28:13Although he won't necessarily remember the trip at the end,
28:16he will enjoy the trip in that moment and that's what'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, because 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,
28:44but I think I'd like to be remembered as a person who was a traveller, photographer and lover of life.
28:57Yeah, one more trip would be pretty good.
29:11I remember the wonderful time I had with Lorraine, my wife. The best thing that ever happened to me
29:16was meeting her and marrying her and living with her. It was wonderful.
29:21I sometimes have dreams with her in it and I feel like she's basically there, you know,
29:26and you wake up and you realise, of course, it's a dream. Meeting her was the highlight of my life.
29:33She was the highlight of my life and in my memory she still is.
Comments