Paul Mercurio’s life has moved between stages and kitchens, cameras and chambers, but motorcycles have always been the constant
There are not many lifelong motorcyclists who can say they’ve never had a crash. But performer-turned-politician Paul Mercurio is one such rider. If you asked the riding instructor who mentored a 17-year-old Mercurio to his learner licence in the Western Australian town of Fremantle, he’d tell you it’s because of his discipline.
“There was none of this ‘get your Ls and go and ride’. I had to get an instructor and have lessons,” Mercurio, now 62, says. “One thing I do recall is he told me to go this way, and the road was quite windy, and he flashed his lights and pulled me over. He came up to me and he said, ‘What do you do for a living?’ I said, ‘I’m a ballet dancer’, and he said, ‘I thought so’.
“Riding a motorbike is about power and energy and flow, being connected inside and out, you know, and that’s very much what dance is about as well. That moment really gelled with me.”
If you ask me, and after the very little time I’ve spent with Paul, I’d say it’s his ability to listen to his instincts and make smart choices, even if they do go against what he actually wants.
“My dream bike was a Mike Hailwood Ducati Replica. I went overseas for a while, I left the dance company to travel, so I sold everything. And when I came back, I found a Ducati Hailwood Replica 900 at a shop and I bought it,” he recalls. “I mean, beautiful machine – crap two-up in Sydney peak-hour traffic – so it was completely the wrong motorcycle… and it was kickstart.
“I actually had visions of dying on it, so one week after I bought it, I sold it.”
And if you asked his mother-in-law, while she might agree with the instinct bit, I’m almost certain she’d disagree with ‘smart choices’ – that’s even if she knows what Mercurio and his wife of now 38 years Andrea once did.
“I was bikeless for a little while and so that’s when I bought my first GSX-R1100. I hadn’t had it that long and Andrea was pregnant with our first child, and her mother was with us,” he says. “Andrea was 10 days overdue and there was a bit of tension around: Come on, hurry up, have the baby, I need to go home.
“I got her mum to go to the shops to get us some milk and I said to Andrea, ‘Come on, quick, jump on the bike.’ And we jumped on the GSX-R – no helmets or anything, just went down the street, down a big hill. I gave it some stick, popped the wheel up a little bit, she screamed. We went home, parked the bike. And a few hours later she went into labour!”
Spend any time listening to Mercurio talk about motorcycles and two things become really clear. The first is just how happy he is yarning about bikes and the second is how big a role Suzuki-branded machinery has played throughout the 45 years he’s been riding. And it’s all because there was a Suzuki dealership next to the caryard which was selling an orange Ford Escort van that he couldn’t afford.
“I’d like to say that I was the head chef at Red Rooster Hamilton Hill in my day, so you know, I was earning a little bit of money – $1.45 an hour actually,” he laughs. “But I looked at it and I couldn’t afford it. Next door to that caryard was a little motorcycle shop and it was a Suzuki franchise. And I’ve pretty much had motorcycles ever since.”
His introduction to a life on two wheels was a GSX250, which he decided he could afford that fateful day, and was his only transport before he moved to Melbourne to study dance at the Australian Ballet School. Afterwards, he moved to Sydney where he bought a GS1000S.
“I loved that bike,” he remembers. “Always loved it. Unfortunately, it got stolen. A friend of mine came round and I said, ‘Come down and look at my bike,’ and we went downstairs and it was gone. Later I got a call from the police saying they had it, so I jumped on the train to the police station and I said, ‘I’ve come to pick up my bike,’ and they said, ‘Well, you won’t be taking it home, mate’ – the guy who stole it had crashed it, killed himself and written the bike off.”
But that wasn’t the memory of that particular Suzuki that he recalls the most.
“My mum flew over to Sydney for a visit and I picked her up on the GS1000. I put her on the back of the bike, put her suitcase in between us, put a helmet on her and rode her home to Kings Cross where I lived.”
Next in line was a 1100cc shaft-drive Suzuki, before an ambassador role with BMW at the height of the Strictly Ballroom movie box-office success meant that Hamamatsu-made machines made way for a spate of Munich-made models, but the large-capacity inline configuration remained steadfast all the way through.
“I’d always ask for a K 1200; it was a fantastic bike, I loved them,” he says. “They were really bloody fast, they were comfortable. I was travelling a lot so I could take it to the airport, leave my boots and jacket and stuff in it, and then fly back in and ride home.
“Occasionally they’d give me the fully faired 1100cc boxers and I would go and pick up my daughter from school with the music blaring. She’d see me, and part of her was like, ‘Oh, Dad!’ And another part of her would look around to see if anyone was watching, because she felt so cool.”
Paul and Andrea have three girls; Elise, Emily and Erin – after the first two names started with the letter e, he said they had no choice but to continue the tradition – but he admits he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of any of them taking up motorcycling when they grew up.
“I’m one of those typical motorcycle-riding dads that, you know, they’ve said to me, ‘Yeah, Dad, we might get a bike.’ And I’m like, well, can I help you get a car?”
If Mercurio’s taste in motorcycles has remained remarkably consistent, so too has the image that first drew him in. As a kid, growing up in Swan Hill in Victoria’s northeast, it was a white bike ridden by a motorcycle cop on the Matlock Police TV series that captured his attention.
“My dad was in that show occasionally, playing a criminal,” he says. “But Paul Cronin – famous Aussie actor – was a motorcycle cop. I’m pretty sure it was either a Honda or a Yamaha, but he had a white motorcycle, and so I was about 12 and I used to dream of being on my white motorcycle and riding in and saving the day.”
That interest didn’t fade as life got busier. Through the 1980s, he was a committed follower of Grand Prix racing. He still remembers stopping work on a documentary he was filming so he could sit and watch Wayne Gardner take victory at the 1989 Australian Grand Prix.
“I used to watch it religiously,” he says. “My wife and I would sit and watch it, back when it was on free-to-air, so I was very much the Gardner, Doohan, Magee, Lawson era.”
Riding, though, was always kept in perspective. He admits he liked the idea of racing, and dabbled with track days, but never harboured any illusion about his abilities. That was reinforced when he was invited to Eastern Creek to ride the radical Australian-designed Hunwick Hallam X1R Superbike. It was a rare chance to sample something genuinely exotic and Mercurio relished the experience – right up until reality arrived.
“I’m pretty sure it was Wayne Gardner there on the day. He came down, just in his jeans and jacket and he took a Fireblade or something out,” he says. “And I’m tipping into Turn One thinking I’m doing really well, and all of a sudden he goes, whoosh, past me, and he was gone – no leathers, just having a bit of a ride…”
Speaking of having a bit of a ride at a racetrack, the conversation turns to Phillip Island, to which Mercurio has been invited in various capacities over the years. But there are a couple of stories that stand out.
“Back in my BMW ambassador days, I went down for the grand prix and we were in Z4s, you know, the convertibles, and I drove Gary McCoy and his teammate around the parade lap,” he starts. “We also did a ride from Sydney down to Phillip Island with Mick Doohan and a whole lot of other people. And Kieren Perkins, who was also an ambassador, was on a different bike. I had heated grips and he didn’t. And it was a terribly cold, wet, rainy two days and he was freezing… anyway, when the race finished, I said to Kieren, ‘Quick, jump on the bike, we’ll go around the circuit’ – because he had the bike in the paddock where the tent was.
“And we actually rode around the circuit without helmets, right after the grand prix finished. And as we came down the main straight, everyone’s running (to the podium), you know, so we had to weave through.”
These days, Mercurio’s working life looks very different. He is the Labor member for the Victorian state electorate of Hastings, representing the Mornington Peninsula. It’s a role that keeps him busy, but one that hasn’t displaced riding from his life.
And rather aptly, he’s found his love of large-capacity inline-four machinery has culminated in a 2009 GSX1300R Hayabusa. A white one, of course. But it very nearly wasn’t.
“I’ve had times, really tough times, like we all do, and I’ve actually tried to sell the Hayabusa twice,” he says. “About six years ago there was no work, and things weren’t great, so I’m very glad that no one wanted it and no one bought it, because I love getting out on it. And I’m glad at 62, I’m still jumping on the bike.”
And long may it continue, because after a life on two wheels shaped by fate, good judgement and a 1970s Aussie cop show, it’s hard to imagine it any other way.
Another long-running passion
MOTORCYCLES haven’t been the only constant in Paul Mercurio’s life. Beer has played a surprisingly similar role, following him through different stages with varying degrees of, er, influence.
He began homebrewing early in his marriage, after receiving a kit as a first-anniversary gift from his wife Andrea, and kept at it for decades. The interest grew steadily and provided some great opportunities over the years. There was a beer cafe venture more than a decade ago that he was forced to walk away from, thanks to what he describes as ‘a lying-thieving scumbag’; there was a short-lived commercial release in 2005 called Merc’s Own Peach Ale that was stocked in 26 bottle shops; and a best-selling cookbook, Cooking With Beer, that sold 125,000 copies in eight languages around the world.
“The dream was always to have a little microbrewery, but I haven’t quite got there,” he says.
These days, the brewing system still sits in his garage, largely unused, although time rather than enthusiasm has been the limiting factor.
