Ross Burbidge is a man who demonstrates that it is never too late to
learn new skills in life, and the key to new adventures is provided by
languages. He is also a man who has managed to combine a lifetime of
love of motor sport, with his many and varied occupations.
Ross was born in Australia and was raised in Brisbane, Queensland. His
father was a civil engineer and Ross showed an interest in that field.
I had pretensions to be an engineer, but academically I didnt make
it, he said. In actual fact, the real reasons included a lack of
stimulus from his schooling and a personal uncertainty of future
direction. Basically I didnt know what I wanted to be but motor
sport had started to rule my life. While in this state of vacillation
he went to the Queensland University of Technology and studied
accounting and commerce.
Because of the motor sport ambition, he worked in a garage at weekends,
as many young men did to get a little extra money, but Ross had other
ideas. He wanted to go motor racing and with a loan from his parents,
bought a car to drive to university. This was secretly modified for
racing, with the hot bits hidden in the garage, to be added to the car
come race weekends!
After leaving university he took a series of jobs, always involved with
the motor industry in one way or another, such spare parts sales or
trainee manager, but nothing with a future, because at that stage, for a
dyed in the wool motor racer, the future extended only as far as the
next race meeting.
He was by then running his own car, and began to attract some
sponsorship and was able to run in Australias premier sedan race, the
Bathurst 1000, and scored a second in class against the factory teams.
Motor sport then became even more dominant, and so he opened his own
workshop, ostensibly to reach out to the public wanting go-faster
equipment, but in actual fact, to give him a workshop in which he could
prepare his own car! Eventually, even Ross could see that this business
was going nowhere, so he closed it and moved to Melbourne.
Again he was involved in motor sport, but remained on the fringe,
because he had this idea that he should learn Japanese. He had been
running Japanese race cars, and needed to import parts from Japan, so it
seemed to make sense at that time. It was at that precise moment that
serendipity changed his life. He read an advertisement placed by a
Japanese company wishing to start a motor sports company in Melbourne.
This was called Scuderia Motorsports and they were looking for mechanics
and a manager. He applied for a mechanics position, but when they found
that he could speak some Japanese, he was offered the position as
manager.
The Japanese influence became stronger. They took him to Japan to race
at the famous Mt. Fuji circuit, while the owner of the company would
frequently make the trip to Melbourne, mainly because he liked coming to
play golf. Rosss ability with the Japanese language was becoming
stronger, now taking formal lessons, and so were his connections with
Japan.
It was time for him to really cement the relationship and he moved to
Queenslands Gold Coast, the most popular holiday region for the
Japanese honeymooners. He decided to retire from motor sport, and hung
up his helmet. That side of his life was over. On the Gold Coast, he
joined a Japanese tour company and became a tour coordinator for them,
to oversee their 35 tour guides. His Japanese language abilities
continued to improve, but as we all know, when you live in an English
speaking society, it is always difficult to become really fluent in a
foreign language.
Again it was serendipity that changed his life his old language
teacher in Melbourne contacted him to advise of an opportunity on the
island of Hokkaido. This was to work in a little village as a
Coordinator for International Relations. Ross was told that immersion
in the language would be the best way to become properly fluent, and
this village did not speak English. He took the position without really
knowing what was expected of him, and described the post as Just
teaching a little bit of English and walking around the village so that
people could stare at me!
But there was more to it than that. Motor sport had not finished with
him yet, or he with it. As his plane came in to land at the small
villages airstrip he noticed a development that looked very much like a
race circuit. It was, and when the developers found about the new
coordinators race background he was asked to become involved, even if
just to translate signs into English, and translate the official
documents from the world motor sport governing authority in Europe.
From there, it was a natural extension to be running his own team again,
and then assisting the local rally promoters who had the ambition of
hosting Japans first world rally championship round. With Rosss
assistance, this became reality in 2004.
However, he was tiring of Japan, and had experienced Thailand on
holidays, so became involved with the Rally of Thailand that year, and
then decided to see if he could boost rallying in SE Asia.
As part of that dream, he has imported two rally cars to Thailand from
Japan, and is looking for suitably sponsored young Thai drivers to
promote. Pattaya makes sense, said Ross, the majority of rallies are
around this area, and I like the relaxed living here, after the
straight-jacket society of Japan.
So if you see a red Honda Integra rally car around our streets, you can
say Konichiwa or even GDay. Ross the motor racing linguist is
amongst us, and if you have enough money and talent, you might even
score that drive.
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