BH – Page 3 – Double Decker Adventures

Deckers Punters and Dead Ants

By JD Chadwick

Around The World In A Double Decker Bus 1979 – 1983.

Chad went into the small travel agency in London to deliver a letter. To his surprise, he came out as the driver of a double-decker bus with 19 paying passengers on a 6 week trip around Europe. The problem was he didn’t have a licence. He didn’t speak their language. He had never driven a vehicle larger than a mini and had no idea where he was going. None of that mattered, he was broke and needed a job – any job! But first, he had just 24 hours to learn how to drive a vehicle that resembled a two-storey building on wheels, without any training or instructions. Then came the daunting task of driving it on the wrong side of the road through France surrounded by renowned crazy French drivers who hated the English.

For the next four years Chad solved crisis after crisis in some of the most challenging situations and countries imaginable in his bid to keep the wheels rolling and his punters happy. What makes this story even more enticing – it is set long before the advent of mobile phones, computers and travel guides. Once you left home you were on your own.

Could you talk your way out of jail by playing cards with your arresting office? Pose as a journalist to gain entry to Ashes Test Match at Lords. Attempt to sell thirteen cartons of illegal whiskey to the chief of police in Pakistan, a devout Muslim and anti-alcohol country? Fix a bus engine with a box of cornflakes? These are just a few of the adventures you will delight in when you read Deckers, Punters & Dead Ants.

Will Chad learn to drive in time? Can he find his way around Europe before his passengers pull the pin demanding their money back? Does he ever master their language? Will he spend time in a Pakistani jail? What has Dead Ants got to do with driving a bus?

Crossing Continents with Top Deck

by Trevor Carroll

Top Deck double deckers offered a revolutionary form of long-distance transport from the 70s to the 90s. The large British Lodekkas carried under-35s vast distances through SE Asia, the Middle East and Australia in a new innovative mode of no-frills adventure tourism.

Taken on by Top Deck as a double decker bus driver in early 1977, Trevor Carroll conducted European tours for a year before he was set loose on his first overland tour, London to Kathmandu and return. A three-week dash to Kathmandu had the tour stumbling into the start of the civil war in Afghanistan mixing with a government crackdown and soldiers and tanks on the roads. Trevor describes his exciting and sometimes harrowing experiences on six overland trips as both driver and courier.

Finally, he embarked on the massive 20-week Sydney to London tour in 1980 with its third and final leg aboard ‘Casper’ and its 20 occupants across India, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia and Italy. The tour passed through 21 countries and covered 34,000 kilometres, conquering places where the buses’ designers never meant it to go.

Trevor met his future wife Hilde on tour, and they have now been married for 34 years.

Skroo Turner the founder of Top Deck and today’s Flight Centre provides an introduction to these stories, his foresight has continued his travel revolution from those lumbering old buses to today’s conglomerate, The Flight Centre Group.

The Hippie Trail

The Hippie Trail

By Sharif Gemie and Brian Ireland

This is the first history of the Hippie Trail. It records the joys and pains of budget travel to Kathmandu, India, Afghanistan and other ‘points east’ in the 1960s and 1970s. Written in a clear, simple style, it provides detailed analysis of the motivations and the experiences of hundreds of thousands of hippies who travelled eastwards. The book is structured around four key debates: were the travellers simply motivated by a search for drugs? Did they encounter love or sexual freedom on the road? Were they basically just tourists? Did they resemble pilgrims? It also considers how the travellers have been represented in films, novels and autobiographical accounts, and will appeal to those interested in the Trail or the 1960s counterculture, as well as students taking courses relating to the 1960s.

First Overland: London-Singapore by Land Rover

First Overland: London-Singapore by Land Rover

by Tim Slessor

Why not? After all, no-one had ever done it before. It would be one of the longest of all overland journeys-half-way round the world, from the English Channel to Singapore. They knew that several expeditions had already tried it. Some had got as far as the deserts of Persia; a few had even reached the plains of India. But no-one had managed to go on from there: over the jungle-clad mountains of Assam and across northern Burma to Thailand and Malaya. Over the last 3,000 miles it seemed there were “just too many rivers and too few roads”. But no-one really knew…In fact, their problems began much earlier than that. As mere undergraduates, they had no money, no cars, no nothing. But with a cool audacity, which was to become characteristic, they set to work-wheedling and cajoling. First, they coaxed the BBC to come up with some film for a possible TV series. Then they gently “persuaded” Rover to lend them two factory-fresh Land Rovers. A publisher was even sweet-talked into giving them an advance on a book. By the time they were ready to go, their sponsors (more than 80 of them) ranged from whiskey distillers to the makers of collapsible buckets. In late 1955, they set off.Seven months and 12,000 miles later, two very weary Land Rovers, escorted by police outriders, rolled into Singapore-to flash-bulbs and champagne. Now, fifty years on, their bestselling book, First Overland, is republished-with a foreword by Sir David Attenborough. After all, it was he who gave them that film.

Travel The Planet Overland

by Graeme and Luisa Bell

Travel the Planet Overland was written to inspire others to explore this magnificent rock we all call home and the core message is simply that anyone sufficiently inspired can travel the planet overland. We take the readers hand and walk them through the long term world travelers reality, introducing the different types of overland travelers and the vehicles they prefer based on the fluidity of their cash flow. We then guide readers through the financial and emotional preparations for overland travel and provide the tools for overland travel success!

One Foot in Front of the Other – Full Stride

by Neil Rawlins

By the late 1970’s & early 1980s the classic Overland tours between London and Kathmandu, which had had their beginnings in the mid-1960s, were drawing to a close. The Soviets had occupied Afghanistan, the Shah of Iran had been deposed and an Islamic State established. In Iraq Saddam Hussain was about to embark on a devastating war with Iran and the seeds of unrest were lying latent in Syria. This was the scenario when the author embarked upon his career as a tour guide on the Overland routes across Asia to Kathmandu. This book is a continuation of the author’s previous Kindle book – One Foot in Front of the Other – First Steps, which recounts his experiences travelling the Overland routes in Asia, Europe and in Africa in the halcyon days of the early ’70s.

After 3 years back in New Zealand & a year working on a uranium exploratory drilling-rig in Wyoming, the author completed a training trip with Sundowners in Europe then, as a rooky tour leader headed to Istanbul with coach & driver to collect clients flying in from Kabul before setting off for the Middle East. It was a memorable trip and a precursor for further tours and the Overland routes to and from Kathmandu.For the next 3 years there were the ups and downs of political vagaries to content with, the frustration of border crossing and the sudden introduction of visa requirements. There were happy times and sad times although the happy times always outweighed the sad.
Moving on to Explore Worldwide, the author became involved in operating Camel safaris across the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, leading tours to Kashmir and Ladakh, to Darjeeling and Sikkim as well as Turkey, Jordan and Tunisia.
This book documents the highs & lows of tour leading: the funny incidents and the, not-so-frequent sad episodes. The frustrations dealing some passengers and with bureaucracy on borders, at embassies and elsewhere. But also an insight into the information a tour leader/guide was expected to impart on the places visited.

Faraway Places Strange Sounding Names

by Gerald Davis

In the late 1970s, adventure bus journeys were the most exciting form of international travel. Buses crossed continents to the fabled cities of Asia, Europe, Africa and South America, carrying adventurous travellers across scenic lands and harsh deserts. Many of the passengers were Australians and New Zealanders, going to and from Britain and Europe.

Tours lasted weeks and months and crossed borders freely – until they were blocked by unrest and warfare in the late 1970s, and the golden age of overland travel came to an abrupt end.

Faraway Places with Strange Sounding Names brings this magical era back to life, thanks to Gerald Davis’s determined efforts to gather people’s stories, photos, maps and mementos.

His book tells the story of the leading operator at the time, the Penn Overland Company, which pioneered the Asian and African overland travel routes in the 1950s, and spread to five continents and 50 countries, taking people on the journey of a lifetime.

This book is a window into that time, and for the thousands who travelled, a chance to relive their journeys. Drawing on memories and mementos of former Penn staff and passengers the world over, Gerald Davis has saved the story from disappearance, and told it in this evocative book.

Family Village Tribe

by Mandy Johnson

Flight Centre Limited is an anomaly in the business world – a modern-day organisation that uses Stone Age strategies to achieve phenomenal success. This updated edition of Family Village Tribe describes the company’s ongoing evolution and is essential reading for anyone interested in the machinations of starting a successful business from the ground up, and staying there.

‘I didn’t realise my life had been hijacked until a year after it happened.’

That’s Mandy Johnson’s take on her introduction into the world of Flight Centre Limited – the travel company that divides its workforce into prehistoric ‘families’, ‘villages’ and ‘tribes’, and rewards them with autonomy and incentives.

From its origins in 1973 as a UK tour company with a single bus called ‘Bollocks’, FCL revolutionised the travel industry and morphed into a global giant. It faced challenges including the War on Terror and SARS that wreaked havoc on business. It battled the encroachment of the internet; a disastrous internal restructure; and a US acquisition that delivered a profit wipe-out, just months before the global financial crisis. And yet each time FCL has come back stronger than before, almost doubling in size every five years, relying on its Stone Age tribal structure as its platform for success.

Its founders were two 23-year-old veterinarians from Queensland, Australia. Neither had any business experience and the idea for the company was hatched while celebrating in a Munich beer hall . . . So how did they make it work? Mandy Johnson and Katrina Beikoff have enjoyed full access to all the major players in FCL to bring us the full story in this updated edition.

Top Deck Daze (Updated)

By Bill James

In Top Deck Daze, Bill James tells the hilarious, true story of how Graham ‘Screw’ Turner establishes a bus touring company using old converted double-decker buses. From humble beginnings in 1973 London, Screw, together with a gang of colonial larrikins, builds up a 100-strong fleet of ‘deckers’. Follow the antics of Screw, Spy, Bill Speaking, Wombat, Filthy, Grilly, Budgie, the mysterious Graham James Lloyd and other incorrigible crew members as they lead their unsuspecting punters on riotous escapades to far flung, exotic corners of the world. The chaos that was Top Deck Travel lays the foundation for Flight Centre. Screw, through his dogged determination builds the company into a hugely successful, multi-million dollar travel empire.

Only Two Seats Left: The Incredible Contiki Story

By John Anderson

This is one of Australasia’s great untold business success stories. It is the incredible story of how a simple idea with a starting capital of just 25 pounds became a worldwide travel company with an iconic brand name. Over two million young people have now travelled Contiki! For the vast majority, the experience changed their lives for ever.

Author and Contiki founder John Anderson blends an autobiography, epic travel tale and business success story which reads like a novel. Discover the raw truths behind John’s exhilarating 28 year journey of dizzying successes and disappointing failures, coupled with his most valuable secrets of successful entrepreneurship.
Feel your sense of adventure surface and immerse yourself in the same spirit of fun and passion that fuelled John’s action packed life.
A book for anyone who’s ever dreamt of taking a risk with that first bold step to venture into the unknown …