Leyland brothers

[8] When aged 15, Mike won a trip to the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne from a cartoon-drawing competition, and his father bought him a 16mm movie camera to take along.

[10] They also planned to use the camera to film a journey to Uluru in their father's Morris Minor; a mechanic friend persuaded them to trade in the car for an old Land Rover.

[11] The Leylands soon realised there existed a wide public interest in seeing the Australian outback, and starting in 1961 they set out on their own to make documentary films that explored Australia.

[3] The show involved viewers writing in with questions and requests for places they wanted to see the brothers visit, in which they would do so in a Volkswagen Kombi van (and later two 4WD vehicles), often along with their wives and children.

[5] Satirical television host Norman Gunston called them “the Starsky and Hutch of the dead centre” during an interview with the brothers on a 1976 episode of his popular variety program.

The park contained amusement rides, a playground, a roadhouse and a 1/40 scale replica of Uluru along with other attractions, as well as a bush camp with a capacity to host 144 guests.

[16] Despite an estimated annual attendance of about 400,000 people, in July 1992 BDO Nelson was appointed receiver and manager of the park when the Leylands failed to meet their loan commitments to the Commonwealth Bank.

[16] In a 1997 article in The Sunday Age, Mike Leyland said that the initial $1 million loan had blown out due to rain during construction and was further compounded by a 27% interest rate.

"[12] Contrary to media speculation that they weren't on speaking terms, in the years afterwards the brothers still saw each other regularly, and even shared information about their new independent television projects on rival networks.

In 1997 Mike sold part of his Tea Gardens property to fund the production of a far-north Queensland film for Channel Seven.

[21] Mal and his wife Laraine ran a photo processing lab in Queensland and in 1997 launched a bi-monthly travel magazine, Leyland's Australia.

[8] Travel All Over The Countryside was originally a series of one-hour documentaries commissioned by the Seven Network in the late 1990s and produced by Mike and Margie Leyland.