Given my hobbling leg, this Canberra trip had to be relatively quiet. A couple of art galleries, a trip to the War Memorial, and the rest of the time hanging around the beautiful 1920's hotel that would be worthy of Gatsby. Must drop some kilos and get myself a white linen suit, sport.

One of the galleries was the National Portrait Gallery on King Georges Terrace in the Canberra suburb of Parkes. Historically the lead motor sport category in Australia has been touring cars. At one time this consisted of people driving around a race track in cars which were very similar to those that you and I might have driven on the road, had we been driving Ford Cortinas back in the 1960's. Over time the cars resembled our vehicles in little more than body shape and the competition became dominated by two groups. Ford, with its Falcon sedan, and Holden (the "Australian" if you want to call it that, arm of General Motors) initially with its Torana and later its Commodore sedans. The "jewel in the crown" event each year has been the Bathurst 1000 (as in 1000km, formerly 500 miles) which is held at the Mt Panorama circuit at Bathurst in the Great Dividing Range west of Sydney. (Yes, OK, it's more an eroded upland than a true mountain range. Still, it's called Mt Panorama, OK?)

The intent of both camps was to sell more cars. However since both Ford and Holden have recently declared that they're quitting manufacturing cars in Australia, and since Ford has consequently withdrawn from motor racing here, the point is now moot. But back in the 70's and 80's it mattered.

And this man, this man here... he was known as the King Of The Mountain. He won the Bathurst race 9 times for Holden between 1972 when he was a mere 27 and 1987 when he had turned 42.

In early September 2006 I was at a hotel in the Leura area west of Sydney (as I have confirmed from finding the photoshoots from that trip) when the news came through that Peter Brock had been killed, aged 61, while driving in the Targa West '06 rally. He skidded off a downhill bend and hit a tree.

This sculpture had been done about 6 years earlier. The sculptor is Julie Edgar (b. 1951), a Melbourne artist who studied at RMIT, Monash University and the University of Melbourne. Her busts are created in stages, starting with a clay sculpture, then forming wax and rubber moulds, then bronze casting, and then grinding, rubbing back and detailing through patination.

Peter Brock was far from a saint, particularly in his personal relationships. And toward the end of his main career he also indulged in some pseudo-scientific clap-trap drivel called the "energy polariser". But none of us are perfect. Achieving 9 wins at Bathurst was no easy feat, so the presence of his sculpture in the gallery was pretty much inevitable. There are doubtless far more flawed characters depicted elsewhere in the gallery.
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Edit August 2024: Hello from almost 10 years into the future, where I still don't have that white linen suit despite dropping a few kilos. For some reason I had it in my head that Brock had died in Tasmania, probably because it's arguably the most famous of the Targa races in Australia. And perhaps because it was featured in Eric Bana's film Love The Beast, which is a personal favourite. However Targa West is, or I should say was, a race in Western Australia and the accident occurred in the town of Gidgegannup which is about 40 km (25 mi) north-east of Perth. The race hasn't been run since 2021, but may come back in the future. The plans for that are not completely clear at present.

The name Targa is one of those ones that has morphed over time. It is sourced in the Italian word for a motor vehicle licence plate (amongst other types of plates) which was used for a motor race in Sicily in 1906 called the Targa Florio. Since all things Italian are cool, the name "Targa" was appropriated for many other races which wished to bask in the aura of Italian coolness. It was also appropriated by Porsche for one of its models despite the fact that they did not know what the word meant at the time they started to use it.

In any case, there have been several Targa races in Australia though at the time of writing most of them have been suspended because of a couple of deaths in recent Tasmanian ones.

One other thing... in Brock's (racing) days Holden was number 1 in sales in Australia most years. You would see Holdens parked along every street in Australia, more or less, and the thought of them no longer being around was unthinkable. However as I mentioned by 2014 Holden had already decided to cease manufacturing in Australia.

In 2020 General Motors pulled the plug on the whole brand. You will not find a Holden dealership anywhere in Australia now, and a Holden on the road is a rare sight indeed.