Final rally for everyone's best mate

By RICHARD BOOCK

You get the feeling that if a Hall of Fame was to be created for Good Kiwi Blokes, rally driver Possum Bourne would be one of the first inducted.

The man whose name became synonymous with New Zealand motorsport was remembered as everyone's mate yesterday - a man who strove as hard to please in his everyday life, as he did at the wheel of his rally car.

The young man who smashed his mother's Humber while trying to avoid a possum was remembered for his ready smile, his penchant for eating friends out of house and home, and an ability to shrug his shoulders at the most anxious moments.

He once demolished a kitchen chair belonging to the mother of mechanic Snow Mooney when simulating a driving move before dinner - and, according to his grieving mate, wasted no time in leaping back up on another to finish the stage.

Mooney, who flew to Bourne's bedside as he lay in Dunedin Hospital after the April 18 crash, emphasised just how understated the New Zealand rally hero was while relating an experience at Kaukapakapa.

"It was one of those rare times I was in the co-driver's seat," he said.

"I could see this fast corner coming and decided that if Possum got us around it, we'd have to rename him God ...

"Anyway, adhesion was lost, gravity took over and we rolled down the hill quite a few times, finally coming to a rest upside down, both hanging there by our harnesses.

"He looked across at me, still upside down, and said deadpan, "didn't think I could take that corner flat".

Mooney still remembers the day that Bourne, who dabbled in truck-racing for a time, turned up at his Pukekohe East workshop with a new racing truck - a 5-tonne Kenworth.

"He went sideways through the gate entrance and made about seven or eight gear-changes up the driveway ... it was only as he got close that I was able to calculate that his truck was about two-feet too big for the workshop.

"Poss ended up embedded in the workshop door, with plaster, splintered wood and debris falling all over the bonnet ... "

Remembered as a better race driver than a mechanic, Bourne nonetheless kept his hand in with Mooney and the crew, frequently dropping in at the workshop to help as the team worked late.

"We had a shadow board with every single tool on the wall," recalled Mooney.

"When Poss arrived we'd just watch the tools disappear one after another until, by the end of the night, the wall would be empty and the tool-boxes would be gone, too.

"Poss would be somewhere, just wallowing in all the tools, and accusing us of taking all the spanners."

Mooney shook his head and could hardly describe the scene that greeted him at Dunedin Hospital's intensive care unit: "Seeing the legend lying there in such serene surroundings ... it just rendered me breathless, I couldn't speak.

"To be that great, you have to have loyalty, love, kindness, trustworthiness, and ambition.

"Poss had all of that."