431 – Gather Round To Learn About Major Events

Wayne Taylor, the man quietly keeping South Australia’s biggest events spotless, takes Steve Davis behind the scenes of the Olympics, Wimbledon, Formula One, and the old Clipsal 500, in an episode recorded right on Gather Round weekend, with the Musical Pilgrimage pausing to celebrate the Cellar Door Shuffle.

When 80,000 people descend on an event, somebody has made it look effortless. Wayne Taylor has spent three decades being that somebody, from the Sydney 2000 Olympics to Wimbledon, Formula One on three continents, and right here in Adelaide at the Clipsal 500. His company, First Facilities Group, now brings that same discipline to commercial and residential properties (and events) across Adelaide.

There is no SA Drink of the Week this episode, but Wayne does weigh in on the relative merits of beer events versus wine events versus spirit events, and the answer is exactly what you would expect from a man who has cleaned up after all three.

The Musical Pilgrimage features Steve Davis and the Virtualosos performing “Cellar Door Shuffle,” a celebration of the great South Australian wine country ritual, which also gets a preview mention for the upcoming History Hit Parade show at the Mercury Cinema.

You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve!

The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards.

And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: [email protected]

If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it.

And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concise
page.

Running Sheet: Gather Round To Learn About Major Events

00:00:00 Intro

Introduction

00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week

There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week.

00:02:17 Wayne Taylor, First Facilities Group

Right now, as Gather Round unfolds across South Australia, tens of thousands of people are doing what they always do at a footy match: finding a seat, grabbing a pie, visiting the loo, and not once thinking about any of it. That invisibility is because someone’s doing their job brilliantly. Wayne Taylor has spent the better part of three decades making sure that when 80,000 people descend on an event, the wheels don’t fall off. He’s done it at the Sydney Olympics. At Wimbledon. At Formula One races on three continents. At Clipsal 500 when 200 staff, 15 supervisors and a $300,000 budget had to deliver a spotless result across four days. And he’s done it right here in Adelaide, quietly, at events you almost certainly attended. He now runs First Facilities Group, bringing that same discipline to commercial and residential properties across Adelaide.

Wayne Taylor has a habit most of us would find exhausting. Every time he walks into a building, he is quietly checking the mirrors, the bins, the general state of things. It is not fussiness. It is decades of conditioning that started when his parents cleaned Memorial Drive as a boy from Broken Hill, and he mostly just got in the way by raiding the office stationery drawers. That origin story matters because the values Wayne brings to First Facilities Group now, respect, honesty, and an obsessive eye for what others walk past, were baked in early. As he puts it, “If you can’t get your housekeeping correct, how can you then operate your business?” It is a lens that applies equally to a gleaming corporate lobby and to the pit lane at Albert Park.

The stories from his career read like an event passport. At the Sydney Olympics he managed 1,100 staff, set an 80% minimum recycling target, and navigated vehicle bomb checks just to get to work each morning. At Wimbledon, he learned that a single cigarette butt on the ground was enough to earn a conversation with the CEO, and that some corporate boxes were quietly serving spirits in coffee cups because you cannot legally drink alcohol watching football in England. At Formula One, a certain unnamed driver, “Mansell,” parked his car next to the waste compactor despite clear signage, and paid for it when a bin tipped onto the vehicle. Wayne watched from the level above and, eventually, laughed.

The Clipsal 500 holds a particular place in his story. He worked it for twelve years and is clear-eyed about what it meant to Adelaide after the Grand Prix left in 1995: “The place went dead.” The Clipsal helped rebuild that. His team delivered the best margin in the company that year not through corner-cutting but through relentless post-event debriefs, 4am starts, and crews walking the entire circuit in a line with headlamps, because the lighting was never quite good enough.

One of the sharper insights in this conversation is about the people who do this work. Wayne keeps what he calls a little Bible, a list of standout workers from each event. The good ones get taken to lunch, thanked properly, and connected to the next opportunity, whether that is the Grand Prix in Melbourne or something interstate. It is empathetic at a human level, and it also happens to be smart: one well-led supervisor with 20 people will outperform a rabble of 50.

His principles for First Facilities Group are unchanged: respect, honesty, punctuality, and a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. He once disciplined his own teenage son for repeated lateness in front of the whole crew, because anything less would have been unfair to everyone else. That is the standard he holds himself to and expects from others.

01:08:34 Musical Pilgrimage

In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature Steve Davis & The Virtualosos‘ new song, Cellar Door Shuffle.

This song is a love letter to the ritual of winery visits across South Australia, from the Hills to Barossa, McLaren Vale to the Clare.

Wayne is still in the room for this one, and Steve uses it to draw a neat contrast from the week’s main themes: beer events are loud, spirit events are rough, wine events are, as Wayne says, “a little more sophisticated.”

The song will also feature in the History Hit Parade show with Keith Conlon at the Mercury Cinema. It’s on Monday, May 11, 11am, and Sunday, May 17, at 4pm and it will simply be an enjoyable show of historical anecdotes, fun, and music.

Here’s this week’s preview video

There is no video this week.

SFX: Throughout the podcast we use free SFX from freesfx.co.uk for the harp, the visa stamp, the silent movie music, the stylus, the radio signal SFX, the wine pouring and cork pulling SFX, and the swooshes around Siri.

An AI generated transcript – there will be errors. Check quotes against the actual audio (if you would like to volunteer as an editor, let Steve know)

431-The Adelaide Show
===

Steve Davis: [00:00:00] Hello, Steve Davis here. Welcome to episode 431 of the Adelaide Show podcast. This is being recorded and more than likely being published on the weekend of the gather round in South Australia. Now, that’s a major event when it comes to major events, and our guest today has been in the background of many major events all around the world.

His name’s Wayne Taylor and he runs a company in Adelaide called First Facilities Group. But we’re gonna dive into his past because if there’s anything you’ve watched on TV or attended yourself that’s major sporting or other cultural festivals, he’s probably been there lurking in the background. And then in the musical pilgrimage, uh, we’ve got a song, uh, one by Steve Davis and the virtualosos that intersects a little bit with his world.

At one level, it won’t seem obvious at first, but it’s something that celebrates the whole concept of the cellar door shuffle that many people do when they visit South Australia. Uh, all tie it all together when we get there. Until [00:01:00] then, enjoy

Theme: wave

here.

Refugees

Caitlin Davis: in the spirit of reconciliation. The LHO Podcast acknowledges. The traditional custodians of country throughout South Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.[00:02:00]

Theme: Lady Who? Lady.

Other lady. Other lady. Other lady who

Steve Davis: right now as gather round unfolds across South Australia, there are tens of thousands of people doing what they always do at a footy match. They’re finding a seat, they’re grabbing a pie, they’re visiting the loo and not once thinking. About it at all. And in fact, that invisibility is because someone’s doing their job well.

Wayne Taylor has spent the better part of three decades making sure that when 80,000 people descend on an event, the wheels don’t fall off. He’s done it at the Sydney Olympics at Wimbledon, at Formula One races on three continents. Atec Clipsal 500, when 200 staff, 15 supervisors, and around a $300,000 budget, had to [00:03:00] deliver a spotless result across four days.

And he’s done it right here in Adelaide, quietly. At events you’ve almost certainly attended. He now runs First Facilities Group, bringing that same discipline to commercial and residential properties across Adelaide. Wayne, welcome to the Adelaide Show.

Wayne Taylor: Thank you very much.

Steve Davis: Uh, when we first met, and you just happened to mention in passing some of this background, I knew I had to get you on the Adelaide Show.

Um, many people listening into this, you know, they might’ve been involved in Gather round, either there physically or watching on the tv. They might’ve just come back from a game they probably haven’t thought once about facilities. What do someone like you see when you walk into an event? That the rest of us probably don’t even pay attention to.

Wayne Taylor: Well, the sad thing is I probably drive everyone insane. And for that reason, when I do go to events, I’m always looking in the toilets, I’m checking the bins and I’m checking the [00:04:00] grounds, and I’m, I’m giving some comment and feedback as to what it is like and whether they’ve done a great job and they’re doing a great job.

Steve Davis: So it, it would become your second nature, wouldn’t it?

Wayne Taylor: It’s the business. So everywhere I go and it’s, regardless of whether it’s an event even into a business, I’ll go into a, a building somewhere and I will critique what I see as soon as I walk in. And particularly if I go in early in the morning and it should be right and it’s not, sometimes I’ll even make comment to the client in a subtle way.

Wow. You know, I didn’t think that the mirrors and the lift were very clean today, or, or words along those lines. So you can’t get it out of your system. It’s always there. But

Steve Davis: why is that important to you?

Wayne Taylor: I’ve grown up with it. My parents were cleaners when we first moved down from Broken Hill. My father’s a horse trainer.

Mom was a cleaner, and they used to go and clean Memorial Drive. So we would go to the events there, which was the, uh, rollerskating Darby that they used to have and the tennis and [00:05:00] so forth. And that’s where I started. So I would help them Claridge Holden on Only Road, which is now a Mercedes dealer, was where they used to clean.

So I would go and help, but predominantly all I would do would go through the drawers and get the staplers out, all the pens and, and put things in my pocket. So I was a bit of a nuisance, more so than a cleaner.

Steve Davis: But even just with my marketing hat on, you looking at the mirrors and the lift, not quite clean on that first morning you’ve gone somewhere.

There is just, I guess what you’re saying, I’m gonna put words into your mouth.

Wayne Taylor: Mm.

Steve Davis: Is it’s that first impression moment for other people coming in. You, you’re coming to visit this business and you, oh, and there’s just, you might not even think of it, but underlying thing, there’s just a, oh, hang on. If that’s bad.

What else? It’s

Wayne Taylor: a reflection on the business. Yeah. You, if you can’t get your housekeeping correct. How can you then operate your business? Yes. So,

Steve Davis: alright, we’re gonna start wandering through some of the big name events and places and, and thank you for volunteering for this. So,

Wayne Taylor: hang on, I’ve gotta go [00:06:00]

Steve Davis: now.

You were venue manager at the Sydney Entertainment Center during the 2000 Olympics. You’d been based in Sydney for about 18 months, building up to it. When the games actually started, what was the single moment when you thought, right, this could go very wrong, very fast if we don’t X. What sort of thing are you thinking about on that front?

Wayne Taylor: There are two aspects to it. The first time you rock up in Sydney and you have to go through credentialing, so you have to provide all the information and then they do the security checks. But once you actually get through that phase, the next one is accessing the venues because it’s not like walking up and Oh, here’s my pass and go in.

Your vehicle has to be checked for bombs. They will check your vehicle for anything. They check under the seats, they check everything. We had passes for all venues, but you are only allowed to have a pass for that one venue. So what would happen is you had to hide all the other passes ’cause they think that you’re a conspirator.

So it was a little bit subversion on [00:07:00] one, one hand to try and actually get in and then do your job.

Steve Davis: See, I’ve got two teenage daughters. Mm-hmm. My car is very rarely spotless. But you’d want a spotless car. We need to keep that frictionless.

Wayne Taylor: Correct? Absolutely. And in fact, you’d be very scared that if you rocked up and they found certain things in your car that you didn’t really want ’em to find.

So the problem was with the pool of vehicles that we had, you didn’t always get the same vehicle, so you had to rely on everyone to be doing. The right thing.

Steve Davis: What are the, we’re gonna start with, there’s so many aspects of what you do, but what are the logistics of waste, for example, at an Olympic venue and certainly the things that we might not even think about.

Wayne Taylor: The good thing is I’d had a lot of years experience doing very large events in England and, and here, but when we got to Sydney in 2000, we had around 1100 staff working at that event. We were all housed at Eastern Creek, and in fact, all our staff stayed in the pit building. So we had 16 people per pit [00:08:00] going through the pit building.

That being said, the waste side of it as such, we had to engage a number of different businesses and companies to, and to, to do that. And we had a, we had a responsibility to do a lot of recycling, which we did too. So our recycling component was a minimum of 80%. Recycling was the. Absolute minimum.

Everything else had to be,

Steve Davis: so does that mean, ’cause you know how most of, and I’m not sure in the two thousands, if they actually had the bins we have now with a yellow, a red and a green, did they have them or?

Wayne Taylor: We did. And that was the beginning of that sort of situation that that was the forerunner for all this sort of thing then.

Steve Davis: Yeah. But if you’re aiming for the 80% minimum recycling, what happens to the, with the turkeys who chuck the wrong thing in the wrong hole?

Wayne Taylor: A lot of it was sorted. Okay. So the predominant obvious recycling was sent to the recycling centers, the. The, uh, material that probably was a little questionable was actually sent to sorting places and they would then sort it [00:09:00] and then send to landfill.

Okay. There was very little landfill. Um, actually, but one important point too is that for the waste that we had, that was what we call compostable, all the liners that we used in the bins because every bin had a liner, be it a two 40 liter bin or otherwise, and they’re all compostable. So in other words, when that rubbish did go somewhere and it perhaps it was gonna landfill, that bag would also break down.

We didn’t use plastics.

Steve Davis: Okay. Uh, now, ’cause you’ve, you’ve seen that across lots of more monocultural events, but the Olympics, there’s 200 different nations competing. Many of them had spectators. Does that bring with it any unexpected things from that merging un in pressure cooker situations of different.

Cultural backgrounds.

Wayne Taylor: Well, we were lucky in one respect that we didn’t do the accommodation. We did all the venues as far as, because it was not impossible to cover [00:10:00] everything under those circumstances. So there were companies doing the accommodation. I didn’t envy them because, similar to what you’ve just said, then they were the sort of issues they experienced.

Okay. But we were dealing with many cultures and different languages, and in fact, all our staff were multicultural. We had a lot of people from around the world, a lot of backpackers and so forth. So we had to ensure that wherever we were working, then we had to have somebody could actually speak that language because a lot of the staff we had.

They only had their own native language. And so we had to be able to communicate with ’em as to the exact requirements. ’cause we had to meet really tough, strict criteria for this sort of cleaning and, and what we had to do as far as recycling. And we had to put everyone through a process and they had to comply through the strict processes that we had.

Steve Davis: Now at the risk of going into some sorted territory and new upping and leaving, I can’t ignore this. There’s a offbeat podcast I listen to sometimes called those two guys and they were talking recently at the time of recording of the Winter Olympics that had just happened [00:11:00] in Italy, I think it was.

Mm-hmm. I didn’t know this, but all the athletes, and I guess their team that go with them get a set of Olympic colored. Condoms, uh, and they become collectibles and they’re fought over. They had to reissue them midway through ’cause they were all used up. I don’t want you to talk about how they might be used, but what I want to talk about is you’ve got these highly disciplined people who have been under pressure for ages, and suddenly, once their event’s finished, they let their hair down.

We are pretty disciplined at home with what we do, and don’t flash down places. Do, do, do people. Are people irresponsible at times in some of those scenarios? Do you get things flashed or left around that you think, come on, sunshine, you could have done better than this?

Wayne Taylor: The athletes and the administration people are all given strict criteria and requirements as to what they do.

Okay? They don’t always do it, but the percentages are [00:12:00] similar to the public and that most of the people will perform and carry on. But on the other hand. Most of ’em don’t. But, uh, I didn’t see any of those.

Steve Davis: Oh, okay.

Wayne Taylor: Only because they were predominantly in the, in the accommodation, accommodation area. Yeah.

So lucky I missed out. I did hear stories about that, but

Steve Davis: yeah. Okay, so, uh, and by the way, if you want, uh, we’ve got a full set of the colored No, we haven’t. Um, I wanna turn to Wimbledon. Let’s go a bit highbrow now, because it’s, if I’m right, 2004, 2005 mm. It’s one of those events where the image is carefully managed, uh, you know, the strawberries and cream, the pristine white, the whole thing.

Is there a different sort of pressure on you when you are responsible behind the scenes for an event that is essentially brand obsessed? A

Wayne Taylor: hundred percent. A hundred percent In as much as it’s almost surreal [00:13:00] working at Wimbledon because you hear so much about it and not many people get to go. So having the privilege of being able to go there and working, you get behind the scenes so you see things that the other people don’t see.

And the fact is, again, we then used, um, a lot of, uh, backpackers. In fact, I had a crew of 20 Romanians and Brazilians, neither language I speak. Yep. So it was most difficult. But, um, other than that, um, the thing that struck me the most purple, everything’s purple and green at Wimbledon. When you look at Wimbledon, you’ll see signs in the buildings.

They’re all painted purple and green. They’re the predominant colors. In fact, I’ve, I’ve actually got a towel from one of the tennis players that got left behind and managed to, uh, bring that back with me as well.

Steve Davis: Do you find that people from the organization. Stick their nose in bins and things and, and a much more, uh, micromanaging in style because of [00:14:00] that intense brand protection they have.

Or am I getting that a bit wrong?

Wayne Taylor: Hopefully no. English people are listening to this. Yes, but the ponce nature of Wimbledon, so it is very, they are very, very fussy about how things had to be done. Um, the CEO of the company I was working for in doing Wimbledon, I was with him and we would walk the premises and observe and look for issues and talk to the clients and so forth.

If there was a single match or a single cigarette button anywhere, he would pick that up. And so I soon learned that everything has to be absolutely pristine both inside and outside because you are being observed and measured on exactly that.

Steve Davis: Wow. So it’s not just the tennis players under

Wayne Taylor: there. Oh, no, no, no.

And in fact, the, the whole aspect of Wimbledon, they are very pedantic. You cannot have anything. We had people based everywhere to ensure that if something got dropped, [00:15:00] it was pretty well picked up as soon as it was dropped. And that’s the nature of Wimbledon.

Steve Davis: Have you got a quick reflection on the nature of, uh, the crowds at Wimbledon versus, say at an Australian equivalent event?

Yeah. Are we both the same? Are we different? No,

Wayne Taylor: to be honest, they were very polite. Okay. You get the odd one. You get the odd one, and of course, by the end of the afternoon, the champagne and the gin and whatever else they’re drinking. Yeah. Um, they become a little, a little disjointed. But overall, uh, they respected the fact that it was Wimbledon and you had royals, you had international people there.

So this is a reflection on their com, uh, on their country. So they, most people generally did the right thing there. The English

Steve Davis: and we are a bit more relaxed.

Wayne Taylor: Oh, we’re far more relaxed. Yeah. I don’t think we could do a Wimbledon here in Australia by the, you know, by that situation

Steve Davis: now you’ve managed cleaning waste at Formula One events on three continents, including here.

And, and the Clipsal 500 as well. Uh, Albert Park four times, [00:16:00] if I’m right, yes. Silverstone,

Theme: yes.

Steve Davis: Adelaide in the 93 95 era, um, back when the Grand Prix was actually here.

Theme: Mm-hmm.

Steve Davis: Can you walk us through what Formula One does to a precinct? Like what’s the footprint, an F1 event? Creates that Maybe fans don’t see what, what is there?

Wayne Taylor: I think where you’re going with this is that people go to this event Yes. And they go to look at the cars and everything is fantastic, but what they don’t understand is that when they walk in the next day, after there’s been 20, 30, 50,000 people there, that the tallest are clean. There’s no rubbish on the ground, and the bins are empty and everything is clean.

They have no idea. We had a massive team of people that would come in overnight and uh, and do all that work. I’ve gotta tell you a little story. Yep. Um, what we’re here for, um, we had a, uh, one particular driver, and I won’t mention his name, MANSEL. Um, he. No one was allowed to park at [00:17:00] the back of the pits.

Okay. But he would drive his car in or be driven in so that he didn’t have to walk through the crowds and so forth. And of course we were trying to move waste down from upstairs to corporates and so forth. And, uh, he had his car parked right next to our compactor and of course trying to lift the bin with the lifter.

Yes. To go into the compactor. The bin actually came off the compactor and went onto his car. So his car is now covered in waste and he wasn’t happy in the least.

Steve Davis: Really.

Wayne Taylor: And I’m observing his actions from above. I’m up on the first level looking down. I’m thinking, goodness me, this is gonna be a bit of a problem.

And then I started to laugh because he was so infuriated, but you’re not allowed to park there. You were warned. No one was allowed to park. So he’s taken on his own. Anyway, that was a little aside to that, but, uh,

Steve Davis: was there an outcome? Did he just have to wear that?

Wayne Taylor: He moved his car. He moved his car. We won in the end.

Yeah.

Steve Davis: So the list that I get from that is read the signage at events.

Wayne Taylor: There are very strict rules for Formula One, uh, and, and, and all [00:18:00] major events as you’d probably appreciate the, the Olympics and so forth and so on. Yeah. Um, we have to be compliant. Um, we have to be seen, but not heard, but be compliant.

So when something happens, it has to be fixed. But we have to work around the fact that we don’t wanna upset anyone. We don’t want them to see any rubbish. So it becomes a real art to be able to do those sort of functions.

Steve Davis: Am I right that for the Clipsal, uh, which I think was 2003, 2005, you apparently returned the best percentage margin of all for your company and the way you managed.

You, you, you met everything the client wanted.

Wayne Taylor: Correct.

Steve Davis: But you did it in such a, an efficient way that. They weren’t bled, they actually made a good profit. What was that secret sauce?

Wayne Taylor: I don’t wanna let the cat out the bag as to how much we made, but inherently, when you do, you cleaned up an event We did.

Good pun.

Steve Davis: Thank you.

Wayne Taylor: The, the situation is that every time we do an event, we are never happy. We always try to improve each time. So every year we would [00:19:00] work out what our mistakes were and then we would go and actually improve it. So we would have constant meetings. We would meet every day, every night, and, and after the event.

So we would identify the areas we weren’t good in, and then we would fix it and rectify it even on the fly.

Steve Davis: So while the rest of us are listening to the sports commentators that night, reflecting on that event and this challenge and the timing, there are people like you. Who are talking about the gritty, the nitty gritty, and getting that better tomorrow, that maybe these bins were left o over full too long.

What do we do? Where was the bottleneck? That sort of thing.

Wayne Taylor: Nothing was insignificant. We actually slept on site and we didn’t sleep very much. We had accommodation, showers, and everything else on site. Our day would finish around about 11 o’clock at night and then I’d be up again around four in the morning and then back in, we’d have meetings with the Motorsport people, um, around five or 6:00 AM in the morning to address any issues from the day before.

[00:20:00] But we would have an army of people there at night. We would have a massive army of people going through the place to the point where they would walk in a line and an IMU pick right through the entire facility. So there’s a lot of effort and organization done to do that. And of course, as you’d appreciate.

You can’t see very well at night because the lighting wasn’t great. Yeah. So we had headlamps and torches and any means we could to actually be able to see, to make sure we got it looking good.

Steve Davis: I’m envisioning that scene from the ET where they’re looking for ET at night, doing a big search through the woods.

That’s the thing.

Wayne Taylor: It would’ve been much like that. We didn’t have the luxury of those magnificent torches that they have now. The LEDs. Yeah,

Steve Davis: of course. So you’d have been going through batteries left, right? Well,

Wayne Taylor: we went through lots of batteries and we recycled them afterwards.

Steve Davis: Of course you did. Uh, now those people doing that, we’re coming to them.

At the end of our chat, but I wanna move somewhere else to London. Uh, 2004, I believe you were sent over there as manager of special projects after the National Operations Manager resigned.

Theme: Mm-hmm.

Steve Davis: You had to step into the gap [00:21:00] at Tottenham Hotspur.

Theme: Mm-hmm.

Steve Davis: Uh, Fulham Wembley Arena, Highbury Sand down the Oval.

These are names many people would know. You also consulted on the Millennium Dome Project. Gee, that’s, that’s a break from the par.

Wayne Taylor: Yes. O2. Right.

Steve Davis: And it was also a bit of a problem child at the time. In in public. In the public. Let’s just start with the Millennium Dome because that featured in James Bond movie, all sorts.

What happened?

Wayne Taylor: You’d hate me watching these movies. I drive Helen Insane. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. I saw that. So I do drive insane with a lot of that, but it’s given me the, the, um, the person who actually owned the business would say to me, we don’t do the most glorious job, but we do it in some of the world’s most glorious locations.

And that’s always stuck with me. Yeah. That, um, we didn’t have to pay to go anywhere. We were just able to get to these places and, and get access to places that a lot of other people couldn’t do.

Steve Davis: So when I say Millennium [00:22:00] Dome to you

Wayne Taylor: mm-hmm.

Steve Davis: Which was that big edifice in in London to Mark. Yes. The, the turning of the millennium.

What comes, what triggered, what’s triggered in your memory?

Wayne Taylor: The huge size of it. And that there was no support mechanisms inside. Yeah, it was just a massive building. Um, so it was, it was awe inspiring. So we had to meet there with all our equipment. We had a company called Karcher who provided us with all the, the equipment.

So we would meet the rep representatives, we’d have to train people and so forth. But yeah, just you would walk in and be awe inspired by the sheer size internally on that place.

Steve Davis: And if I’m right, James Bond falls onto the roof or something is sliding down the side of the roof. Could that happen for real?

Wayne Taylor: I wouldn’t want to try it because I saw that it’s a long way to fall. Um, that

is,

Wayne Taylor: he’s a good man. Always has been.

Steve Davis: Um, I am a bit of a sucker for English football. I’ve gotta say. Oh, I, I do love it. Although, Southampton’s my team, so I, I dunno what it is to win, uh, all that. [00:23:00] Well, but you were working at Highbury, which was arsenal’s old ground just before it was abandoned and they moved to Emirates.

Was there a sense of end of an era? There was, was there building nostalgia at the time, or anger, or what was the mood like?

Wayne Taylor: Look, I think coming from Australia, I didn’t follow soccer as it was, or English football at all. So I went there completely naive as to what they do and so forth. And, and you’re talking about Arsenal and, uh, we went there and, and I must say they’re small stadiums because it’s much like a rugby stadium as such.

Yeah. But the amount of seats that are packed in, but the noise that those people generate and the singing, I. It just blew me away. When I look at Tottenham for instance, and they had the old stadium, ’cause they’ve got the new one now. The first day I was there with the operations manager and he said, uh, when you’re going around through these doors, he said, the code is [00:24:00] Cronenberg.

And I’m thinking, I’m looking at a numeric keypad. And I said, how do I type Kronenberg into that thing? He said, it’s like the beer. And I had this dumb look on my face. I’ve never heard of Kronenberg. It was 1664 as per the beer. Anyway, that was, we, we do digress a little bit, but I think too, going back to the football, um, the thing that I would see behind the scenes Yeah.

Is they used to have designated areas for the players to park. And during the game, I would have to go down there for whatever reason to check. And the amount of money that was parked in that car park, the cars that these players had. So the sheer wealth of not just the players but the clubs themselves, um, fascinating.

And yet all the members, all the, the supporters pay their money and pay their memberships to support those clubs over there.

Steve Davis: It’s weird, isn’t it? And, and I would’ve thought many of the players arrived by a bus, but I guess that’s the away team, the visiting team.

Wayne Taylor: They drive their roll, their Jags, [00:25:00] their Mercedes, their whatever, they, their maseratis, everything.

There’s no cheap cars in the player’s car park.

Steve Davis: Wow.

Wayne Taylor: I do have photos somewhere of that, but, um, yeah, I couldn’t believe it.

Steve Davis: So there’re a smaller stadium. ’cause it it did, it was grassroots. It all that began grassroots before it became super duper. Um, and you’re saying. They squeeze in perhaps more concentration of humans than we might at our events.

Does that put pressure on facilities?

Wayne Taylor: You can only do certain things. You can only go in certain places. There were pretty strict rules. The supporters for one team could only sit in a certain area.

Steve Davis: Yeah,

Wayne Taylor: but the single thing that got me was that when the game was on, or actually before the game started, the bars are packed.

And so they serve their beers in in pint glasses, which are plastic disposable cups. And when the game starts, they literally either try and [00:26:00] skull and then run out and all the beer is left and we have to throw it all away. Oh. It happens at the beginning of the game. And then at halftime. At halftime, they all race back into the bars.

They drink as much as they possibly can. They don’t get to finish it ’cause they’ll all buy two or three beers and then try and scale it. But as soon as. The players come back out the ground, the game starts, they just leave all their beers and they go back out. You cannot drink alcohol watching a game of football in England.

Really? And, and I couldn’t believe it. So what they used to do is, in the corporates, I shouldn’t say this, but they would serve alcoholic beverages in te cups or coffee cups to hide the fact that they’re actually drinking alcohol. But you’re not allowed to drink alcohol and watch football.

Steve Davis: Isn’t that an interesting contrast?

Well, you didn’t know that, did you? I didn’t, no. Um, because when you go to watch cricket, where you go to watch footy here in Australia, it’s, it’s a given, it’s a right RITE to sit there with, I mean, I’m not even a beer drinker typically. [00:27:00] But I always have one at the cricket or just one. Just

Wayne Taylor: medicinal.

Steve Davis: Yeah, medicinal.

Just to be part of. Although I did pick up, ’cause I do, uh, a lot of theater reviewing. I did learn over the years, even though I’m a wine person, a glass of beer or a pint, whatever is very satiating fills you up and it makes you quite content for that bit of time. Uh, whereas wine, you’re sort of in and out, more needs, et cetera.

Wayne Taylor: I’m more of a beer and bourbon man. Okay. I’m not a wine person. There

Steve Davis: you

Wayne Taylor: go. But anyway,

Steve Davis: um, so let’s just take a one bit of, we’ll stay in England because you went in the same posting to Farborough Air Show, uh, then leads and the Redding festivals. Hmm. They’re completely different crowds. Completely different relationships to well hygiene.

Mm-hmm. How do you ju adjust your operation from an air show audience to a music festival audience? What are the contrast?

Wayne Taylor: The simple answer to that [00:28:00] is you push the envelope, you try to work as closely as you can to where the rules end. So in other words, you push it. If you can’t go here when no one’s looking, you would go there and do certain things because ultimately you’re measured on the result and you then have to try.

And what’s a compromise?

Steve Davis: What’s an example? What’s an example?

Wayne Taylor: Oh heck um, access I think, was probably one of them. And particularly with Wimbledon, you weren’t allowed to go in if you were wearing certain things or you were wearing certain things. So, but the players and the corporates still required those areas to be clean.

In fact, in some cases we would station people in that toilet and as soon as somebody came out, you would hand them a towel, they would wipe you tape the towel, and you’d go straight in and then service that that cubicle as the case may be. Because the requirement and the respect that they have is such that it’s gotta be done for each person.

That went in, more or less. It was a clean cubicle. Or a clean toilet. [00:29:00]

Steve Davis: Now is this just me? But I’d be self-conscious knowing that a human was about to go into a cubicle where perhaps it wasn’t just a number one, a little bit of embarrassment.

Wayne Taylor: That’s the job.

Steve Davis: That’s

Wayne Taylor: the, and if you can’t do it, move on.

There’s nothing I’ve ever asked any of my staff to do that I haven’t done myself.

Steve Davis: Oh yes.

Wayne Taylor: Now on that, I actually did the air show at Avalon one year. And in fact, the portable toilets that are there, um, the splash down toilets, very good toilets and so forth. But what happened is I got told by one of my employees that they weren’t gonna clean the toilet ’cause it was too bad.

And of course you walked in and the smell was bad. But in accessing that particular toilet, the person who had actually been in there looked like they’d fired a cannon with that substance in it. Wow. And it was extremely bad. I did clean that myself. Yeah. And I said. That’s the last time that I will do that.

You, I’ve done it. Now. You will do it. Um, it’s not for everyone. Uh, and I can tell more the [00:30:00] grimace on your face

Steve Davis: now. Now, to be fair, I wasn’t, I think I could muster up to do that.

Wayne Taylor: Mm-hmm.

Steve Davis: It was more the person who had left that I’d be a bit self-conscious knowing that someone was about to go where I had been.

I would just, am I just too, should I have just taken that as like a king and said, well, well done. Look after what I’ve just left behind.

Wayne Taylor: There are people like that. And you will fight. Look, I, I can, I don’t want to get too deep into this, but people actually go into a cubicle but don’t actually use the toilet.

Um, and, and you don’t see a lot of that, but they’re the sort of issues that we have to contend with. So, and I don’t need to elaborate anymore on that.

Steve Davis: Well, I think you should. No, you don’t have to. Um. What about the worst site that you’ve seen left? Are we going to go music festival territory?

Wayne Taylor: Oh.

Steve Davis: Or are they not?

Like we think

Wayne Taylor: we never heard a big day out.

Steve Davis: Yes.

Wayne Taylor: Big day out in Sydney. Yes. I’ve done them in Sydney and Melbourne.

Steve Davis: Okay.

Wayne Taylor: So the thing is there’s a lot of young people that go to them, and the [00:31:00] problem is that there are never enough toilets. And this is Sydney Showgrounds before it became what it is now.

But in the old showgrounds and they used to do big day out, the females would have their toilets and they would have their respective cubicles. But the problem is there were never enough. So they’d be lined up. They gave up, they would walk around to the men’s cubicle and even the men were even lining up.

That’s how busy things were. And they would then go into the men’s squat up the urinal. Whilst the men are standing there, do their business and then walk out and think nothing of it. But they weren’t as bad as the ones I was standing talking to one of my other managers and not 10 feet away. This particular woman, there was a tree.

She just lifted a skirt and squatted in front of us while we’re trying to have a, a conversation. So, um,

Steve Davis: gee, and of course, I mean, other people might have noticed it, but you have a particular lens because that’s your responsibility.

Wayne Taylor: Well, I don’t think she’d been the only one that did it. Yes. [00:32:00] You’ll notice that, that dogs and cats tend to gravitate and they’ll sniff and they go, oh, somebody’s been here so I can go.

I think that people thought that’s a good tree. That’s a good, I’m gonna use that again.

Steve Davis: That’s good. It does Take me back to a Tada Swift concert I that last year at the MCG with my girls and I became a swifty. I’m a swifty. Mm-hmm. Um, female toilet to male toilet ratios are terrible at the best of times.

Wayne Taylor: Yes.

Steve Davis: And I don’t know why we still haven’t got that right. However. A TA Swift concert is 96% female. And so, although there weren’t women making use of urinals, they certainly were just going in to use the cubicles within the men’s, and you just had to mm-hmm. Adapt it. Did these things come up in conversation?

Uh, does, does anybody running events thinking about this at all? Or is it too hard? Basket,

Wayne Taylor: most of the time, if we’re doing an event, we’ll do a review for the client.

Steve Davis: Yep.

Wayne Taylor: And we will do a complete review or a [00:33:00] report on how things went, on the waste, on the cleaning, generally on issues that we experience.

Um. I’ve actually done the gay Mardi Gras once in Sydney. Um, I wouldn’t do it again, um, at the Horton Pavilion. Yep. Whether you’re familiar with it,

Steve Davis: yes.

Wayne Taylor: But at the back of the Horton Pavilion downstairs, the toilets are in there. Now, in those toilets they have dual, so you have a cubicle with two toilets in it.

Anyway, that I didn’t

Steve Davis: know.

Wayne Taylor: Yeah. So, uh, that’s all. I think they’ve got rid of that now. The, yeah. The old pavilion there. But, uh, the particular gay Mardi Gras that I did, um, and Helen’s probably well aware of this too, that I, I actually went to my colleague at the time and said, mate, I’ve had enough of this.

And that’s the first time I’ve ever walked out of an event. Um, never to do another one again, but. Probably the worst case, but anyway.

Steve Davis: Yes. Well, I’m not sure how this follows in my way of [00:34:00] segue, but there was an event called Big Boys Toys, uh, that you went to New Zealand to look after. It’s a different genre here.

Wayne Taylor: Mm-hmm.

Steve Davis: What was Big Boys toys? I’m thinking it’s big trucks and big things. What was big boys toys?

Wayne Taylor: No, they sell ’em in the shops. You know, those toys?

Steve Davis: Oh, really?

Wayne Taylor: No, it wasn’t that. It is big boys toys and it’s for the sort of toys that boys or men with a lot of money would buy the big fancy cars. The, the, the fancy motorbikes, the, the jet skiers, the boats.

It was all those sort of things that normal people can’t afford. Um, and the thing is, the staff that I had there at the time were 12. Mothers. Um, and they were very good. They were very good cleaners. Yeah. But as you could imagine when, and I don’t want to categorize, but some of them didn’t get along. So the biggest task I had was trying to get them into groups where they actually cooperated together and worked together.

Wow. Correctly. But don’t touch anything. [00:35:00] Don’t sit in the cars. Uh, because everything was extremely expensive, uh, over there. So, uh, big boys toys. The next time it comes out you want to go to one. Very good.

Steve Davis: What were the crowd like? How well were well behaved or, I mean, ’cause I imagine there’s a certain sense of entitlement that patrons of a show like that have where they expect, I mean, you’ve got Wimbledon where there’s, uh, that sort of nicety level.

Yes. But here you’ve got my, I imagine a brash, I earned my respect. So bow down to me. Am I wrong?

Wayne Taylor: 20% of the people who were there? Yeah. Could buy. The other 80% are tire kickers and, and whatever else. So, but the interesting fact too with that is that was in November in 2003 in New Zealand, in Auckland. And they said, oh look, we really need you to get over and do that and no worries.

All right, so jumped on the plane, get over you, you took, talked to so and so, get some staff. And so I had to organize it all myself. The thing was that, um, [00:36:00] this is November, so I pack a light bag. I thought I’m only going for a few weeks. This won’t take long. It was freezing. So I, it rained pretty much every day.

November, in November in New Zealand. ’cause Auckland is on the similar latitude to Hobart, to Tasmania. So. It’s not what I expected. I’m thinking, oh, Adelaide in November is only gonna get warmer, but it didn’t, so I, I’ve digressed a little bit from there, but big boys toys, it’s for the big boys. The big boys with big wallets

Steve Davis: Now, another big toy that many boys like are trains.

Okay. Uh, I think there’s something about men and trains. Uh, I dunno if it still holds, but it certainly did for a lot of our history. Uh, which brings me to a little side, a siding of your career, which was time you spent with Australian National. So we’re looking after trains here and

Wayne Taylor: Pacific National and SAR.

Oh, what was that? So SAR.

Steve Davis: Yes.

Wayne Taylor: Then it became Australian National and then I went on to Pacific National.

Steve Davis: Well, we used to know someone, uh, Barry Ranger used to [00:37:00] work at SAR many, many years ago, and I was a little boy. I was fascinated that he was there keeping the trains running. Just fascinating. But you worked there in particular with the focus on, uh, the freight of dangerous goods and how, how, what goes into the thinking, because I imagine particularly from a freight perspective, um, when you stop at the traffic lights and you’re in the country and a huge freight trains going past, we don’t pay too much attention.

You know, uh, you can see that’s a lot of cars, but most of ’em are just generic looking carriages. But things would have to be transported that are unstable or dangerous or high value. Can you just give us a glimpse inside this world,

Wayne Taylor: glad you’ve raised this. Okay. Let me just add and preface this by saying that.

Trains are run with locomotives and they run on diesel, and the fuel tax on [00:38:00] diesel applies to trains even though they don’t go on roads. And it was always a bugbear of the railways that they had to bear the cost and supplement the costs for the road industry. Yeah, so that being said, um. Yes. Most people trains, they’re sitting in a level crossing the train goes through.

That’s a nuisance. You’re making my day so hard for me. But the amount of work that goes into doing those. So I was lucky in the time there was in the railways, I started as what was called a number nicker, and then a guard working on the rail network on the red hens around Adelaide collecting tickets.

And really, there’s a lot of stories yeah. There that I probably can’t explain. Young girls going to school were very provocative back in those days.

Theme: Yes.

Wayne Taylor: And they would hold their tickets. Oh, anyway. But moreover, as I got into the railways, I got into an area called Tims, the uh, transportation Information Management System.

And it was a computerized system because trains run everywhere in Australia, but it was segmented. Because the Australian national role didn’t go to New South Wales, didn’t go to Victoria, didn’t go to [00:39:00] Queensland, and didn’t go to wa. So the federal government created this to create a national royal network.

But because of the obstinate, um, governments in those other states, they wouldn’t allow that to happen and be one enterprise as a Tim’s person. I then used to, um, I was part of a team. We developed a system of identifying trains and wagons. And if anyone sees a train go by now. Yeah, you will see every wagon has a four alpha character, a five numeric, uh, number and a single alpha.

And that actually identifies the type of vehicle that it is, what it carries, what speed it can do. And the numbers are a special sequence, which create what they call as the last letter after that. A check letter. A check dig. Yeah. So we created a computer system. So I work between operations. Um, and the, uh, and the computer, uh, programmers.

And we built this, um, system, which then became national, and you’ll see [00:40:00] now done here in sa by, uh, by a, uh, a chap by a chap who was named Williams. And, um, very smart man. And that’s now gone across. And I was lucky. I actually also did, I’m digressing, I shouldn’t do this, but there was a thing called opera in the Outback.

Yes. It was many, many years ago. And you, you may remember that. And in fact, Bob, uh, the chap who’s the CEO for the, um, uh, heritage down at, uh, port Adelaide at Port Dog, Bob Samson, um, dropping names, him and I were engaged to film the opera in the Outback and do a documentary. So him and I, we obtained a proper, um, news video camera that the.

At the time. And uh, we actually followed the train up and we were driving all the way up to the Outback to film this. We followed the train and I said to Bob, let’s go down. When we got to Port Perry, let’s go down and we’ll film the train coming outta Port Perry on this track. Bob wasn’t happy [00:41:00] about it.

And ultimately as we got down there, we realized that because of the rain, although the ground was hard, it was like ice and our full drive, land Rover couldn’t move. So the train’s coming, and of course the driver’s seen us and we’ve flagged him down. Can we help? Yes you can. So we had to get a chain off of the train, off the engine and the train then attached to our Land Rover and pulled us out of that mess.

Now, I dunno if anyone ever got to hear about it, but it was Cornish and we should have filmed it. But yeah. Went all the way up and we filmed the opera in the Outback. And uh, I did a documentary and, uh, I actually did the narration on the, on the documentary.

Steve Davis: So was that before or after your career at events and looking after big events?

Wayne Taylor: That was before. This is going back in the, uh, in the eighties.

Steve Davis: Oh, so you can’t have any input into what the crowd was like in their use of toilets and facilities? The highbrow opera crowd.

Wayne Taylor: Oh, I didn’t do toilet cleaning back in those days. No. Okay. That was later.

Steve Davis: But hazarded [00:42:00] materials on our trains. What goes, what thinking goes into that?

Wayne Taylor: Uh, compliance is, is extremely important. So the identification of that, um, we were talking about the identification of rail wagons and numerics and that a train load was created, and particularly with dangerous goods, they were clearly identified. So this was all put on a computer system. So as that train moved along, the information as to dangerous goods and actually where.

Those wagons that contained it were located on that particular train. And of course, if there’s a derailment, you need to know that, you need to know whether they’re at the front or at the back. And depending on how dangerous that is, because some of them could be radioactive, um, or even flammable or whatever the case may be.

The most dangerous thing though was probably hay.

Steve Davis: Hay.

Wayne Taylor: Because hay can catch fire. Self ignite fire.

Steve Davis: Yes.

Wayne Taylor: And if it gets wet and then you, you then come out of the wetness and that water sits in there and it actually then combust [00:43:00] and that creates fires.

Steve Davis: So does that mean you would try to put the hay carriages at the back of the train?

Wayne Taylor: It was a balancing act, yes. But yes, you, you would have to balance that. We would generally not put hay bales on a train with dangerous goods. Yeah, I was

Steve Davis: gonna

Wayne Taylor: say. Or anything else. So fireworks criteria next to

Steve Davis: the hay?

Wayne Taylor: No, no. You, you wouldn’t put the box of matches next to the petrol tank and so forth.

Steve Davis: But the, something that’s potentially radioactive. Does that go at the end to give the drivers a bit of a chance to escape? Or I guess right now

Wayne Taylor: it’s insulated anyway.

Steve Davis: Oh, is it? Okay.

Wayne Taylor: And, and the thing is, um, depending on the circumstances, it could go at the back or the front, but as you just need to know where it is or be aware of where it is located on the train.

Steve Davis: And is there anyone carrying anxiety when a heavy laden train is on its journey? Just in the back of their mind going, hope that’s okay. Hope that’s okay. Or once it’s left, it’s left.

Wayne Taylor: Yeah. Look, I, I, I think the train driver and the guard as they used to have in those days and then they became obsolete and was the driver and the fireman, um, yeah, they had to be fully [00:44:00] aware of those circumstances as to where it was.

So, um, yeah, carrying dangerous goods. ’cause those trains are quite large. You know, those trains could be well over a kilometer long and, and weigh many thousands of tons, so, yeah. Yeah.

Steve Davis: And. They kept some traffic off our roads. Some heavy transport was kept off our roads because of them.

Wayne Taylor: I’m a firm believer in,

Steve Davis: yeah,

Wayne Taylor: in rail transport.

Steve Davis: Same here. I feel we’ve taken a backward step on many ways. We’ve lost ca sovereign capability in a number of industries where times like now remind us of that lack and that that shift to the cheaper, supposedly road transport and the, it’s more flexibility to get into lots of places that then you put land aside.

I mean, I can see those arguments, but just a little bit of patience and planning. So yes, you can’t just say, I’m gonna send this and we’re gonna leave the truck right now, but you just wait till the next morning or that night. A little bit of that would’ve been better for the country as a whole.

Wayne Taylor: I, I think too with that, the, the fact that we can [00:45:00] carry so much more freight for such a smaller amount of fuel used Yes.

Is so important, as I said. Yeah. Um, they still pay the tax on that, on that fuel as well. But back in the day, in the rise, we developed a system here called Road Rails. And people wouldn’t remember this, but we used to run trains up to Port Perry, um, and they were actual trailers, semi trailers, and we would put rail wheels under the back and we would run a train of 10 or 20 of those at high speed, at a hundred kilometers an hour.

And when they’d get to their destination, they would uncouple and go straight on the truck and then get delivered. And that was a means to try and, um, make it more viable to, to use rail transport. But I suppose what we’re talking about rail, and it just comes to mind, I, I, I drive a lot and I see a lot of people try to cut through level crossings and the like.

Um, I was on the transpacific or the, the trans Australian. Uh, railway, uh, we were heading to Perth. I was gonna kalgoorlie to train people over there in Kalgoorlie, [00:46:00] and we got to a little place called Warner Town, which is up near Port Perry. Um, and up on the engine, um, we were watching at this particular level, crossing this particular car, had left the service station.

Just on the side. And as he’s coming across, I’ve seen him and I, I’m thinking, I just don’t think he’s gonna stop. And I’ve mentioned it to the driver and he saw him, he sounded the, the horn quite loudly, multiple times. This driver didn’t, didn’t even see him. And, and the last thing we saw was this car go under the front of the train.

Um, and to see that it, it really made me aware I would never try and run a level crossing. But while we’re doing this, and if people are listening, please, if you see a level crossing and you’re not even sure it’s only gotta stop sign, please stop and look because the consequences were dangerous. And in fact, in this case, um, the two people were in the car were killed.

Uh, and it was quite traumatic because they’d survived the crash, but died of their injuries. ’cause we couldn’t get ’em out of the car. So.

Steve Davis: You know what, that’s timely because we do get [00:47:00] complacent. ’cause if it doesn’t have, it’s not a cross thing with the ding dongs, then you downplay it a little bit. But the train’s moving at pace.

And so a quick glance you might not see, but if it’s a stop sign that that’s there for a reason,

Wayne Taylor: stop. It’s very traumatic for the driver. And, and you’ll see ads on there now for, um, rail cars. ’cause we used to have, we used to have a lot of suicides in the metropolitan area. And you might hear about them.

Yep. You wouldn’t have heard, you know, a small percentage of what actually occurred because it’s too traumatic. And those drivers, and they suffer.

Steve Davis: They’ve

Wayne Taylor: gotta, they carry that with them. So

Steve Davis: because they’re doing what they’re doing and they can’t stop those things on a dime.

Wayne Taylor: Oh no, no.

Steve Davis: Let’s shift gears.

Clipsal 500, a different sort of question because when you were there, I think it was 2003, 2005 through that period,

Wayne Taylor: did it for 12 years actually.

Steve Davis: Oh, did you really? Okay. What do you think that event meant to South Australia or Adelaide’s sense of [00:48:00] itself?

Wayne Taylor: I will go back a little bit. The Grand Prix was here from 1985 to 1995, so that was the last year we had it in 1995.

We had a cumulative crowd for the entire event of 520,000. They still haven’t reached those numbers for the Melbourne Grand Prix. The Melbourne Grand Prix numbers have gone up, but that is still the greater number of people for a Grand Prix held in a, in Australia. Yeah. What happened? The place went dead after the Grand Prix left and to some good people.

Uh, the, uh, the Motorsport board decided to bring in. What was, in fact the first one was the Mitsubishi

Steve Davis: Oh, wow.

Wayne Taylor: Race. That was the first one. And then of course it became the Clipsal 500 and, and carried on. But, um, it started off slowly but then, then built up and, uh, it was a magnificent event and we, we got to use that.

And I think for all the people in the eastern states, eastern side of the city on really, sorry, but everyone else loves it. [00:49:00] But you, you feel that it helped rebuild that void. Correct. We needed that. We were devoid of events. Melbourne saying We are the sporting capital of Australia and Brisbane’s having all these events and so forth.

But it was so significant to get a major event back here and, and that really put a Adelaide on the map.

Steve Davis: Now using racing terminology. We’re coming into the home straight now. There’s a few last themes to touch on. One that intrigues me is one of the subsidiaries you worked for had the glorious name, executive washroom.

Uh, you had to manage a fleet of toilets going across Australia for different events. Australia open the golden slipper, the toured gee, the golden slipper. That’s a horse race, isn’t it?

Wayne Taylor: It

Steve Davis: certainly is. If there’s anything like the Melbourne Cup, my goodness

Wayne Taylor: sure is

Steve Davis: toured down under as well. Um, what was executive washroom and is there a prestige hierarchy [00:50:00] when it comes to event toilets in this land?

Wayne Taylor: When I did the Sydney Olympics, upon returning to Adelaide. We had an operation in, in clean event called Executive Washroom. So it was being run by a Scottish guy, um, who really didn’t speak very good English.

Steve Davis: That’s ironic. ’cause they don’t like spending a penny. But

Wayne Taylor: No, but what happened is I ended up taking over that he wanted to move on, so we took it over.

I had an offsider here. Um, and in fact they said you’ll have a another person who was working with you at the Olympics in Sydney, and uh, his name’s Paul Verbiage and he’s gonna help you. And I said, uh, no, sorry, I don’t know him. He said, no, he’s from Adelaide and you will know. And I said, well, look, I know everyone I work with.

And there was no one called Paul Verbiage. Turns out that the chap who I was working with in Sydney, we called him Dipper. Oh, and I never knew his real name. Okay. Anyway, long story short, he and I both started this and we had, um, what were, what were, uh, towable toilets, executive washroom. And in [00:51:00] those we’d have perfumes.

Oh, we would have flowers. Oh, we would dress them up. They were executive washroom. The problem is that the women found them so good.

Steve Davis: Mm-hmm.

Wayne Taylor: That they would knock off all the perfume and the air fresheners and the flowers and everything else. But it was a very elite type of toilet, but very well, uh, used and, uh, very much sought after.

In fact, there’s a chap called, um, Glen Preska who, um, I don’t know whether most people know, but you’ve heard a splash down. Um, he came over here at one point to Adelaide and, um, he adopted the same philosophy with that because that part of the business, that clean event, had they sold it. And then he brought that component in.

And if you go to some of the events, he doesn’t just do normal toilets, he does those executive type toilets. And they are quite popular too, especially if you’re gonna go to a nice place. You want a nice,

Steve Davis: well, that’s right. I mean, depending on the, the status of the concert or whatever, it might be more [00:52:00] entertaining and spend your time in the toilet.

Wayne Taylor: Well, they have TVs in them as well.

Steve Davis: You are joking.

Wayne Taylor: I’m not joking. So if you go in there, you can still watch tv, not so much for the females, but the males. There’s a TV over the urinal, so you can, and, and of course those big six. Meter units that they have say at the Melbourne Cup. Yes. They would have a hundred of those there.

And of course you’ve got a hundred thousand people, you need that many toilets. And they’re only the portables, not just the um, but wouldn’t the TV

Steve Davis: defeat the purpose? ’cause it would lead to more loitering time, right?

Wayne Taylor: Yeah. There was a little bit of vandalism went on with those two. So, uh, yeah. And they would do exactly what you just said too.

Steve Davis: Do we sometimes not deserve,

Wayne Taylor: I think sometimes we go over the top. Yeah. You try to please people and you can please some of the people some of the time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Steve Davis: Alright, so here we go. I want to get into the people. Yes. Who are the, the, the hands and feet on the ground? ’cause a friend of mine’s been doing, I’ve been watching him over the [00:53:00] last few years.

He’s been in the job market looking for event work. Different bits and bobs serving food, cleaning different things around facilities. And I must say it’s been a harrowing thing to watch the ups and downs, the easily dismissible nature of what he does, the lack of care saying, oh, come in, you’ve got an appointment.

And then no, they’ve, they’ve, it sort of very expendable. Um, given that in our society those sort of roles are considered sort of a last resort thing for some people. Not all does it make it hard to tap into a good pool of humans who are really ready and willing to engage at a professional level to carry the job forward.

Wayne Taylor: Short answer is yes. Um, in doing so many events over so many years, trying to find the right kind of people. ’cause there’s no point doing interviews and saying, have you [00:54:00] got cleaning experience? Because cleaning isn’t rocket science. Mm-hmm. It is very, very straightforward. But what we do find, and what I’ve found is you can.

And I digress here. We were doing, um, uh, an all boys concert, uh, five Seasons of Summer or one of those. Oh, yes. Uh, one of them in Perth. And, and I’d been tasked to go there and help with the clean I’d worked during the day. They sent me home. I had a couple hours sleep, came back at night to do the final clean at the end of the concert.

And Oh, so you

Steve Davis: didn’t get the concert?

Wayne Taylor: Oh, sorry. Yes. I must have missed that one. But more importantly, when I got back, it was just a bit of a shambles, the girls, and there were 90% of the crowd were girls, if not more. Yeah. Um, and what was happening is all the staff that were there, uh, a lot of ’em had been working during the day, and then we had some others that had come on night and trying to coordinate ’em to do it.

And they were here and they were there, and I just got out into the wacker and I called out and, and said, sorry, it wasn’t the wacker, it was C bco. And I said, please, everyone just stop and just everyone get over here, get in the line [00:55:00] and just walk through systematically and follow it. Where I’m going with this is it’s more about the.

People managing those people than how many people you have. I could do a job that you use 50 people for, but only use 20 people, but a couple of good supervisors who know what they’re doing because I ended up going home five in the morning and uh, I barely got back to my hotel and the phone rings. It’s the, the boss.

He goes, where are you? I’m here. There’s, there’s no one here. I said, no, we finished. He said, you can’t possibly have finished. I said, no, we finished an hour ago. And he said, was it all done? Yeah. And of course we got the whole thing completed. What he didn’t understand is it’s so important to have smart heads.

Steve Davis: Yes.

Wayne Taylor: The numbers and you can get the job done. But they’re all hands on people too,

Steve Davis: isn’t that? Ah, okay. ’cause we often hear middle management is where things get lost. There are blockages in general, generally across the corporate world.

Mm-hmm.

Steve Davis: You are saying, hang on just a minute. [00:56:00] No. If they are people who have got hands on experience themselves and can think clearly.

They know how to marshal the troops.

Wayne Taylor: Correct. On the job training.

Steve Davis: Yeah.

Wayne Taylor: And you’ll find that when people are properly led mm-hmm. And they start to see, hey, wow, what a great thing this is. We’ve been able to do all that in half the time we would’ve taken if we were just gonna go and do it ourselves. You were talking about Clipsal before.

Mm-hmm. And the Grand Prix and everything else. And we used to have a concert over on CBC Oval, and there’d be a massive crowd of 15, 20,000 at whatever the concert was. We would clean that entire oval and the toilets and everything else in 20 minutes.

Steve Davis: What? Hang on, what?

Wayne Taylor: In 20 minutes? All the rubbish that was left on the ground.

And the toilets are all done in 20 minutes because we would just mass people with designated tasks, designated supervisors, and, and it would take just 20 people to clean that entire oval in 20 minutes. So there’s a [00:57:00] whole degree of sorcery and logistics. That you’ve got, it’s an organization behind it. It it, it sounds very simplistic, but there’s a plan to how that’s done.

Bearing in mind, they’re all the rubbishes and bags and the night crew then just come along and pick it up and take it away.

Steve Davis: We just had the Ashes Tests series in Australia and Adelaide Oval in particular, but other places. What did you think when you heard the news reports of the balmy army who were pretty rowdy and drinks everywhere, but they themselves?

Wayne Taylor: Cleaned up.

Steve Davis: Cleaned up,

Wayne Taylor: very impressed. I did the test match back in, uh, between England, Australia back in 2012 and Adelaide Oval, and they weren’t as proficient back then because as you’d depreciate when people leave, you don’t see the rubbish while you’re watching the cricket. But as soon as they all get out of there, it is just a massive rubbish.

And, um, uh, we use a lot of blowers and different techniques to, uh, to do that. But I was very impressed with that and, uh, I saw the photos [00:58:00] and the way they got together and coordinated everyone. Yeah. You say, mate, I’m gonna sign you up.

Steve Davis: Well, on the testing. Um, another thing that happened over this, what I think the Adelaide Oval Game was scheduled for five days, I think it was finished early day three.

What does this do logistically behind the scenes to people like you who’ve had to contract people? For the whole thing. Do they get turfed out without pay? Are they covered? Does it muck up your budgets? Do the, do you have to budget that in? What’s, take us through that, that part of facilities management.

For big events,

Wayne Taylor: you are right. The, the staff are predominantly casual, so they only get paid for the hours that they work. But there’s a lot of planning with logistics and equipment and, and supplies, you know, all the toilet paper you’ve had to order in to cover that and now you’re not gonna use it. So, so you really have to take that into account as well.

And, um, [00:59:00] you, you would hopefully get that done, doing it laid over. We would do the footy so our, without giving too much away, again, our staging for costing was based on crowd attendances and I had, I had a complete spreadsheet based on. The teams who were playing and the expected crowds that would attend for those games.

And we would forecast an entire year’s costs for the A FL at Adelaide Oval. And we, we were probably five or 10% either side of that. But you have to do that if you’re gonna do that, because as I said, you can buy equipment, fuel equipment, um, consumables, and then it cuts short like three days. That’s a big crowd because you’ve only got, you’ve got two days of what you are expecting 50,000 people or 40,000 people.

It’s a lot of stuff that you’ve gotta carry now and carry over

Steve Davis: and you can’t be too conservative and think, look, it’s probably gonna last four days ’cause you’ll get caught out.

Wayne Taylor: Well, you’ve gotta buy it up front. And how do you then get compensation back from the client because the client goes, well, we don’t care.

[01:00:00] We, we don’t want it now.

Steve Davis: I suppose the surplus toilet paper you can keep for the next COVID pandemic and make your money back that way. Um, I just. I think you’ve answered this, but I wanna make sure we haven’t left a stone unturned. You have very good principles. You’ve learned, you’ve earned that, you’ve learned it over time.

You are bringing in people like my friend who’ve got a job in the gig economy. They’ll be here, they’ll be shunted off, they’re here and gone. You have a reputation that will follow you to the next contract. Declar. For you, there’s continuity. How do you, if it’s possible, or is it just your planning to use people cleverly anyway?

Is there any way to instill them to care at the level you care when there’s not a lot in it for them?

Wayne Taylor: Really good question. What we do is I have a little [01:01:00] Bible Yeah. With a list of names and contact details for these people, and over the years we will clearly ident and we’re talking about doing the cleaning, but at the back end.

I’m looking at these people and then I talk to the very supervisors who stood out to you in there and how can we use them moving forward? So what would happen is I would then at the end of the event, identify those people and we would have a little get together. We’d take ’em out for lunch, have a few beers, say Thank you very much, because we really do make sure we thank people when they do a good job because there is this reward system.

But what would happen is we would then pass their information onto other people interstate. We would then say, you can go and work at the Grand Prix. Would you like to work at the Grand Prix Accommodation and Transport? We’ll cover and then we’ll pay you for actually doing the event for those good people.

It’s actually worth that because as I said before, you could have a good supervisor, he could use 20 people to do a complete job as to, as opposed to 50 people in a [01:02:00] rabble. So you’re actually saving on your costs with labor, but you are getting the best out of it. See, that just strikes me as smart.

Steve Davis: You know,

Wayne Taylor: there’s,

Steve Davis: it’s, it’s empathetic at a human level.

Yeah. Like, it, it shows a bit of care beyond the bottom line. But at the end of the day, it’s also smart.

Wayne Taylor: You’ve gotta look after people. If you treat them like crap

Steve Davis: or the stuff that you’re cleaning out of the book. Yeah.

Wayne Taylor: If you treat ’em like that, then, then they’re not gonna do the right thing for you. It you, you have to then ensure that they believe in you.

You show them respect and they show it to you. Now, let me tell you, if they don’t show me respect. They don’t get it back and we don’t use them again. But the good ones we can clearly identify and, and they appreciate it. When I first started doing this, I did the Grand Prix back in 1987 for, uh, tempo cleaning.

And as a consequence, I was working in the railways at the time, but I thought, Hey, get into the Grand Prix for free. I did that. They identified that I had certain characteristics that were, were quite good and it led me from [01:03:00] doing it there to ultimately when Clean Event got the contract in 1993. And then I took a more management role then.

Steve Davis: Okay. Um, so we now come to 2026. First Facilities Group is your baby. What of all this past experience is relevant that you bring to what you are planning to do and are doing under First Facilities Group? Tell, give us, paint that picture for us.

Wayne Taylor: Off the top of my head, respect and honesty. Respect for the people who are working for.

Respect for the people you are working for, but equally, to be honest, now I can say to you that I’m gonna send four people there to do a particular job, and they were there for so many hours and that’s gonna cost you x. I wanna make sure that those people not only do the job, but they’re there for that time.

But if they do the job a little bit quicker, I would then say to the client, Hey, listen, I know I said it was gonna cost a hundred dollars. It only actually costs us 80, [01:04:00] so I’m actually gonna then do that. The client then goes, wow, you know what? If he says it’s gonna cost whatever, and it costs whatever, I’m, I’m actually gonna believe him because he’s gonna give me the honest answer and the honest day’s work for whatever that is.

And I always say to my people, too, A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. If you do the job, I, I have no issues in paying you and, and pay you a bit more if I, if I have to. Mm. But if you do the wrong thing and you try to sneak around. I’m not gonna use you again. I do not like dishonesty and I do not like lies.

Third one.

Steve Davis: Yep.

Wayne Taylor: I do not like people are late.

Steve Davis: Yep.

Wayne Taylor: Now you were late today. You’re pointing at me. Yeah. You were late today. Yes. No, all jokes aside, um, I worked at Holden for a few years. I was a resource manager at Holden and as a consequence I had 20 staff. We had specific shifts to do the jobs that we had to do out there, and I had my two sons working for me and um, my youngest son was actually late.

A [01:05:00] couple of times. So first time he got a, you know, Hey, don’t be late the second time. A little more terse warning on the third occasion, he was late. I dragged him into the office and tore him a new one, and I said, this is your last chance. I cannot tell these people who are here to do the same thing and then not do the same thing to you.

He was in tears. Uh, he was only 18 or 17 at the time, but he knew where I come from and, and all my kids have worked for me. I have two sons and two daughters. Yeah, they’ve all worked for me doing cleaning, doing toilets and everything else. And that’s given them a good grounding. Moving forward to punctuality is a, is a rural big point, so don’t ever be late and if you are, have a very good reason for, for being late.

So,

Steve Davis: yes, well, mine was my new GPSI went to the wrong house so. That was a, I’ll let you off this time. Whew. Gee, I feel like I’m, I’m having a job interview here at the moment. Um, so and what does first, who would be using first Facilities group? [01:06:00]

Wayne Taylor: First facilities, we currently are doing, um, some commercial cleaning.

So we have a number of small contracts that we do for commercial cleaning, but we, uh, we also did the Adelaide 500, uh, at the end of last year. Uh, as a consequence of that, we actually did the Motor Sport Festival, which was just held, uh, just back in February. Um, we are doing a, uh, a hill climb, um, up in the hills, uh, next month.

Um, and we are slowly building up the repertoire of events and, and things. I have two partners who I use. Yep. And, um, it’s just doing exactly what I said, being honest. And then business will come your way. You do the right thing, and people will actually come and ask you.

Steve Davis: Last question, just for around your own home or your own business, what lessons are there to keep things.

Running smoothly and cleanly,

Wayne Taylor: get an accountant. I have been trying to do the bookkeeping and so forth, which is good because I’ve done that in the past. [01:07:00] Um, but to have somebody to make sure, because in this day and age with, with compliance and the tax and everything else, you just need to make sure you tick all the boxes.

’cause I hate going back and fixing issues. If there’s a problem, we’ll fix it straight away and move on. Yeah. So,

Steve Davis: okay. And that I said was the last question. This is the actual last question. If you were given a golden ticket now you could travel to any major sporting event, major event in the world, not, it doesn’t have to be sport, um, what would it be?

Wayne Taylor: Oh, interesting. Um,

Steve Davis: yeah. And you don’t have to clean anything.

Wayne Taylor: No,

Steve Davis: you can just go as Wayne tape.

Wayne Taylor: I dunno if I could enjoy an event. I, I, I can’t get that outta my head. I, when I was in London in. 2004, the games were on in Athens and I’d been in London for three months without a day off and they asked me to go to, it’s been in London doing all those things.

Yes, they asked me to go to Athens and I, I said, no, look, I couldn’t possibly do it. But look, I think to do an Olympic and Olympics and enjoy it because I’ve never really enjoyed them. I’ve had to work. So [01:08:00] it would be great to go to an Olympic somewhere and actually do that. In fact, on that particularly maybe a winter Olympics, because that’s something, I was supposed to go to Salt Lake City in 98 and I couldn’t get my passport in time and I missed that.

Olympic Games, uh, the Winter Olympics. Gee, winter Olympics.

Steve Davis: Alright. Winter Olympics. Is that because you want that colored G Condom collection? Is that what the attraction really is?

Wayne Taylor: Have you told me that? I I can’t get it outta my head.

Steve Davis: Yeah. Wayne Taylor first facilities got put the link in the show notes.

Thank you for taking us through this journey.

Wayne Taylor: Not my pleasure. Absolutely.

Theme: And now it’s time for the musical pilgrimage.

Steve Davis: In the musical pilgrimage. Uh, we’re gonna feature another song by Steve Davis and the Virtualosos. Uh, yes. I write the lyrics and then my virtual session band bring them to life. And I’ve done a song called Cellar [01:09:00] Door Shuffle. ’cause I’m a South Aussie. I enjoy my wine and I wanted to bring this together, something celebratory for that whole joyful experience.

One of the lines in it, Wayne. ’cause Wayne is still with us. By the way, for this, just to get the song underway, it says, we are not here to guzzle. We are here for the wine. Okay. That, that’s in my beautiful idealized. I can see you’re smirking there. But my idealized version of humanity is that we get that.

Now, I do know people who runs at the doors. Not always the case. I want you to reflect on alcohol and events. Can you compare beer led events versus wine led events versus spirit led events? Is there a difference when it comes to the impact of, for those people, managing waste and cleanliness, et cetera?

Is there a difference? Or is al, is it alcohol versus non alcohol? [01:10:00]

Wayne Taylor: Beer events are loud and noisy. Wine events are a little more subdued and sophisticated spirit events are shocking. So having said that, yep. Yes, I would probably venture into the wine events. They’re a lot more sophisticated. Um, yeah. I’d be more than happy to do those because we drank a lot of, well, I didn’t drink wine, but, uh, doing the events and particularly doing the Royal Show, the Easter show in Sydney for many, many years, we would go days without sleep because we’d work 16, 17 hour days and then drink all night and then go back to when, I shouldn’t say that, but, uh, we’d sober it up by the time we went out.

Steve Davis: So you would be more comfortable in your company if you were engaged and they said, look, mate, it’s gonna be a wine forward event. You’d be a lot more at ease than it’s gonna be a beer event.

Wayne Taylor: They’re all a little different,

okay?

Wayne Taylor: But we know how to, how to accept those. And it’s a sophistication I think is, uh, is the wine events.

And we’ve done a few of those and we enjoy doing those too.

Steve Davis: Well, [01:11:00] on that note, let’s have a listen to Cellar Door Shuffle. By the way, this is one of the songs that Keith Conman and I will be featuring in our History Month show called History Hit Parade. We’re going, I think it’s 10 of my songs. I’m gonna share the history elements that I’ve researched.

Keith Condom is gonna have some anecdotes to further get our juices going for what the song’s about, and then we’ll hear the song will play it. In the Mercury cinema, so I’ll put the link to tickets in the show notes as well. Let’s here. Cellar door Shuffle.

Steve Davis & The Virtualosos: If the cellar door is open, that’s a very good start.

Before a word is, you must practice the yard. Don’t look too excited. Don’t make too much noise. Once you know you’ve been excited, move a dignified boy. Do the sell it or shuffle from the whites. Do the red, [01:12:00] or start with some bubbles if you want them. Instead, do the cell door shovel just one step at a time.

You’re not in a guzzle. You are here for the wine From the hills to Bara, from the. Creek river land, you’ll find what you see. But if you feel spoken down to you are in the wrong place. Wines of drink, you don’t frown to Josh. Light up your face. Do the cellar door, shuffle from the WA to the red, or start with some bubble, but you want them instead, do the cellar door shuffle just one step at a time.

You are not here [01:13:00] to tole you’re here for the wine. If you’ve never been this dance, let them take a chance. Relax, let. Taste and flow. Hold your glass, do the light, and with your nose, breathe in. Take a step when you right to let the good times begin. Do the sell a door shovel from the white, or start with some bubble if you want them.

Instead, do the cell door shuffle just one step at a time. You’re not here to go. You are here for the wine. Doctors and farmers over here. To give socialite, charmers [01:14:00] something other than this. Our Australian passion has put our wine center stage. Now. It’s a world renowned fashion to taste. Our wine wear is made, sell, shuffle from the whites, the red, or start with some bubble if you want them.

Instead, go the cell door. Shuffle just one step at a time. You are not in a go.

Steve Davis: Seller Door Shuffle, Steve Davis and the Virtualosos. It’s available everywhere, streaming everywhere, but hopefully you’ll buy a ticket. Bring some friends and have a great time with us at the Mercury Cinema. Wayne Tater, thanks for hanging around. Thanks for being so open and generous with your stories. [01:15:00] Um, I feel like I’ve earned a drink now and I’ll make sure I put the cup in the correct bin.

Correct. Thank you. I would very much appreciate that. Until next time, it’s good night for me, Steve Davis. Goodnight, Don.

AJ Davis: The Adelaide Show Podcast is produced by my dad, Steve Davis. If you want to start a podcast or get some help producing creative content, talk to him. Visit steve davis.com au. Thanks, aj.

I’m Caitlyn Davis, and I agree with everything my sister said, but there’s one more thing to say If you’ve enjoyed this podcast. Please leave a rating or a review ’cause that will make my dad really happy. Oh, and one more thing. If you really, really liked it, please help a friend put the Adelaide Show on their phone.

Thanks for listening.[01:16:00]

Buzz Buzz.

Theme: Lady.

Lady, lady, lady. Bad lady. Lady. Lady. Who?