AUSTRALIA'S KING OF THE MOUNTAIN DIES...
Sep 8th, 2006, 05:49 AM
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AUSTRALIA'S KING OF THE MOUNTAIN DIES...
Peter Brock.. "BROCKY".. died today..
AUSTRALIA'S BATHURST CAR RACING CHAMPION..
Today Australia lost another Aussie Legend in the same week.. re: Steve Irwin on Monday..
Take One Last Lap with Brocky in the A9X V8
Holden Torana Monster Car @ Bathurst http://www.shamozzle.com/OneLastLapwithBrocky.html
R.I.P. BROCKY.. King of the Mountain...
Bathurst NSW Australia..
Peter Brock 26 Februry 1945 ~ 8 September 2006
AUSTRALIA'S BATHURST CAR RACING CHAMPION..
Today Australia lost another Aussie Legend in the same week.. re: Steve Irwin on Monday..
Take One Last Lap with Brocky in the A9X V8
Holden Torana Monster Car @ Bathurst http://www.shamozzle.com/OneLastLapwithBrocky.html
R.I.P. BROCKY.. King of the Mountain...
Bathurst NSW Australia..
Peter Brock 26 Februry 1945 ~ 8 September 2006
Sep 9th, 2006, 12:13 PM
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I feel so sad about this news.
When we returned to Calgary in January 2000 from our 2.5 year expat assignment, our younger son stayed on in Melbourne to do his last year of high school there, and he lived with Peter and Bev Brock for that year. They were so kind to him. But I'll go back to the beginning.
When our two sons had settled into their new school, they occasionally had friends to sleep over at our house and they also slept over at friends' houses. One of the friends who sometimes used to sleep over with our older son was this kid called Rob Brock.
Then our older son had a couple of sleep overs at Rob's house. He came back and told us some funny tales about the sleep overs. He said one morning he was busy waking up and he was lying in bed with one eye open and he saw this black and white dog walk past, and then the same dog walked past in the same direction, but he hadn't seen it walk back the other way, and then he saw the same dog walk past again, also without having walked back. He said, "Um, Rob, you have this weird dog that keeps walking past me in only one direction." Rob laughed, and said, "That's not one dog. We have five dogs. They're siblings and they look the same."
Our son also told us anecdotes about this acreage that Rob lived on outside of the city. Well that's what we call that kind of property in Canada. Our son said there was a main house and then there was a shack in which Rob's granny and grandpa lived and another shack in which Rob's grown up brother lived.
One day our older son said to me, "You know, Mom, Rob's dad is famous," and I said, "Oh is he? That's nice," and I carried on doing whatever it was that I was doing and didn't give it another thought.
Then one day our son pointed to an advertisement on TV and said, "That's Rob's dad." There was this handsome, distinguised man who looked like an older version of Rob, and there was this blonde twentysomething woman calling him "Brocky." Then our son said, "<b>Now</b> do you believe me?" I was quite taken aback, and I said, "Yeah, I guess I do."
Fast forward to the time when we were getting ready to come back to Canada. Unbeknown to us our younger son had been hatching a plot to stay behind and do Year 12 in Australia. He had asked my husband's cousin, who is an immigration consultant in Melbourne, what documentation he required to stay in Australia. He discovered that his school did not have accreditation to have foreign students. He persuaded the principal to apply for accreditation so that he would be able to continue studying there. Then he lined up four classmates whose families all would have been willing to host him for the year. His idea was that if my husband and I didn't approve of the first family, he'd move on to the second family on the list, and so on.
Then our younger son dropped this bomb on my husband and me a couple of months before we were due to leave Australia. He invited us to a meeting with his principal and teachers. To cut a long story short, everything was already so well arranged, and the principal and teachers were so enthusiastic about it, that any objections that my husband and I might have had were addressed one by one.
We agreed to have afternoon tea with the family who were first on the list of prospective host families. This turned out to be the family of our younger son's classmate, Alex, who was the sister of our older son's friend, Rob. When I phoned the Brocks to set up the meeting, Rob and Alex's mom, Bev, laughed. She said, "We're finally allowed to talk about this. We've been sworn to secrecy for months and months."
My husband and I drove out to the Brocks' acreage to meet Bev and Peter. It was a magical place. They were vegans, and grew organic fruit and vegetables. Their house and the grounds felt very spiritual, for lack of a better word.
I got a chuckle out of the two "shacks" that our older son had told us about, the ones in which Rob's recently deceased grandparents had lived until recently and the one in which Rob's older brother, James, lived. The "shacks" looked like lovely houses that any normal family would have been delighted to live in. However, it was true that they were smaller than the main house, which looked more like a mansion.
My husband and I immediately liked Bev and Peter, and felt no need to move on to family number two on our son's list.
When we raised the issue of the expenses that the Brocks would incur in housing and feeding our son for a year, Peter refused to accept any financial compensation. He just waved his hand and said it was nothing.
Bev and Peter were very hospitable to our son. We got a shock half way through the year when our son broke his wrist during a skateboarding accident at school. Because of the time difference between Australia and Canada and because it was an emergency, Bev had exercised the written permission that my husband and I had given her and Peter in advance to use their best judgement in the event of a medical emergency. By the time she managed to get hold of me on the phone, the orthopedic surgery already had been done, and our son had a pin through his wrist. I found it devastating to have an injured kid thousands of miles away, but I knew Bev would give him lots of TLC, which she certainly did.
Our son did very well in Year 12, and rejoined us in Canada. At that point my husband and I sent to the Brock Foundation a cheque covering what we thought our son's room and board for the year had been worth.
After that we exchanged letters with the Brocks at Christmas. Each of their Christmas letters would arrive with a small extra touch, like a pressed eucalyptus leaf.
We did not receive a response to our Christmas 2005 / New Year 2006 letter. We surmised the radio silence was the result of Bev and Peter's May 2005 separation that other Australian friends had told us about.
At midnight last Thursday night, our older son phoned us from his downtown Calgary apartment. He told us that he'd seen on an Internet forum that Peter Brock had died in a car crash during a rally.
Ironically our younger son was vacationing in a hard to reach place on Vancouver Island. I tried unsuccessfully to reach him on his cell (mobile) phone. Then I sent him an e-mail on the off chance that he would manage to pick up an e-mail message somehow. Astonishingly enough, he e-mailed me back saying he'd received the message and was terribly sad to hear the news. He's due back in Calgary tomorrow (Sunday) night. We're looking forward to discussing the matter with him, as we want every family member to participate in whatever expression of sympathy we send to the Brock family.
When we returned to Calgary in January 2000 from our 2.5 year expat assignment, our younger son stayed on in Melbourne to do his last year of high school there, and he lived with Peter and Bev Brock for that year. They were so kind to him. But I'll go back to the beginning.
When our two sons had settled into their new school, they occasionally had friends to sleep over at our house and they also slept over at friends' houses. One of the friends who sometimes used to sleep over with our older son was this kid called Rob Brock.
Then our older son had a couple of sleep overs at Rob's house. He came back and told us some funny tales about the sleep overs. He said one morning he was busy waking up and he was lying in bed with one eye open and he saw this black and white dog walk past, and then the same dog walked past in the same direction, but he hadn't seen it walk back the other way, and then he saw the same dog walk past again, also without having walked back. He said, "Um, Rob, you have this weird dog that keeps walking past me in only one direction." Rob laughed, and said, "That's not one dog. We have five dogs. They're siblings and they look the same."
Our son also told us anecdotes about this acreage that Rob lived on outside of the city. Well that's what we call that kind of property in Canada. Our son said there was a main house and then there was a shack in which Rob's granny and grandpa lived and another shack in which Rob's grown up brother lived.
One day our older son said to me, "You know, Mom, Rob's dad is famous," and I said, "Oh is he? That's nice," and I carried on doing whatever it was that I was doing and didn't give it another thought.
Then one day our son pointed to an advertisement on TV and said, "That's Rob's dad." There was this handsome, distinguised man who looked like an older version of Rob, and there was this blonde twentysomething woman calling him "Brocky." Then our son said, "<b>Now</b> do you believe me?" I was quite taken aback, and I said, "Yeah, I guess I do."
Fast forward to the time when we were getting ready to come back to Canada. Unbeknown to us our younger son had been hatching a plot to stay behind and do Year 12 in Australia. He had asked my husband's cousin, who is an immigration consultant in Melbourne, what documentation he required to stay in Australia. He discovered that his school did not have accreditation to have foreign students. He persuaded the principal to apply for accreditation so that he would be able to continue studying there. Then he lined up four classmates whose families all would have been willing to host him for the year. His idea was that if my husband and I didn't approve of the first family, he'd move on to the second family on the list, and so on.
Then our younger son dropped this bomb on my husband and me a couple of months before we were due to leave Australia. He invited us to a meeting with his principal and teachers. To cut a long story short, everything was already so well arranged, and the principal and teachers were so enthusiastic about it, that any objections that my husband and I might have had were addressed one by one.
We agreed to have afternoon tea with the family who were first on the list of prospective host families. This turned out to be the family of our younger son's classmate, Alex, who was the sister of our older son's friend, Rob. When I phoned the Brocks to set up the meeting, Rob and Alex's mom, Bev, laughed. She said, "We're finally allowed to talk about this. We've been sworn to secrecy for months and months."
My husband and I drove out to the Brocks' acreage to meet Bev and Peter. It was a magical place. They were vegans, and grew organic fruit and vegetables. Their house and the grounds felt very spiritual, for lack of a better word.
I got a chuckle out of the two "shacks" that our older son had told us about, the ones in which Rob's recently deceased grandparents had lived until recently and the one in which Rob's older brother, James, lived. The "shacks" looked like lovely houses that any normal family would have been delighted to live in. However, it was true that they were smaller than the main house, which looked more like a mansion.
My husband and I immediately liked Bev and Peter, and felt no need to move on to family number two on our son's list.
When we raised the issue of the expenses that the Brocks would incur in housing and feeding our son for a year, Peter refused to accept any financial compensation. He just waved his hand and said it was nothing.
Bev and Peter were very hospitable to our son. We got a shock half way through the year when our son broke his wrist during a skateboarding accident at school. Because of the time difference between Australia and Canada and because it was an emergency, Bev had exercised the written permission that my husband and I had given her and Peter in advance to use their best judgement in the event of a medical emergency. By the time she managed to get hold of me on the phone, the orthopedic surgery already had been done, and our son had a pin through his wrist. I found it devastating to have an injured kid thousands of miles away, but I knew Bev would give him lots of TLC, which she certainly did.
Our son did very well in Year 12, and rejoined us in Canada. At that point my husband and I sent to the Brock Foundation a cheque covering what we thought our son's room and board for the year had been worth.
After that we exchanged letters with the Brocks at Christmas. Each of their Christmas letters would arrive with a small extra touch, like a pressed eucalyptus leaf.
We did not receive a response to our Christmas 2005 / New Year 2006 letter. We surmised the radio silence was the result of Bev and Peter's May 2005 separation that other Australian friends had told us about.
At midnight last Thursday night, our older son phoned us from his downtown Calgary apartment. He told us that he'd seen on an Internet forum that Peter Brock had died in a car crash during a rally.
Ironically our younger son was vacationing in a hard to reach place on Vancouver Island. I tried unsuccessfully to reach him on his cell (mobile) phone. Then I sent him an e-mail on the off chance that he would manage to pick up an e-mail message somehow. Astonishingly enough, he e-mailed me back saying he'd received the message and was terribly sad to hear the news. He's due back in Calgary tomorrow (Sunday) night. We're looking forward to discussing the matter with him, as we want every family member to participate in whatever expression of sympathy we send to the Brock family.
Sep 9th, 2006, 02:38 PM
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Judy, what a lovely story. I hope that a lot of Aussies will read that but I am sure that most of us know what kind of man he was and how much he will be missed.
Not only do our sympathies go to the Brock family but also to those near and dear to him as they too have lost someone wonderful in their lives.
Not only do our sympathies go to the Brock family but also to those near and dear to him as they too have lost someone wonderful in their lives.
Sep 9th, 2006, 10:06 PM
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Thank you, lizF. At the time that I typed my previous post I was feeling sad about being far away from the people to whom this event was meaningful and my inability to share it with them. Expressing my thoughts here helped.
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