Kerry Packer by Michael Stahl (i read books .txt) 📕

Bartlett had met Packer around 1979 when the race ace received a call asking if he’d be willing to give some driving lessons to Mr Packer. Bartlett suggested the Oran Park race circuit, south-west of Sydney.

‘We hopped in the car, I think it was the XJ-S and I took him around,’ recalls Bartlett.

‘After a little while he said: “Enough of this. I want to have a run around, you tell me what I’m doing wrong”…

‘I’ve often thought the reason we hit it off was that I was actually telling him what to do. That can only lead so far with Packer before he says, “Well, fuck—don’t tell me to do it that way!”

‘I said, “If I tell you to do something, it’s because you need to know the next step. If you can’t do it the way I want you to, you just go and do your own thing. And when you crash, don’t fuckin’ blame me.”

‘I knew who he was, but to me he was just a rich businessman. He said, “Do you know who you’re talking to?” “Yeah, I’m talking to a bloke I’m trying to teach how to drive” … So he said, “Alright then, show me!” And it went on from there.’

On the circuit, Bartlett says, he could readily see that Packer ‘was quite a good steerer’, with a flair for driving quickly.

Bartlett also recognised he was getting some respect.

‘Once we’d got over that argumentative stage, which didn’t last long—he was a very forgiving guy, in a lot of ways—it turned out it wasn’t a mistake to be that insistent. What he respected was that I’d stuck to my guns.’

Packer, it seemed, was happy—or at least able—to defer to others who were expert in their particular field and had the confidence to assert it. Thus, characters like helicopter pilot Nick Ross, polo mentor Sinclair Hill, cattleman Ken Warriner and a small circle of others, became trusted confidants.

Bartlett found himself propelled into that inner circle as the go-to guy for motoring matters. In short order, Bartlett would be servicing Packer’s cars at his Sydney race workshop, jetting off to source high-powered toys, accompanying him on automotive adventures, designing a go-kart track for the Ellerston property and, most visibly, carrying Channel Nine sponsorship on his Formula 5000 and Chevrolet Camaro racing cars.

The adventure would run until the end, 25 years later.

But back to the beginning and the fire-breathing Jag.

A new technology, among passenger cars at least, was the turbocharger: a turbine pump that crams ever greater quantities of fuel and air into the engine, creating prodigious power—for so long as the engine can take the pressure.

‘I said, we’ll put a couple of turbochargers on it,’ Bartlett grins. ‘But it was a complete and utter bloody disaster, the whole way along …

‘We estimated it got up to about 1200 horsepower [895kW], before we backed it off to about 800,’ Bartlett says. ‘You couldn’t drive it very often—you couldn’t drive it around the city because it was a complete dog, and that’s what Packer didn’t like about it. The carburettors would jam and then the car would catch fire.

‘It never caught fire with him in it, thankfully. But it did with me, a couple of times.’

It was a work in progress. Bartlett strove to resolve the issues of delivering fuel, keeping the engine cool, and strengthening the transmission system to handle the power of two contemporary F1 cars. And between times, having to blast it with a fire extinguisher and clean it all up again.

‘Then one day he rang me—or his secretary rang me—and said, “KP wants to go down to Canberra, is the XJ-S ready?” I said, “Well, it is.” She said, “Go up to the house to collect him and you can go down to Canberra.” I thought: “Shit”…’

Bartlett was understandably less than confident of the big Jag’s ability to make the trip—around four hours, prior to today’s freeway—without self-immolating.

‘So I picked him up, and he said, “I’ve got to get to Canberra in an hour and a half, two hours tops.” I said, “Well, we won’t do it in this.” He said, “Why the fuck not? You said you just tuned the fuckin’ thing up, why won’t it do it?” I said we’ve never done that sort of distance before … “Just hop in the fuckin’ thing and shut up, I’ve gotta get to Canberra.’”

At the wheel of the Jag and thundering up to speed, Packer instructed Bartlett to phone the office and have his helicopter dispatched to follow them. The Jag had a head start of about 35 kilometres when the chopper lifted off from Channel Nine.

‘We get to Mittagong,’ Bartlett says (a distance of 115 kilometres from Sydney) ‘and Christ alone knows how many police cars were after us by that time. I wasn’t looking at the speedo, but we were going hard, waaa-waaaa, top-gear stuff. And suddenly he says, “I haven’t seen that chopper. They’re supposed to monitor where I am. Where’s the fuckin’ chopper?”’

‘There wasn’t much phone coverage in those days, and I had to ring someone and get them to ring someone. Eventually, somebody says: “The chopper pilot says he can see you in the distance, but they can’t catch you!”’

By Mittagong, Bartlett was panicking that the Jag would set a signal fire for them. ‘The thing was starting to smoke, the gearbox was smelly and I thought, ohh, shit … I said look, I’ve just got to pull up and check the gearbox oil … He said, “But I’ve gotta get to rah-rah-rah,” but I explained that we wouldn’t get there if the gearbox blew up.

‘Naturally, it was pissing oil everywhere, I was waiting for it to catch fire again, and he says, “I’m not gonna make Canberra in this, am I?” So I phoned the chopper and we got to somewhere near the Bong Bong Racetrack … the guys landed in farmer Fred’s paddock, and Packer’s over the fence and off. “See you in Canberra!” he says.’

Bartlett did