Seven Crazy Years
By Bob Barnard
Paperback 465 pages
ISBN: 978-1-67804-157-1
Published by Lulu Press
Price: US$24.99 from www.lulu.com
Anyone who was around in the epic ‘eighties will be familiar with the name Bob Barnard. He was the Londoner who found his way to Australia to exercise his engineering degree, and ended up designing and building the circuit for the Australian Formula One Grand Prix in Adelaide – a track that is still regarded as possibly the best street circuit ever. Behind the track work however were interminable politics, and that scenario followed Bob to Phillip Island when he rebuilt the derelict circuit into the fabulous track we enjoy today. More politics took him to Sydney to build the Eastern Creek layout from what was a fetid garbage tip.
All this should have set Bob Barnard on a path to fame and fortune, but while the fame came to a degree, the fortune did not. This engrossing book follows the highs and lows of a career that continues to this day, with Bob now ensconced in Spain after decades of peripatetic existence chasing work and staving off the effects of two bankruptcies. Back a few decades, developers and entrepreneurs who found themselves bankrupt – Christopher Skase and Alan Bond spring to mind – usually fled somewhere and hid while their creditors suffered. In Bob’s case, he did his level best to pay back creditors, which meant working multiple jobs, sometimes out of his field of expertise. Knowing Bob personally I also know he can be a prickly character occasionally, particularly when he believes those around him are not up to scratch. I’m sure he would admit that if he had his time over, he would have been more selective with whom he got into bed (in a business sense).
This is a big book, full of intimate detail and character analysis, but it is an engrossing read that covers not just the 1985-92 period as the title suggests, but more than 50 years of a career that was a mixture of excitement and disappointment. If there is a criticism of the book, it is in the layout, which has few photos, and those used are generally of poor quality. In a career such as this, encompassing the heights of motor racing from MotoGP to Formula One and everything in between, I would have thought quality photographs would have been in abundance.