Six weeks before he died, on September 8, 2006, Peter Brock phoned the woman who had shared his life for 28 years and from whom he had recently separated. “He called me to say, ‘Bevo, I want to tell you I’ve finally retired’,” recalls Bev Brock. “And I knew that was huge because he’d had a number of attempts.
“I could tell from the tone in his voice that this was upsetting him. He said he was no longer ‘dreaming’ his races, he no longer had his timing – and that’s critical when your life’s on the line – and he no longer had the passion. He said, ‘And I knew you’d want to hear this’. I congratulated him.
“Something happened in those intervening weeks that changed his mind. He didn’t have the courage to tell us. We didn’t know he was competing again.”
Peter Brock, the motor racing legend, Peter Perfect to his fans, the King of the Mountain, could not walk away from the adrenaline of motor racing, from the adulation or from the identity and purpose and the spotlight it had given him for 40 years.
Bev Brock was at home when she got the call – Peter had died after hitting a tree in a car rally near Perth, not far from where she had grown up. He was 61.
Bev, 67, tells her story – of life with a sporting superstar, of love, support, excitement and, in the end, betrayal and loss – with the extraordinary eloquence of someone who has been both a schoolteacher in her early years and later a life coach.
Although they never married, the couple had two children together, Robert and Alexandra, and Peter would refer to Bev as his wife. She changed her surname from McIntosh to Brock by deed poll in 1980.
Reflecting on his death, Bev believes Peter would have been “gutted” at the manner in which he died. Committed to road safety, he gave talks to school groups about taking care in the car, and for a time was the face of the .05 drink driving campaign.
“To have lived his life where he had been voted the No. 1 all-time Australian touring car driver and been listed in the top 13 in the world in all forms of motor racing … to then lose his life in that manner was the antithesis of everything,” she says. “To be in a rally where he misread the conditions, pushed beyond the limit and paid the ultimate price.”
Bev was “totally devastated”. “He was larger than life. He was my kids’ father, we had two grandchildren at the time. Before we’d separated we’d planned on spending this time camping our way around Australia.
“For me to have to deal with this under intense public scrutiny … I’d taught life skills so I had to be able to walk and talk, and I had to be able to set an example to my kids.”
For Bev, motor racing was not a passion “but it became our life”. For 28 years she travelled with Brock to events, performing all sorts of functions.
“It’s far from a glamorous world,” she says. “It is hard work. For me it involved administering the team, doing timing; I’d do all the sewing for the promotional outfits, I’d do all the cooking for the team, I’d look after his particular diet, his laundry, organising his appointments, co-ordinating sponsors. His autograph-signing sessions were an art form in itself.”
And it was a very macho world. “Women have a very limited role, a support role, and I didn’t object to that at all,” she says. “For 28 years it was my life, but the instant it finishes, you no longer exist.
“Peter’s fans and the senior administrators know and value my part in it all, but it’s like you’re no longer part and parcel of it. Without that support he couldn’t have done what he did. It’s an interesting and confusing part of the sport but it’s typical in any male sport – the women don’t exist. You’ve got to be very tolerant, very accepting, very supportive. Without that the guys can’t be in the frame of mind to do the things they do.”
The frame of mind many women were in around Peter Brock was making it clear to him that they were available. “I was fortunate that I wasn’t jealous,” says Bev. “He was a gorgeous, charismatic, handsome, engaging fellow. And he liked women. I understood that.
“Because we’d been friends before we got together, I saw what his life consisted of. I was not under any illusion that that was going to stop.
“Obviously it was flattering to any guy, when you’re constantly served this very attentive smorgasbord of delightful women – men are going to respond.”
And Brock occasionally did. “Peter had a philosophy that there is love and respect and value in a relationship but you could love more than one person … (but) that you could only be in love with one person.
“Every now and then there would be some attentive woman who would be very determined to get their way. And we talked about that. He knew that that wasn’t acceptable to me. So we often had frank, open discussions that were meaningful and not always easy but needed to be had.”
The end of their relationship in May 2005 coincided with Brock’s fear of retiring from a sport that had defined him. “He was 60. He didn’t want to face getting old. A bit of a Peter Pan. And he’d had 40 years in a sport that had consumed his life and suddenly he’s facing not just a delayed mid-life crisis, he’s also facing the fact that everything he thinks has made him who he is is finishing – his career is going.
“He was soul-searching, he was bereft, he didn’t know where life was going to take him. He’d never managed a cheque book, he’d never used a plastic card, he’d never shopped and suddenly he was confronted with the fact that his life was in his hands.
“I gave him time to soul-search, to explore who he was becoming and I found a bit of paper; in the soul-searching he’d committed (this) to paper.”
On that piece of paper Brock had drawn several circles, with himself in the middle and five circles surrounding it. He had put the names of individuals in each circle, and their closeness to his own circle indicated his ability to communicate with them. Bev Brock was appalled to find that a former close friend was in the inner circles and that she was in the outer-most circle. “That to me was the biggest insult,” she says.
The friend, Julie Bamford, and Brock were soon to be publicly a couple.
“That morning I’d woken up with him, totally wrapped in his arms, with him telling me how much he loved and respected me and how important I was, how I was this amazing person. I could forgive many things, but I couldn’t forgive that.”
She called a halt to the relationship, not knowing if it would prove to be permanent. It was. Peter moved in with Julie Bamford. Was it hard? “At the time, no. What was hard was that it was the end of an amazing life.”
Bev told Peter: “I don’t think you really appreciate what impact this is going to have on your public and on your contracts.” She was right. Brock lost public support and sponsors. “It was a confronting time for him.”
Peter Brock knew his attraction to other attentive women could be destructive to their relationship. “He realised it stood the chance of destroying everything that he valued. He’d always say to me, ‘Bevo, who would I depend upon if you weren’t there? I couldn’t see my life without you and the kids’. He knew that the stability and support I gave him made so much of his life possible.”
After his death, Bev had to face a long and expensive battle over his will. For almost three decades, Peter had done the driving and the public relations while she did what he called “the small stuff”, which is everything else. That included upgrading his will 18 months before he died. “I got him a will kit and he filled out the detail at the front and signed the bottom and left the middle part blank. ‘Bevo, it will be up to you, I trust you to do the right thing, I won’t be here’.
“But you can’t do that. Because it was signed it negated the previous legal wills so there was dispute and in the end the five legal teams did very well out of it and the rest of us ended up with legal bills.”
What did she do, having lost almost everything? “You’ve got to restart your life. (I was left with) a little bit of superannuation and a lot of bills. That to me was probably the reason I want people to realise that life can change in an instant, dramatically, and very few of us have anything in place to cover ourselves.”
A friend who knew that Bev had no means of providing a roof over her head lent her a deposit on a home and she moved to Warrandyte for a while. She is now building a house in Eltham where she will be close to her three children and six grandchildren.
So how does she feel about where life is at now? “I think in some ways I’m in the best place I’ve ever been emotionally, mentally,” she says.
“In terms of having someone to share the rest of my journey with, no, that hasn’t happened yet. I’d love that to happen. I get concerned at the number of people in our age bracket who are on their own and there’s this sense that they are incomplete and there’s this desperation to have somebody share their life.
“It says to me there’s something about that lack of sense of self where you’re content in your own space. Having someone to share that with you is icing on the cake.”
People have different responses when they meet her. “They say how much they loved and respected (Peter), or how much they were disappointed in the way it finished. I get both. Most commonly how much they loved and respected him and how much they value me as an essential part of his life, and how sorry they feel for me.
“To me it was a coincidental public profile that I developed. Never intentional but, because I was so solidly supportive of him through tough times, that’s what people identified with, and to me that’s natural; that was part and parcel of what a partnership’s about.
“I sort of, in some way, gained recognition as an individual in my own right and people respected that I was my own person; I wasn’t some sycophant who was just a ‘yes’ person. We had a very honest, sometimes confronting relationship.”
She is greeted warmly when recognised in public. “People still come up to me on the street and want to give me a hug and tell me how sorry they feel for me … and how I’ve been an inspiration because I’ve maintained my dignity and integrity through it all. It’s very sweet, but it confuses me as to why people would feel sorry for me. My life has been a fantastic one.”
» Life to the Limit (Affirm Press $29.99)
