Mal Leyland, one more time…

Veteran filmmaker and doco travel pioneer Mal Leyland, 78, is hoping to produce his final screen project during an upcoming trip.

“This trip that I’m about to do, I’m going to film it,” he tells ABC.

“I would like to think that it reached a big audience, and one of the ways of doing that would be to offer it to the TV networks.

“But I’d like it to be perhaps my last hurrah.”

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.

“When we arrived at the rock, we got some beautiful shots of it in the sunset,” he says.

“But that night, it got up windy and all of a sudden, it started coming down cats and dogs.

“The rock was just like a big, shiny blob of jelly. It was all glistening, and it was completely different,” Leyland says.

“We had six inches of rain that day, and it was the first time it had ever been photographed in the rain — and I got these shots of these waterfalls.

“They’re actually the highest waterfalls in Australia when they’re running, but they only run occasionally when it rains heavy.”

Their television shows in the 1970s and ’80s attracted some of the highest ratings of the time, and their theme song Ask the Leyland Brothers remains familiar to millions of viewers.

But their story also incldes a Leyland Brothers World theme park going bust in 1992, while the brothers had a falling out after going bankrupt.

Mike Leyland died from Parkinson’s disease in 2009 at the age of 68, although the pair had made amends.

In 2019 Mal hit the road as a “grey nomad” for Studio 10.

Both Leyland Brothers received an MBE for services to the film industry in 1980.

Separately a drama project Leyland Brothers: Monster Hunters is in development with Werner Films under director Daina Reid.

You can read more on Toowoomba-based Mal Leyland today here.