MAL LEYLAND ‘I WANT ONE LAST ADVENTURE!’
Along with his brother he inspired a generation to discover Oz, now the icon is hitting the road again
Talk to anyone over the age of 40 and chances are they can still recite the catchy theme song to Ask The Leyland Brothers after a childhood spent watching the two brothers travel all over the country on their pioneering TV show.
With their bushy sideburns and daggy flares, Mike and Mal Leyland became unexpected and mild-mannered superheroes to generations of Aussie kids thirsting for adventure. They took their wives and kids along for the ride, travelling in a battered four-wheel drive Jeep and bright orange Kombi van, to destinations suggested by their millions of fans.
In the process, the English-born siblings, who moved to Newcastle in the NSW Hunter Valley when they were young,
carved a name for themselves as latter-day explorers.
Fast forward almost 50 years, and Mal, 77, is the only surviving Leyland brother after Mike died in 2009 from Parkinson’s disease. Sadly, Mal’s wife Laraine, 73, a fan favourite, died of a heart attack in 2018 on the eve of their 50th wedding anniversary.
FINAL PROMISE
“The very night she died she said, ‘I want you to make me a promise that you are going to write your novels,’” he says, choking back tears as he recalls how Laraine seemed to know her time had come the night before she suffered her heart attack.
“We went to sleep in each other’s arms. Laraine was always smiling or laughing, and the last thing we were doing was laughing about the fact I hadn’t packed up my tools, or my ‘junk’ as she called them.
“The next minute she was gone. It was the worst day of my life.”
‘The next minute she was gone. It was the worst day of my life’
Mal says losing Laraine also reminded him to make every day count like it could be your last, and so he’s working on finishing his series of four novels based on a “bloke with the wanderlust”.
He’s also planning one last expedition. “Strangely enough I want to go around Australia,” tells Mal, who lives in Toowoomba with his grandson Rex. “Never once have I done a full circumnavigation around Australia. I’ve got myself a car and a little second-hand caravan. I’d like to upgrade the car but I just don’t have the money.”
Despite his career in television, these days Mal lives very simply in Toowoomba, getting by on the pension and an occasional small royalty cheque.
The siblings’ theme park, Leyland Brothers World, went bust after just two years in 1992, and took with it the $6 million fortune Mal and his late wife invested. The crippling loss sparked rumours of a bitter feud between Mike and Mal, who went their separate ways professionally after the bankruptcy. However, Mal insists there was never a feud.
UNBREAKABLE BOND
“We had differences of opinion as brothers do,” he says. “But we were also very close. We’d gone through things where we depended on each other to come back alive, and once you’ve been through that there’s a bond that cannot be broken by a simple little disagreement.”
The heartache over the loss of their respective fortunes did, however, lead them to strike out in different directions, with both brothers producing new travel shows for different networks.
“They were put up against each other on the same weekend,” he says.
The rivalry left the once inseparable brothers at odds, and Mal admits they saw less of each other. “We hadn’t been in close contact for a long time,” he says, explaining that when they eventually reunited it was clear that Mike was suffering badly with Parkinson’s. “I barely recognised Mike when he got out of the car. We chatted for the rest of the afternoon. I never saw him again.”
Mal says he can’t wait to hit the road again, even if he had to sell his beloved campervan because it reminded him too much of the gaping hole Laraine left in his heart. “I couldn’t stand going away in it because there was this horrible empty seat next to me where Laraine used to sit.”
And the last thing on Mal’s mind is romance despite the loneliness of life without his late wife.
“I’m too old and still in love with Laraine,” he tells. “I’d feel like I was doing something wrong. It will take time before I’m going to be able to accept it, and by then I’ll be a super old fart and no-one wants a super old fart!”