The Leyland Brothers were part of my childhood. Listening to my emotions with this book on my desk illustrates why I had to buy it. Where I bought it is totally irrelevant, and that’s a good thing as I have no memory of that. In the 1970s and 1980s the brothers had their own show on the Nine Network. I watched it often enough to be able to sing the opening song. When I bought this book I wanted to retrieve some of that magic.
Mike Leyland was a cameraman with NBN Television while Mal was a cadet in The Sun newspaper in Newcastle. Aged 21 and 18 neither of them were married, nor had kids. They were able to be as footloose and fancy free as their jobs allowed. They wanted to go on adventures and they did this in spades. This book details their journey in 1963 along the Darling River. Their 1,400 mile (2,300 kilometres) ride in an open boat is madness, but they made it happen. They took along their good friend, Keith Davey, to complement their skills. This was a journey they planned to make in one month. They were beset with troubles and eventually finished in 68 days. Some of their delays were made so they could film birds, or to wait for their parents to be able to wire them some money.
During their journey they sent film footage back to the office so the news would be able to cover where they were up to. After their journey they were able to make a documentary which seems to have started their career on TV. I say that because when I look at their Wikipedia article I see that they started producing documentaries in 1966, sometimes producing a book of their journey. I now want all the books and the documentaries.
I loved this book. Despite my small writing I had such trouble fitting all of my notes on the back of one business card. I did manage it, but it took some old-fashioned ‘turning the card by 90°’ in order to fit in the rest of my thoughts.
While reading this book I was constantly reminding myself of some things. This book is set in a time before decimal currency and before we changed from imperial measurements. Everything was measured in miles, easy for an American to understand, but much harder for an Australian who’s mostly grown up with metric. Our currency didn’t change until 14th February 1966 so they’re using pounds, shillings and pence.
We had no mobile phones and no internet. If you wanted to contact someone in the bush you could send them a letter or try to phone them. Not everyone had a phone in their house. The Leylands tried to contact various businesses where they expected to land, such as the Police or the Post Office. Some people replied to their letters, but others didn’t, partly because the business was closed.
With no internet they had to contact government departments in order to try and obtain detailed maps. Some of the maps needed a bit of an update. Some of the information they were given regarding river conditions was a bit incomplete. This meant that they had issues getting through certain areas and took longer than they’d expected.
They wrote to a number of companies during the planning stages. They were hoping to find sponsors. They did find a boat company willing to give them a boat. They were so confident they didn’t think of learning how to drive the boat before the picked it up. Thank goodness the people handing it over didn’t believe them and gave them some quick lessons.
The three young men were fairly handy and good at improvising. They managed to break many pins during parts of their voyage and improvised something that mostly worked. A propeller broke and they made a new one from baked bean tins. When this second one broke they happened to be near enough to civilisation to be able to request a propeller be sent to them. They then rowed the 20 miles (about 30 km) to Caloola sheep station where they waited for it.
One thing I’d to make note of is about a previous home of this book. It used to belong to the Caulfield-Malvern Regional Library. It still has all the library paraphernalia inside. The pocket in the front for the card and the loan slips pasted into the inside back cover. I note this book seems to have only been borrowed twice. I’m about to lend this to a friend, it’ll be fascinating to hear her reaction.
I could use many more words about this book. I’ve only covered my thoughts and used none of my notes. This seems to be a rare book. I see four results on AbeBooks. It’s a good book to read. Not only does it depict Australia in a particular time, but also a particular place…the Darling River. It is a place I will only get to see small sections of, but now I’ve seen the entire through the eyes of the Leyland Brothers. Not just one brother, but both of them. They took turns writing chapters and I was caught once more because I don’t read chapter headings. I was trying to understand who was talking and finally thought to look at the chapter heading. Yes, the information I needed was there. That was an eye roll moment.