Alby Mangels

Alby Mangels: The Adventurer Who Hated Fame The Rise to Fame "I never did anything for cinema, I just did what I wanted to do and what turned me on," he ...

“It blows me away what I’ve done, and the successes and the hardships that I’ve had,” he says. “It was a bit hard to keep it all on track. This stubborn young man would often have to sell tickets, then convince a customer to look after the booth so he could run up on stage and regale the audience with tales of his exploits. “Then I ran up the back and started the projector, and then I went back down again and sold more tickets,” he says. The broadcaster had initially shown interest in the film, but that all changed after seeing the quality of the footage. Mangels was 21 when he and his mate John Fields set off with a single film camera and a $400 budget for what became a six-year pilgrimage to 56 countries across four continents. Prior to setting off on the journey that would leave his mark on the world, he had notched up a bizarre curriculum vitae that included stints as a chook farmer, jockey, shearer, baker and builder — but certainly nothing that might presage his climb to the pinnacle of Aussie film and television. He decided to market the movie himself, eventually landing a royalty deal with a TV station and setting off to show World Safari in any town hall within the station’s broadcast footprint. The 74-year-old adventurer and documentary filmmaker, who created the World Safari films and Adventure Bound TV series of the 1970s and 80s, was a sex symbol in his own right: all tight shorts and sun-kissed sinew. “I’ve been away for 10 or 12 years now and I’m where nobody knows me at all and I like it,” he says. These days, he spends most of his time living under an assumed name in a secret island location, but he still has one more adventure in the works. He had an absent father, and grew up dirt poor with his mum until she died when he was 15.