No one puts Mike & Mal in a corner
Swayze had been battling cancer for many months a finally succumbed at the age of 57. While a solid actor who appeared in a number of successful movies such as Ghost and Dirty Dancing Swayze will not go down as one of the greats.
But I’m not here to denigrate the acting merits of Patrick Swayze, more to bemoan the lack of respect and appreciation paid to an Australian icon, Mike Leyland who’s death was announced yesterday.
While a picture of Swayze features of the front page of The Daily Telegraph there was no montage for Mike, just a passing reference to being one half of the Leyland Brothers.
Mike and Mal Leyland should be held in the highest regards in Australia, not just because of their pioneering documentaries, their love of travel, their promotion of Australia but because they were Dags.
Everything about the Leyland’s was daggy, even back in 1976 when Ask the Leyland Brothers commenced on the 9 Network they were daggy, those short shorts and tight t-shirts, fluffy hair, brightly coloured comby van and that theme song…Travel all over the country side, ask the Leyland, ask the Leyland, ask the Leyland Brothers.
The Leyland’s did not have the polish of today’s travel shows, they filmed everything on super 8. They didn’t travel the world to exotic places like Milan and Madrid it was strictly domestic. They went to likes Myrtleford and Mudgee.
Today’s travel shows take you to places their sponsors allow, there are contra deals and fluffy pieces on majestic sunny beaches. The Leylands never took themselves too seriously, and seemed to truly enjoy what they did. Mike and Mal were not merely presenters, they did everything, filming, writing and presenting, they even took along their families along for the ride.
The Leyland’s didn’t see the move in Australian culture away from the Dag and made the ill-fated decision in 1990 to open Leyland Brothers World, complete with a gigantic replica Uluru. While attendances were good it wasn’t enough to pay the bank loans and the park was taken over by receivers and sold in 1990.
Life style and travel shows are still very much in vogue and they owe a lot to the Leyland Brothers. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a place in the polished media world today for the likes of Mike and Mal Leyland. There is far too much weight given to image and sex appeal rather than content in today’s travel shows. Why else would Jenifer Hawkins be on The Great Outdoors? .
Since the 90’s Australians have started to lose their inner dag, scared of the ridicule that may be given if they go to the beach in a pair of budgie smugglers, Australia was a beter place when we were all a little more daggy, and it’s sad that a great dag was not given a more prominent send of in the polished and self absorbed media world.
The faux salutes the pioneering spirit, adventure and excellence of Mike Leyland a true Dag.
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Nice piece Mr Doyle. Mike does deserve more respect.As a young boy I really liked the openings with his missus jumping up in the tight T-Shirt headlights on (high beam). Glad to see you distance yourself from the ‘polished’ media. Its Mudgee Mr Doyle not Mudgy you dag!
Yes they really had it all going back then. The had muscle shirts but without the muscles. Well here at the Faux there will always be a place for the likes of Mike & Mal. Thanks for the heads up on Mudgee, will have to give the editor a a kick up the arse, hand on that’s me.
Wonderful, Doyle, wonderful…!
I’ve been tempted for a while to give this piece a bouquet.
Yet, I’d despaired. I’d thought the politically correct 21st Century post-post modernist conformists had so emasculated the Aussie male to a point of
Imitative Brooklyn ghetto mimic that all hope had been lost. We were now
forever dominated by the Politically Correct mob who have made it absurdly “shameful” for Aussie men to be proper Aussie men, insisting instead that we cower in fashionable beige coveralls as if ashamed of our gender.
And this, while our women have been “Sexed in the City” to fashionable
and proud clothing outline exhibition of their womanly bits, sans shame and boldly Brazilian even, lest anyone dare scrutiny and challenge.
This is a good and honest thing.
But there’s a smell of hypocrisy about it all.
Aussie women have achieved brilliant freedoms since the awful days of the Bondi beach inspector bikini battles.
Our women are free to wear and dress to happy advantage in full and public celebration of their femininity… Unless they want to conform to another irritating
PC hypocrisy of dressing in solidarity with African and Muddled Eastern fundamentalists in the stoning pits.
We’re glad out women are free to celebrate in all manner of attractive dress.
But not so the Aussie male. He’s now the subject of scorn, of ridicule, if he opts to wear his once cherished Speedos.
Speedos, Stubby shorts, and rainbow coloured shirts would never have been an issue with Mike and Mal. Nor with their womenfolk who were always joyously feminine and photogenic, as well as astute and workmanlike in their partnership tasks making those many inspiring Leyland Brothers TV programmes.
And so many of us, with our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles were eager to go see the many brilliant places that Mike and Mal introduced each week. All were relatively easy to find. And laugh if you must at their rugged Series Land Rovers and utilitarian Combi wagons and tents, but they showed how all Aussies can enjoy this country on a weekend or a few days away, without borrowing hugely on a bank loan to do it.
Best of all, they showed us our own backyard, as you said, Doyle.
But look, it’s taken ‘till today with the emphasis on yet another appalling Federal spend to send a spiv-marketing message to the “tourism world” abroad for this incentive. Doyle, you’ve spurred me to call for a revival of the wonderful and essential daggy world of the dinkum Aussie.
Mike and Mal and their families – not ever to forget Mal’s memorable and photogenic luscious-legged wife who was also his assistant in all things – were the real deal.
You’re right, Doyle. Today’s plastic ‘getwellaway’ presenters, producers, programmes, are hideously artificial and useless by comparison.
Sure, we might be temporarily distracted enough to catch a bit of the fantasy notion we could someday join the privileged jet set the sponsors send overseas at little real cost to the networks, against the shrill shouting of the discount Stormin’ Normin Gross discount franchise store spruikers whose harassing ads serve to disturb viewing to the point of immediate switch over or off, in favour of a down-to-earth travel book. Written by Mike and Mal…!
If we’re to be served endless repeats of MASH and ARE YOU BEING SERVED, then please bring back the Leyland Brothers close to reasonable viewing hours.
Doyle’s point is well made. We don’t need to spend countless quadrillions getting the Oz message out. All we need is to learn from our own history, honour our own culture, and cease the politically correct hypocrisy that inhibits our manhood and devalues genuine, down-to-earth enjoyment of our own backyard.
And there’s the thing: The Leyland Brothers shared their genuine enthusiasm for everyday Australia with everyone.
I’d always thought their movie making skills had been achieved with sound on film and wild sound 16mm.
Doyle’s report that they worked in Super 8 – with, at a guess, sound striping and cut and paste spool editing – is a tribute to them.
Clearly they used minimum technology, with talented and exacting research, reportage, scripting and production to achieve valuable
programmes that must by now be serving to whet the latent dinkum Aussie dag DNA in us all…?
Unless, of course, the current mob of destructively cynical PCers who ridicule our lifesaver’s in their speedos and want all blokes to wear New York ghetto fashion “board shorts” – dangerous surf gear, unsuited to athletes and lifesavers – because for some reason the “shape” of a bloke’s manhood is offensive to the politically correct conformists…?
Whether I might agree with his policies and politics or not, my response to the PCers is such that I’d vote for any politician fair dinkum enough to go unashamedly into the surf wearing a lifesavers cap and Speedos or athletic shorts when out cycling…
If only because he was a genuine, dinkum Aussie Dag.
So, I’ll support anyone who wants to revive the Mike and Mal Leyland school of dinkum Aussie adventure journalism.
Especially now that Paul Hogan – who prefers the Yankee lifestyle while making yet another Aussie dag movie here – is suggesting correctly that Australia is as much about the people as it is about the landscape, and that this might be the real focus of the Oz tourism high priests.
Yep… Bring back the Aussie Dag adventurer, in cottage industry publishing and movie making.
Theme parks too.
But without anti-dag banks backing.
Do that, and I’ll be there to contribute, lend a hand, and enjoy making it all happen.
Again.
- Theo. Bennett
Canberra
.
probably didnt understand how 2 guys could do all that stuff when i was young growing up ! Now ive travelled around non stop for ten years in a furniture truck to extended sunsets & horizons and previously to Perth & Darwin & i never stop to think there must be an easier way around australia & then i think of the immense love ,immagination and talent these guys had to go out and bring it all home to us beings in the stress filled cities. I would love to get all the shows on dvd but i am wondering where can i get some t shirts n bumper stickers <my favourite things in all of australia apast from the oceans & waterfalls & canyons & the red dusty outback