"Well, I must admit I don't mind stirring the pot occasionally and saying some some things which you could probably say are a little bit out there. I'm a provocateur."
Peter Brock (2005)
 
I begin with this quote for the purpose of subtle symbolism, of course - which some of you will understand, and some won't. Because this is just getting weird, now, and without any joke intended, I'm beginning to wonder if this site will need an "In Memory" category, for all the fallen Aussie celebrities who wind up icons of the great Australian Dream, through career-related deaths. If Don Chip had have died on the lawns of parliament, it probably would have made a better narrative, and he may have got the press he deserved.
 
Peter Brock, Aussie racing (here's that word, again...) legend of the infamous Bathurst hey-day era has been killed while racing in Gidgegannup (Western Australia). Brock, now in his early 60s, was the wild boy of racing turned new-age Vegan, and had faded from the cultural consciousness in recent times (although, "fallen" is a more accurate description). Last year, he appeared on Denton's Enough Rope (post-fall), and for all accounts, was a picture of an ageing man who had recently rejected his former life, in order to embark on a quest of Self-hood and meaning (which smacks of mid-life crisis talk, but in this case, was a much later turning point).

 

The most publicity Brock had received in recent years came when as part of this "new life" (where the line is drawn between instigation and justification is always a difficult matter, in such cases), he divorced his wife, Bev. Feeling betrayed and abandoned by the husband she stood by for 30 years, Bev wrote a book on the subject, and had given stories to the current affairs market, who happily ran with portraits of Brock as a playboy serial cheater (we can expect a similar turn around, as we have seen by the same people who rubbished Irwin, only to now rubbish anyone who rubbishes Irwin). Brock had his moment of retort on Denton, an interview (that can surely be expected to be re-run, almost immediately) ending with the question as to where he would be in ten years from now.
 
"Um, hopefully what I'm talking about here today will have come to, uh, fruition," said Brock, "and it will have worked out pretty well."
 
But I say, let's remember Brock not for his womanising-come-masculine quest for Self-hood. Let's remember the other moment of recent Brock history, where revhead met new-age, and Brock claimed to have the future of autovehicles in his hands. Let's remember The Energy Polarizer, a product unleashed upon the public by Brock, where by a small box of crystals was installed in the car, to make the engine run at maximum efficiency, powered by... well... the "energy", etc. Brock defended not having any scientific data - or an explination as to even HOW it worked, at all -  by shrugging; "Too difficult, really. I mean, it was gonna cost me 750,000 dollars to get a scientific validation of it. And I didn't have it. I said, 'Look, can you just trust the fact that it does work?'"
 
The product became the laughing stock of the media, and Brock's image crumbled. He also believed that tyre pressures should be at what was a scientifically deduced "dangerous" level, and between the humility of the Polarizer, and being a spokesman suggesting life-endangering advice, Holden (who Brock was the posterchild of, and will still be remembered as now, of course) dumped him from the team.
 
But I love it! Here's a serial-cheating car racer who, after being publicly accused of, and exposed as, a bad husband, discovers a spiritual ideology to invest his emptiness in (as a result of the great Aussie Dream he will now become a symbol of, mind you), hence leading him to be exploited by a crackpot new-age businessman, who convinced him to back a crystal-enhanced engine. And when asked how it works? Why, he doesn't even know, and refuses to invest in scientific testing because he was too tight in the pocket (despite the millions he was trying to make off the consumers he expected to trust him). We'll forget all this, of course. We'll forget that in the end, he was a converted new-age Vegan who believed that crystals could power a car (he still clung to that belief last year, on Denton, might I add, though he admitted the fiasco was ultimately "embarassing"), and he will be laid to rest as the Aussie car-racing king of revheads. That's something people perhaps misunderstand in my reactions to the past two celebrity Aussie deaths. I think their reality - that we find so abominable to suggest - is actually far more interesting than their glossed cultural memory. I much prefer to remember humans as just that - humans. Flawed, and complex, and repulsive, and compelling, all at once. Every human story - every real one - becomes an allegory, and it deserves to be told.
 
Commercial media reports have started to flood in, nicknaming Brock, "Peter Perfect". Germaine Greer is yet to comment.