Veteran filmmaker and pioneering travel doco Mal Leyland, 78, is hoping to produce his final film project during an upcoming road trip.
“This journey I’m about to take, I’ll film it” he tells ABC.
“I’d like to think it’s reached a large audience, and one of the ways to do that would be to offer it to the TV networks.
“But I wish it was maybe my last hurray.”
The Leyland Brothers were pioneers of outback documentary making, first setting out in central Australia in 1960, when Mal Leyland was just 15 years old.
They were the first to film Uluru in the wet, the first to cross Australia from its westernmost point to its easternmost point and the first to travel the Darling River in a small boat.
“When we got to the rock, we had some great sunset shots of it,” he says.
“But that night the wind picked up and suddenly it started pouring cats and dogs.
“The rock was just like a big shiny mass of jelly. It was all glittery and it was completely different,” Leyland says.
“And then the falls started going down.
“It was raining six inches that day, and it was the first time he had been photographed in the rain – and I got these shots of these waterfalls.
“They’re actually the tallest waterfalls in Australia when they run, but they only run occasionally when it’s pouring.”
Their television shows in the 70s 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 history also includes a Leyland Brothers World theme park that went bankrupt in 1992, as the brothers had a falling out after going bankrupt.
Mike Leyland died of Parkinson’s disease in 2009 at the age of 68, although the couple made amends.
In 2019 Mal hit the road as a “grey nomad” for Workshop 10.
Both Leyland Brothers were awarded MBEs for services to the motion picture industry in 1980.
Separately a dramatic project Leyland Brothers: Monster Hunters is in development with Werner Films directed by Daina Reid.
You can read more about Mal Leyland based in Toowoomba today Here.
(embed)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXcFDdBxXFs(/embed)
