I just heard on the radio that Peter Brock has been killed in a racing crash.
All the boys I went to a country town high school with drove V8s, and all of them looked up to Brockie. He stood above the perennial Ford-Holden wars in terms of his racing hero status, partly because of his cool, calm demeanour - Brock was the Bjorn Borg of Australian motor racing. Or course, some of the most partisan supporters will never forgive him for switching teams (and some others who will never care about racing will not forget his controversial marriage break-up).
Irwin’s death was so bizarre at a relatively young age that it was by far the most shocking. Thiele was elderly and had long been in bad health, so no shock there, which may explain why his death has been so eclipsed by Irwin’s. I’m not shocked by Brock’s death: racing is inherently dangerous and Brock had had a long career that it’s almost as though he’s finally succumbed to the odds. In fact, once I’d absorbed the news, my first reaction was that at least this will take some of the media blowtorch off the Irwin family (the Australian media, anyway).
A mailing list I belong to has a macabre habit of announcing celebrity deaths with a [grim(listname)] tag, and then performing a weird sort of Kevin Bacon connections game to find three celebrity deaths that fit together as a set within a brief time frame. Australia found it way too easy to collect its set of three this week.
Another dinkum Aussie icon gone. Very sad but like Irwin he died as he lived, in the fast lane.
Both died with their boots on. What a way to go!
Brock. Just an instant and inseperable association with cars and unlike Formula One the dreamers could at least own something that bore a vague lineage to what he was racing in.
My faves the L34
Killd in a car crash. What are the odds?
I hadn’t head anything till on the way home. The train was crowded and the news drifted through the carriage. One overheard comment was “Another Aussie icon gone. These things come in threes.” And I thought “What about Thiele or even Don Chipp?”
A longer post on Australian identity and confirmation bias somewhere in there.
The confirmation bias effect is strange, Shaun. I’d originally thought that Chipp, Irwin and Thiele made a three, but Irwin and Brock seem to go together better, which is what our pattern-seeking brains latch on. Thiele and Chipp don’t fit all that well with each other pattern-wise, and certainly not with Brock and Irwin.
Let’s just hope we’re not actually getting two triples - Irwin, Brock and another daredevil against Chipp, Thiele and another public non-sporting figure.
Sad. My sister lives in Bathurst and we’ve driven up round Mt Panorama a few times. Made me wish I had a licence so I could pretend to be Brocky on Conrod Straight.
Christine: not nearly as high as you might think. The touring car racing which he made his name in hasn’t had a fatal crash in many years.
However, the form of motorsport he was competing in when he died - a tarmac rally - is considerably more dangerous.
All of them were genuine characters, though, which does provide a link of sorts.
I hope not tigtog but it is interesting about who captures the adoration of the Australian public. Those I was only a child in the 70s the political icons of that era seemed to be firmly fixed in my head (no doubt due to my dad’s involvement in local politics) so the death of Don Chipp did register for me. Then again he was in poor health unlike Irwin and Brock.
One consolation (as steve at the pub pointed out) they both died doing what they loved and lived life to the full. To throw an oft used expression, we are here for a good time, not a long time. A good lesson in regards the fragility of existence.
And given my dad did rallies and hill climbs when he was young and one car I learnt to drive in was a V8 Falcon and I drive an XR6 at the moment, for some reason I am not into motor sports at all or being an all out rev head.
I’m not being a hard hearted smart-arse, but sandwiched between stories about Brock and Irwin on PM this afternoon was a story about the Kovko inquest, that included a flashback to his Mum saying that her son could never have killed himself accidentally with a gun, because he was just too good at what he did…
Sadly, my biggest Brock memory was the Denton interview that I watched accidentally one night in a hotel room. Less Peter Perfect than Peter Pan, starting to believe his own propaganda.
Steve Irwin and Peter Brock in the same week. It is unAustralian.
But the latest sad news is a good thing that helps Australians in our darkest hour.
Where all the mums and kiddies were trooping to the Sunshine Coast to leave teddy bears and flowers at the Australia Zoo, now all the dads and teenagers can hoon to Mt Panorama and set up a shrine of burning tyres and spilled motor oil.
Where earlier they were divided by a lack of understanding, at last the two halves of this sunburned country are united in grief…how fucking Australian is that?
Memo to John Howard: a car accident is a far more quintessentially Australian way to die…I wonder if Brocky had a beer in his hand though?
In my grief about the person referred to by the PM as “Brocky” (And really, who would have thought Dear Leader was such a hoon at heart? This should be the subject of the next election: Ford or Holden?)
Well I’ve conducted some fairly intensive research about things coming in threes on teh internets, and believe I’ve come up with some fairly convincing scientific proof:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJi1sGSiBKE
Really, you’ll be amazed.
It’s an ill wind that blows no-one any good at ‘ cashforcadavers’ or ‘ stiffs.com’ or even ,’ The rotten dead pool.’ See also ‘ Policy analysis markets.’
Meanwhile rumours are circulating in hyperspace of a Steve Irwin ‘ hit’.
This was allegedly carried out by a new Au Navy REMUS submersible on the direct orders of ‘ Man-of-steel’. Irwin was swinging back to Labor.
This is our Stalins ‘Sergei Kirov’ assassination as Qld is his ‘ Leningrad’.
It has been a great week for celebrity deaths, hasn’t it. If they come in 3s, then Chipp can’t be included - ‘cos he was so old and could have been expected to die anyway. So if they come in 3s, then there must be 1 more out there somewhere, just waiting to happen…
Jeez, I dunno. Anybody’s sudden unexpected death is a tragedy that the world would be better off without. A bigger tragedy is when they are patently avoidable…
Cheers…
The Fark thread on Brock is chaotically irreverent as expected.
Yeah, professor rat, I think you may be on to something.
Speaking for myself I’ve never believied Lee Harvey Oswald was shot in that basement. It was a coverup. He’s back as a stingray.
With celebrety deaths coming in the anticipated threes, if I was Dick Smith my chopper would be staying on the ground this weekend.
Dick Smith is a rational man and a sceptic, he won’t be affected by such dumb superstition.
I should resist but can’t: Warnie karking it in some text-sex-messaging electrocution incident would fit right in.
Didnt’ Brocky go a bit “nexus” at one stage, and build an ‘orgone’ machine al la Wilhelm Riech and put his car engines in it?
I think he was a health food nut, possibly vego (?) and yoga exponent etc too. dont think it went down too well with his racing fans at first…but it’s always v.good when someone goes totally outside their public persona and embraces whacko ideas!
Vale Peter Perfect. I’ve been driving Falcons for past 8/9 years (parts are cheap as chips) and still feel like I’m voting for the other side.
Tig - the Ashes are coming up - do not even think about Warnie and bizarre accidents…then again I’d bet on a super-resistant-STD strain and things dropping off, as a more likely fate in this case.
Heh! Or clocking himself in the head with a cricket ball.
sorry, orgone machine = whacko, not yoga and healthy food…
Oddly enough the car that Peter Brock was driving was a large engined rear wheel drive fibreglassed bodied sports car with a dangerous rear end, the other large engined rear wheel drive fibreglassed bodied sports car with a dangerous rear end - the Corvette Stingray.
OK that’s enough paranoia for one day.
Correct Jo, Peter Brock was notable for 3 things (in addition to being a champion racing driver)
He was an over-the-top vegetarian. Not sure what his diet beliefs were, but they certain didn’t include meat.
He was equally as fanatical about drink driving and driver safety. (His racing car always bore the number “05″)
He always had time to sign autographs & be kind to fans, especially younger ones. He was very conscious that the impression he gave, in what was a few moments to him, was to the fan a once-in-a-lifetime experience of meeting a sporting idol.
Yes, he did go a bit “Nexus” at one stage, which resulted in Holden severing business ties with him in the 1980s.
He started fitting the HDT “specials” (modified road cars made with Holden factory approval) with a gadget called the “Energy Polariser”, which was basically some strong magnets. It was claimed to “align the molecules” in the vehicle to make it work better. Unsurprisingly, everybody else, most importantly Holden themselves, thought this was rubbish.
Brock also started recommending that the tyre pressures in the Polariser-equipped HDT cars should be set to dangerously low levels.
GMH were frightened they were going to get sued, not only because the Polariser didn’t do what it claimed to do, but because they were worried about the risk of tyre failure through people listening to Brock’s tyre pressure recommendations.
In the end, they cut all ties with him, and brought in Tom Walkinshaw to set up Holden Special Vehicles to run the race team and build hotted-up factory-approved Holdens.
If anybody wants to go visit the library and dig some motor magazines of the era, there were reams written about it.
I remember the Polariser fiasco. It came as quite a surprise to many that Brocky could be so loopy — perhaps we all assumed someone as successful as him had to be a rational, evidence-based sort of guy. But then a lot of seemingly intelligent, reasonable people visit homeopaths and naturopaths too.
Today I heard a story on the ABC that the crew filming with Steve Irwin secretly went out and spent four days completing the filming for the documentary Ocean’s Deadliest. Here’s the Australian’s version.
Philippe Cousteau, grandson of Jacques Cousteau, was working with Irwin and says that ironically stingrays were not planned to be part of the show.
One of my thoughts about Steve Irwin’s death is that he was personally very familiar crocs and reptiles, but may not have had the same expertise with stingrays. You can’t imagine Irwin ever letting himself be caught within the strike zone of the jaws of a crocodile.
The information from Cousteau suggests that it was a chance encounter for which Irwin was not prepared.
This CNN interview gives some idea of Cousteau’s regard for Irwin.
I understand the final message of the film is that man is the biggest menace in the ocean environment.
Brocky? An “over-the-top vegetarian”? In the Boltiverse doesn’t that make him a Nazi?
He did look profoundly good for a 61 year-old, though. Just can’t picture him in an SS uniform hacking VWs around Mount Panorama.