In 1979, when the US space station Skylab was predicted to fall to earth somewhere in Western Australia, Bill King pounced on it as a tourism opportunity. Bill, a tour operator who’d forged a reputation as a specialist in remote adventure experiences, took out ads in eastern state newspapers inviting people to join him on an excursion east of the WA goldmining town of Kalgoorlie to recover Skylab.
“So Bill brought a couple of metal detectors and off they went,” says Andrew Dwyer, who went on to own Diamantina Touring Company, recalling his favourite anecdote about Bill. “They didn’t find Skylab – they came nowhere near it – but it was wildflower season, and the wildflowers were incredible, and everyone had a fantastic time.”
A few weeks after Bill returned home, he received a phone call from an official at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California asking him if he’d be interested in mounting an expedition to locate and recover what was left of Skylab. The fallen space station had broken up as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, scattering debris across WA and the Indian Ocean.
“‘Absolutely!’ Bill replied,” says Andrew, who started in adventure tourism when Bill already had a reputation as a pioneer and leader in the industry. “And so NASA funded this huge expedition with Unimog [specialist German-designed and manufactured all-wheel-drive vehicles] and all sorts of other specialist gear, with Bill leading it, to go out and recover Skylab. This time they had the expertise, and they did recover Skylab – and that was when Bill got his really big break.”
Skylab’s recovery attracted headlines worldwide. From that point, Bill became synonymous with outback travel and adventure, not only in Australia but also in European and US travel markets. He helped fuel a fledgling industry that now contributes hundreds of millions of dollars every year to Australia’s economy. According to Queensland Government figures, outback tourism in that state alone is worth more than $400 million a year and supports more than 4500 jobs. WA, South Australia, New South Wales and the Northern Territory boast similarly impressive figures.
Despite how it seemed, Bill’s success didn’t come overnight. By the time Skylab crashed back through Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated across Australia and the Indian Ocean, Bill had hosted a range of tours into remote parts of the country for more than a decade.
Surprisingly, Bill grew up in the city – a Melburnian whose family operated a suburban bus company. From a young age he developed an affection for the bush. He loved sharing that passion and, early in his working life, saw huge potential in escorting tours into the far-flung, red-dirt destinations for which Australia is now famous worldwide.
So in the late 1960s, at a time when the words ‘tourism’ and ‘outback’ were rarely used in the same sentence, he began his own travel company, Bill King’s Northern Safaris. He bought and equipped two Land Rovers, a former army ambulance and a bus built by Brisbane-based Denning Manufacturing and began offering tours to central and northern Australia. The regional towns and landscapes he visited were a far cry from the traditional tourist destinations on the east coast. “In those days there weren’t many people who would go out to really remote parts of Australia, but Bill sort of invented the model for how to do it,” Andrew says.
According to the website of the National Road Transport Museum in Alice Springs: “Bill soon realised it was uneconomical to use small seating capacity vehicles and in 1970 purchased two ex-army International 4x4s and two M-series Bedford 4x4s, and…Bill designed and built his own 18 passenger vehicles and called them Desert Cruisers.” The cruisers were relocated to Alice Springs. The museum reports that by 1979 “Bill King’s Northern Safaris was operating 10 vehicles and had four Greyhound coaches on charter”.
Bill died aged 92 in 2022, but his name remains linked to outback tourism through the coach touring specialist AAT Kings, which acquired his company in the mid-1980s and retained his surname. He wasn’t the first or only operator taking people into the outback, but he was undoubtedly the best-known in those early years. “Part of his image included his [Akubra] hat and his kerchief, so he was able to promote an image of the bush because he was always in character,” recalls Bill Wright, who delivered the eulogy at Bill’s funeral. “While there were other people around doing what he did, he was able to really market the product so that people found it attractive and in a style that was genuine.”
A collection of snaps from the archive of AAT Kings, which acquired Bill King’s tour company in the 1980s – retaining his name in its brand. Images courtesy AAT Kings
Talk to anyone who knew Bill and it quickly becomes clear that what set him apart were his innate skills at spinning a yarn and as a salesman. “He was tenaciously entrepreneurial in his desire to share experience because of his love of the bush,” Bill Wright says. “His wife, Val, was an artist, and the first tours he did were taking people to the bush for painting.”
Bill’s understanding of the world from an environmental perspective also put him ahead of his time. He was aware that mass tourism wouldn’t be good for the bush – but more modest and sympathetic operations could play a role in its protection. “In special ways, people like him were able to expose the bush to [visitors] so that they could get an understanding of how special it was,” Bill Wright says.
Dallas Newton, who in the 1980s became the managing director of AAT Kings, knew him well. The pair bonded over their interest in remote tourism and shared love of Collingwood Football Club. “Bill was an explorer and a risk-taker,” Dallas says. “But if I were to use one word to describe him it would be ‘brave’, not only because of what he did but also who he did it with. You know, it’s one thing go out there [to the outback] in a desert cruiser and take a few people and have a bit of fun, but to go over to Germany or Austria or Singapore or [England] and say, ‘Come to Australia and I’ll take you on these remote tours and you’ll have a ball!’ Now that was brave.”
It was a constant source of amazement to many people in Australian tourism that Bill could convince people in Northern Hemisphere markets to get on a plane and fly 24 hours or more to Australia – and then join him on a tour that would take them hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest town.
Ken Corbett, who used to work for Tourism Australia in the UK, Europe and the US, got to know Bill well when travelling with him on overseas trade missions. “He nearly always wore his [Akubra] hat, even in downtown New York, and he had a very good Australian patter,” says Ken, the founder and managing director of inbound tourism specialists Australian Attractions Pty Ltd. “His love of the outback was genuine, and his tours were the first of the kind of what have now become very well-established in Australia.
“Bill was the first to really focus and concentrate on the outback and sell it to international tourists as his prime sales strategy. He was a terrific salesman without appearing to be a salesman. We in the Australian industry would often use him as a spokesperson because he came across as a very natural Australian – he had that lovely manner about him and spoke of the outback with a genuine passion.”