Smith, Dick

▪ 1994

      Australia's answer to Leonardo da Vinci, Dick Smith continued to amaze the public with his displays of versatility when he was blown into the record books once more in 1993. In an echo of the earlier headline "The sky is the limit for Great Adventurer," Smith, who became famous for flying his Sikorsky S76A helicopter under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, swapped the fixed-wing and helicopter aircraft of his previous exploits for a hot air balloon and entered a race to cross the Australian continent west to east. The millionaire adventurer vowed that his most recent and dangerous adventure would be his last, and when he landed in northern New South Wales in June 1993, exhausted but ecstatic, Smith resolved that henceforth he would stick to being a watchdog for civil aviation interests, where he would concentrate on such issues as air-traffic control systems and the provision of rescue beacons for finding crashed aircraft.

      Richard Harold Smith—aviator, filmmaker, explorer, businessman, and publisher—was born March 18, 1944, in Roseville, New South Wales. He had limited formal education at public schools and a technical high school, but his inventiveness and curiosity soon turned him into one of the signal success and survival stories in modern Australia. His astonishing entrepreneurial skills first appeared when he founded Dick Smith Electronics in 1968. By the time he sold the firm in 1982, Smith was a household name and his firm was a market leader in selling small electronic items from calculators to computers. With the proceeds of the sale, he began a new career in philanthropy, exploration, and publishing. Smith made the first solo helicopter flight around the world (1983), the first helicopter flight to the North Pole (1987), and the first flight around the world via the poles (1988). As a philanthropist he became Australia's most generous individual when he donated $A 1 million to the Smith Family (no relation) charity. In 1987 he purchased The Australian Encyclopaedia.

      The love of his life turned out to be the quarterly magazine Australian Geographic, which he founded in 1986 and modeled on the U.S. publication National Geographic. In October 1993 Smith proudly announced that Australian Geographic would henceforth be printed in Australia, rather than overseas. This, said Smith, would save Australian dollars in foreign exchange revenue. In keeping with his nationalist perspective, Smith exhorted media moguls Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch to follow his example and to print in Australia. (A.R.G. GRIFFITHS)

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