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Mal shares Leyland Brothers history on Australian Story

It's only taken 13 years but Mal Leyland finally agrees to speak to Australian Story about an iconic Australian TV show.

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2015-02-11_1620Pioneering doco series Ask The Leyland Brothers will feature in week’s episode of Australian Story.

Mike and Mal Leyland, who were television institutions during the 1970s and 80s preceded many who followed in their path.

“Long before Steve Irwin and before the Bush Tucker Man and before even David Attenborough
was famous in Australia, there were the Leyland Brothers and they were making these
wonderful films about Australia.” Dick Smith

Now after 13 years of trying to entice the Leyland Brothers onto Australian Story, the program will finally tell the inside story with an interview with Mal Leyland.

Australian Story producers first contacted Mike and Mal Leyland in 2002, but the brothers had
fallen out and refused to take part in the program.

Mike Leyland died in 2009 and his brother Mal has now agreed to repeated requests from the
program to tell their story.

“This is the first time that I’ve publicly spoken about what happened to the Leyland Brothers
and why Mike and I went our separate ways,” says Mal Leyland.

“We made a conscious effort to make sure that people thought we were still travelling together.
We didn’t want people to feel as though we were actually ready to rip each other’s throats out.”

The Leyland Brothers were pioneers of outback documentary making, first setting off to Central
Australia in 1960 when Mal Leyland was just 15.

They were the first to film Uluru in the wet, first to drive across Australia from its western-most
to eastern-most point, and first to travel the length of the Darling River in a small boat.

Their television shows in the 1970s and eighties attracted some of the highest ratings of the
time, and their theme song “Ask the Leyland Brothers” remains familiar to millions of viewers.

Their format of inviting viewers to write in and suggest topics for the show pioneered the
technique of audience participation, a generation before the invention of social media.

But their decision to branch out into the tourist industry by building their own theme park,
Leyland Brothers World, was disastrous.

By the time the project collapsed in 1992, they had lost more than six million dollars and both
brothers were bankrupted.

“In hindsight, Leyland Brothers World was a huge mistake, the biggest mistake we ever made,”
Mal Leyland told Australian Story.

“The partnership that Mike and I had for 29 years was crumbling before my eyes, and I knew
would never be the same again.”

The program has scoured the ABC archives and the Leyland Brothers own material for as much
footage of Mike Leyland as possible. 

8pm Monday on ABC.

3 Responses

  1. Leyland Brothers World make one simple mistake, and that was their ‘big’ Ayers rock wasn’t that big at all……it was one fortieth (or smaller) the size of the real thing. No one wants the see a big monument that is a fraction the size of the real thing. Foreign tourists used to wander through it and look at the hot food and opals, boomerangs and c
    hats with corks in them and ask…..”Is the real Ayers Rock hollow too?” Trues story.

  2. The Leyland Brothers World idea wasn’t the mistake. It was a very good idea! The biggest mistake the brothers made was in trusting a bank – any bank! They should’ve gone to a building society or a credit union, they’d still be active today and likely raking in the loot!
    Moral of the story – don’t trust banks, they’re treacherous! There have been many stories covered by shows like Four Corners and 7.30(Report) that can attest to this, just delve into the ABC archives.

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