Jack Brabham Poem by Ron Price

BRABHAM

Part 1:

I was never that interested in car racing, racing teams, Formula One world championship driving and drivers; indeed, sports in general after my teens took a distant place in my interest inventory. In addition, I have always had a low mechanical interest and aptitude. I never did well in basic woodwork and metalwork, what we used to call “shop” in high school, and I had little interest in cars and mechanics, in motorcycles and, indeed, anything, any gadget or appliance with a lot of parts. If any of these things needed fixing it was off to the repair man. In my second marriage, my wife had a high mechanical aptitude and interest. She took care of all the stuff that needed fixing. I did not marry my wife for her skills in this area, but marriage to my second wife, a Tasmanian, has proved useful on many fronts, fronts I knew little about when we married some 40 years ago.

So it was that, in many ways, Jack Brabham was not a likely candidate for my poetic package of interests as they have evolved in the last 20 years: 1994 to 2014. Some five years ago, though, I watched with interest a brief life-story of Jack Brabham.(1) I won't give you all the details of his life-narrative, just a few highlights.

Brabham enlisted in the RAAF the year I was born,1944. He was then 18. In 1959, the year I joined the Bahá'í Faith, Brabham won the World Championship in car racing, after winning the Monaco Grand
Prix. Fifty-five years ago, as I update this original comment on Brabham, then, this racing legend cemented his name in motorsport history by becoming the first Australian to be crowned Formula One world champion. In 1962, the first year of my own travelling-pioneering away from my home town in Ontario, Brabham drove for his own team, the Brabham Racing Organization. More than 50 years later I am still travelling but, for the most part, it is now mainly in my head, in my literary life.

Part 2:

The 1966 Jack earned a further place in motorsport history by becoming the first, and so far the only, driver to secure the F1 championship in a car of his own creation. It was a feat unlikely to be repeated. I graduated from McMaster university that year in May in sociology and for ten weeks that summer I sold ice-cream for the Good Humour Company at 80+ hours per week. On average new employees with this famous ice-cream company lasted only two to three weeks because of the long hours. Good Humor became unprofitable beginning in 1968 and by then I was teaching primary school among the Inuit on Baffin Island. -Ron Price with thanks to (1) ABC1, “Australian Story, ” 8: 00-8: 30 p.m.,17 August 2009 and updated to 19/5/'14.

You were only a name on
the very periphery of my
life back then the 1960s,
Jack, along with Stirling
Moss & the many Grand
Prix racing-men around
the world. I had my hands
full with just getting through
my days: my studies, my psycho-
emotional life, the embryo of
my career, my new religion- I
was simply too busy, Jack, to
include you in my constellation
of interests. You’ve become an
Aussie hero, Jack, goodonyer.

There will be millions now who
will have their emotions stirred
on hearing of your passing, Jack.

I wish you well as you race on
to another world where, who knows,
you may have some new formula
to keep you busy speeding through
the immensity of space as you
create your own vehicle for the
journey ahead, Jack: goodonyer.

Ron Price
17/9/'09 to 19/5/'14.