Mal Leyland traces a weathered finger across a map of Australia, keenly planning “one more trip” through the heart of the rugged country that helped make him famous.
If his health allows, Mal, now 81, will be on the road again next month, retracing the epic Wheels Across a Wilderness filmmaking journey that he and his late brother Mike completed 60 years ago.
Carmen says her father has always been “her hero”. (Australian Story)
Mal knows this trip with his only child Carmen, son-in-law Jon Evans and a bunch of Leyland Brothers enthusiasts could be his last outback adventure.
He’s had some issues with his health, he says, and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease two years ago.
“One more trip would be pretty good,” Mal tells Australian Story. “Maybe it’ll be my last trip, I don’t know. One day there will be a last trip, because one day I’m going to fall off my perch.”
Mal Leyland is hoping he will be in good enough health to travel across Australia on his last big trip. (Australian Story)
For many Australians in the 1970s, watching the Leyland Brothers forge their vehicles through swollen creeks and set up camp on the edge of vast red deserts was their first exposure to the far reaches and stunning beauty of remote Australia.
The brothers’ mild-mannered nature juxtaposed with the wild risks they took helped cement their television programs, Off the Beaten Track and Ask the Leyland Brothers, as prime family viewing in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Ask the Leylands Brothers theme song became the earworm of a generation. (Supplied: Mal Leyland)
But before the television programs, the two brothers produced four documentaries, using the skills they’d picked up when Mike worked as a news cameraman and Mal as a newspaper photographer.
Carmen says the trip her dad loved the most was Wheels Across a Wilderness, in which the brothers travelled from Steep Point, the most westerly point in Australia to Cape Byron, the most easterly, taking in the Simpson Desert on the way.
“They were the first to cross from one side to the other by a vehicle, which was an astounding achievement in that time,” Carmen says. Their film and photographs of the waterfalls on Uluru during the wet season were the first ever captured.
“It was the most successful production that they ever did and the most memorable,” Carmen says.
In 1966, Mal and Mike Leyland, together with a group of mates, did something no-one had documented before — a four-wheel-drive trek across the country. (Supplied: Mal Leyland)
Mal remembers a lot of that landmark journey, too. He says the really good times and really bad times of his life have stayed with him so far.
But there’s no harm in topping up those good memories with one more trek across the country he loves.
Watch The Leyland Brother on Australian Story, Monday at 8:00pm (AEDT), on ABCTV and ABC iview.
Laraine was the ‘highlight of my life’
The Leylands, 1977: Carmen, Laraine, Mal, Mike, first wife Pat, Kerry, Sandy and Dawn. (Supplied: Mal Leyland)
The best of the really good times in Mal’s life was meeting his wife, Laraine.
“She was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Mal says. “Meeting her was the highlight of my life. She was the highlight of my life, and in my memory, she still is.”
Laraine and Mike’s first wife Pat regularly travelled with their husbands during the filming of Ask the Leyland Brothers, bringing along their young children and instructing viewers on the tricks to setting up a good camp.
Mal and Laraine were lifelong travel companions. (Australian Story: Anthony Frisina)
Her parents had a special bond, says Carmen, and Laraine’s death in 2018 hit Mal hard.
“It caused him to go into a very depressive state,” she says. “That first 12 to 24 months, he really, really struggled to move on with his life. He felt very lost. My mum was the centre of his life. His whole reason for living was for my mum.”
Mal Leyland says photographs help trigger memories. (Australian Story)
Laraine was there for Mal through financial distress, a bladder cancer diagnosis, and one of Mal’s greatest sadnesses — the estrangement from his big brother Mike after they embarked on the ill-fated tourism venture, Leyland Brothers World.
Mal Leyland had a difficult time adjusting to life without Laraine after she died in 2018. (Australian Story)
Failed tourist park Mal’s ‘biggest regret’
It began so hopefully. With their long run of TV supremacy waning in the mid-80s, the brothers decided to create a tourist park centred around a giant replica of Uluru. Their combined worth was about $6.5 million and they took out a large loan to build their dream.
The roadside attraction Leyland Brothers World in its glory days. (ABC TV)
But it took seven years to build, by which time interest rates had soared to 26 per cent. Some bills remained unpaid when the park opened in 1990 and the bank came looking for security.
The houses were in their wives’ names. Laraine did not want to sign her house over. But Mal talked her into it.
It’s one of his biggest regrets. In a 2015 Australian Story, Mal said: “I can’t forgive myself for what I did that day, because I went against my wife’s instincts and I forced my will on her, which was really the worst thing I could ever have done. But to her great credit, she hasn’t held it against me.”
Within two years, the venture collapsed, leaving angry creditors, bad publicity and the end of the Leyland Brothers’ fortune.
“It was a nightmare,” Mal says. “It started out as a dream and it turned into a nightmare.”
Rift tore Leyland Brothers apart
But what hurt Mal most were Mike’s allegations that he had put private expenses through the company’s accounts.
“I couldn’t believe that he didn’t trust me,” Mal said in 2015. “Of all people, of all things, what we’d been through — and then he turned around, accused me of ripping him off.
“The partnership that Mike and I had for 29 years was crumbling before my eyes and I knew it would never be the same again. Our relationship was damaged permanently after that and it never really recovered.”
The collapse of Leyland Brothers World signalled the end of the brothers’ close relationship. (Supplied)
Mal and Laraine set about rebuilding their lives, moving to a 10-hectare block in Glen Innes, NSW, and living in shipping containers as they built a house, cutting the timber themselves.
Not long after, Mal was diagnosed with advanced bladder cancer, requiring surgery to remove a large tumour. He believes the chemical-free food the couple grew on the property helped him pull through.
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Mal had little contact with Mike until a car pulled up in the driveway one day. Mike and his second wife Margie Leyland got out and Mal was shocked by how old and stooped his brother looked. He’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
At their final meeting, Mike was sitting in an armchair as Mal reminisced about their adventures.
“I said, ‘How would you like to do one more trip?’,” Mal recalled in 2015.
“And this little glint came in his eye and one side of his face moved and he mouthed the only two words he said while I was there. He said, ‘One more’.”
But it wasn’t to be. Mike Leyland died in 2009, aged 68.
‘The good things’ stick most in Mal’s mind
Carmen began to notice a few years back that her father, “my hero”, was forgetful, repetitive and muddling up his stories of past adventures.
He even went missing a few times. His son-in-law Jon says the irony of the possible headline, “Police are searching for Mal Leyland who’s lost in bushland” was not lost on the family.
Carmen Leyland is dreading the day her “hero” fades away. (Australian Story: Ben Cheshire)
They organised for Mal to move to Cairns to live with them and Carmen says the official diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease two years ago did not come as a surprise.
“The hardest thing has been watching this man that I idolised my whole life slowly disappear in front of my eyes,” Carmen says.
“We are definitely dreading the day when it gets to the point where we realise that we can’t take care of him anymore.”
He’s not at that point yet, still able to fire off a quick one-liner. Asked about the dementia diagnosis, Mal jokes: “Being a bit crackers isn’t too bad — it’s being really mad that’s a problem.”
Mal Leyland says one last trip would be good before he “falls off his perch”. (Australian Story)
Mal says he still remembers a lot of the old days of the Leyland Brothers and if he has trouble piecing memories together, he turns to his vast library of photographs.
“Having dementia is interesting,” Mal says, “because it depends a little bit on what it affects. If you’ve got a good memory of the good things in life, the good things are far more important.”
Museum plans to celebrate TV icon
The 60th anniversary reprisal of Wheels Across a Wilderness is now giving Mal something exciting to focus on into the future. The plan is to stick as close as possible to the original route but this time, the Leyland family convoy will be accompanied by 10 other vehicles.
The film of their 1966 trip gave Australians a rare chance to see the outback. (Supplied: Facebook/ Travelling with Mal Leyland)
Carmen says these groups are paying to come along on the adventure, with the money going towards a new venture — the Mal Leyland Museum and Photographic Gallery in Cairns. In the gallery will be a little nook for a cafeteria to be named Lara’s Café in honour of Mal’s great love.
“It was always Dad’s dream to open up a gallery and showcase his work [but he] never got the opportunity to do it quite the way he wanted to,” Carmen says.
They’ve already digitised about 2,500 of Mal’s photographs but, Carmen says, “we have barely even scratched the surface”.
There’ll be modern-day Mal Leyland photos to add to the collection if Mal is well enough to travel all over the countryside again. His cameras are the first thing Mal intends packing on this “one more trip”.
“I’d take a couple of cameras,” Mal says. “I’d have a video camera of course … and I would be in my element doing what I love.”
Until recent years Mal Leyland was still travelling and promoting the hidden gems of Australia. (Supplied)
There have been ups and downs in his life, Mal says, but all told, “I think I’ve had a pretty good run”.
“I think I’ve had an influence on people wanting to travel. I think that’s been a good part of what I’ve achieved in my life,” he says.
“I’d like to be remembered as a person who was a traveller, photographer and lover of life … And I had a wonderful wife to do it with.”
Watch the Australian Story ‘The Leyland Brother’ Monday at 8:00pm (AEDT) on ABCTV and  ABC iview.
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