Episode 5. Graham Turner

Graham Turner, 72, grew up on an apple farm in Queensland and attended a one-teacher primary school where he had to make up numbers on the netball team. He’s a trained vet who went from driving double decker tour buses around Europe to starting Flight Centre with a couple of mates. It’s now one of the world’s biggest travel agencies with operations in 24 countries. Flight Centre put Turner on the Rich List for 20 years until the pandemic knocked the share price from $61 to $9. Turner says it’ll take the company 3 to 5 years to recover and while he has no plans to retire, he is looking forward to an overseas holiday. How I Made It website here. Background reading: ‘Cash is everything’: Skroo’s 8 lessons for life; How Graham Turner built Flight Centre and survived COVID-19 For more stories about success, subscribe to The Australian Financial Review here.

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