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Australian Story - Season 31 - Episode 02: Finding Alby Mangels
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00:14Hello. Before the global success of present day screen adventurers like Bear Grylls, there
00:21was Albie Mangles. Now, if you grew up in Australia in the 70s and 80s, you're probably
00:26already going, oh, world safari. Blokes wanted to be Albie Mangles, women wanted to be with
00:32Albie Mangles, but for more than 20 years, the great adventurer has been something of
00:38a recluse.
00:47I've changed a lot over the years, but I don't think of myself as being old.
00:56I'm still young, and I can still do everything that I've always done.
01:03Albie's been off the grid for, what, 20 years or whatever, 30 years? And, you know, he's
01:09led a bit of a hermit life, happy in himself.
01:15He'd done his world safari movies, one, two, three, and plus a lot of other documentaries.
01:20And then, like that, he was gone. He disappeared. I just thought he must have got eaten or a
01:26plane crash or something in some remote island or in a submarine that sunk.
01:30For that generation in the 80s, he was a real adventurer. The next generation, no one knows
01:41him. But that's life.
01:45I went away from everything, from everybody. I've had people, they have a bet, see if they
01:53can find Albie Mangles. And a few of them have done it. And they come 10, 11 o'clock at
01:59night,
02:00knock on my door. And they see me and say, we found you. Not very nice.
02:08So, a few times I did that, I got sick of it. So I don't tell anybody where I go.
02:24World safari. 80,000 miles across four continents. Six years in the making.
02:31When I was young, like every, I think every young guy, we all wanted to be Albie Mangles.
02:37They don't make adventurers like Albie Mangles anymore.
02:42He's dodged bullets, survived crashes, endured the harshest of conditions, and gazed upon some
02:49of the world's most endangered creatures. What drives this Australian who was born for adventure?
02:57What makes him tick?
02:59I think Albie wanted to live a life that was at the limit of his capabilities. I think he
03:07wanted to push the envelope. I think he did push the envelope.
03:12Looking back, there's no doubt in my mind that we were crazy and lucky to survive.
03:18We talk about nine lives. I think he had 18.
03:20He was piloting at Twin Cedar Robinson when the accident happened.
03:24He's lucky and he got through it all and he's got some good stories to tell.
03:29He knew he was a good looking guy. He knew that that look worked and he didn't want to stray
03:35from that. But he was also comfortable like that. That wasn't really very far from what
03:40Albie was like. You know, he was happy on a horse, in a pair of shorts with no shirt.
03:46He really was.
03:48Albie was old school in a way that can be politically incorrect these days. He would
03:54always be adorned with some sort of beautiful woman by his side.
03:59Everyone could see that image of him in his cut off denim shorts with a beautiful bikini
04:05girl. And I think a lot of people looked up to that and went, wow, that guy's living the dream.
04:18There are many professional adventurers who need to push the edge.
04:28Sometimes it's because of childhood trauma and they have to go after that, that feeling,
04:36that feeling of insecurity again and again and again in order to try and master it.
04:42To talk about my childhood, it's a long time ago. I don't know how good my memory is.
04:51I was born in Holland in 1948 and my early years in Holland, we were pretty poor.
05:00We lived in the back of a farmhouse and it was a cellar.
05:04Well, the whole family, we were in that one room and we had cupboards where my brother
05:12and I slept in the cupboard and Ria slept in another cupboard.
05:15Yeah, we didn't have a lot of money, you know, not like people have today.
05:22Oh, no, no. Australia is where the streets were lined with gold.
05:27Yeah, kangaroos. We were told.
05:31We came to Australia in 1955. My mum and dad couldn't speak a word of English.
05:39I was nine, Albie was eight.
05:43Never getting married and settling down probably had a bit to do with mum's influence on me.
05:53Mum and dad, yeah, they did break up. We sort of ran away. Mum and three kids.
06:02And we came and lived on the River Murray in a boat. And that's where I was brought up.
06:13Well, this is my hometown here, Murray Bridge. Old stomping ground.
06:19Then my mother had a second relationship and that one wasn't that good. And I think it affected me a
06:30lot.
06:30The atmosphere in the house was awful, terrible. And I couldn't wait to get out of the house.
06:38Albie left school at about 13. He was a free, free spirit then.
06:46I could just barely read and write.
06:52I met up with this builder called Les Stone. He brought me into the partnership.
07:00And I thought that'd be good for me, you know, because I never had a father figure.
07:06He was only about 15 years old. Very good worker and quite a good personality.
07:14And he ended up quite a good bricklayer, actually.
07:21Here we are now at the cemetery where Mum was buried. Mum got sick when I was about 16, 17.
07:31Mum led a terrible life because of relationships.
07:38And I do believe it killed her in the end with cancer.
07:43In the end, it wasn't a life. And I wasn't happy to see her go.
07:49But, you know, nobody likes to see their mum in pain.
07:57I think his family life had been pretty tough.
08:00And I think he probably just got to a point where he said,
08:03well, if I'm going to make something in my life, it's going to be me that makes it.
08:07And so I think he was driven.
08:08An idea started to come into my head to go around the world and film it and make an adventure
08:19film.
08:19Travel all over the countryside.
08:21I think at the time there was the Leyland Brothers.
08:24The countryside, Oscar Leyland Brothers.
08:27And I thought, well, I could do that, you know, but on a world basis.
08:33And he said, you're going to travel around the world and all this.
08:35And I joke of it and I said, oh, yeah, I believe that when I see it.
08:40When people say things like that, well, it gives you the determination to maybe prove them wrong.
08:46Albie and John left Adelaide early on a Sunday morning.
08:50So I got together with a friend, John, a $300 camera, and we took off north up to Darwin.
09:00People thought, you know, you're mad.
09:03And then we heard about the oldest yacht still sailing in the world, run by two Swedish skippers.
09:12It was like a dream, and we knew right then that this was the way to travel.
09:17First we went to Tonga and spent about a month there, and then from there we sailed to find this
09:23remote island in the middle of the Pacific.
09:27I built a hut of palm leaves for my lady friend on the highest headland overlooking the most magnificent beach
09:33I could find.
09:34From there we went right across Asia, hitchhiked up to Nairobi, and we found this little Dutch car, only a
09:43two-cylinder.
09:44We walked into a bicycle store one day in Nairobi, and there was this little car.
09:49Somebody had traded it in on a new push bike. We immediately bought it for only $200.
09:54And then we decided we'd drive it to Europe.
09:59What we've got ahead of us is a thousand miles of the Sahara.
10:03We were away for six years.
10:05We said just buy rolls of film, hundred-foot rolls of film, and shoot them and put them back in
10:11the rucksacks in the heat.
10:13At times the best way of getting out of Sandbox was in reverse.
10:16We had a lot of mishaps and close shaves.
10:21But I had that dream, and I was not going to come back to Australia with nothing.
10:29And I knew that we could make a good film.
10:33John and Albie hitched back on a Chinese cargo ship.
10:37So we come back to Australia.
10:39I went to the Australian Film Commission, showed them the film.
10:46And I can't do nothing with it.
10:48I went to the South Australian Film Commission, same thing again.
10:53And then I thought, well, bugger it.
10:56I'm going to have a go at it on my own.
11:02My family had the Dendy cinema in Brighton.
11:06So Albie knocked on my office door and said,
11:09could I clean my film upstairs using all facilities?
11:13At that stage he was taking this travel documentary he had made,
11:18which was fairly amateurish, around the schools.
11:23I said, what's the name of the film?
11:25And he said, oh, it's Happy Go Lucky Highway.
11:26And I said, well, that's possibly the worst film title I've ever heard.
11:30It's now going to be called World Safari.
11:32Put the film on and I sort of cleansed a little bit.
11:36My seat's saying, oh, this is a bit rough.
11:39But it had something.
11:41It had a charm.
11:42Albie and John left Adelaide early on a Sunday morning.
11:45It was a good opening.
11:46Good opening.
11:46Good opening sequence.
11:48And then we thought the titles looked pretty simple.
11:51Well, now we're looking at them and think they look really simple.
11:54We just got stuck in the screenings.
11:56We probably did hundreds of them.
11:58All the cash that we got, we'd put into a recut or a re-edit of the film.
12:02We're open to criticism on the quality of the image,
12:06the roughness of the camera work, the editing being the jump edits and things.
12:12But the essence of the trip is always there.
12:16Yeah.
12:17Part of Albie's success was because he did something that no one else did.
12:23He went to all the small country towns, set up a projector and a screen in the town halls and
12:29just went to the masses.
12:31Albie Mangles was kind of like a picture showman a hundred years ago.
12:35He had a great way of kind of promoting his films and making you think,
12:42well, I've really got to see this this weekend or I'm going to miss out.
12:45I booked about 30 town halls and I showed it for a month every night.
12:53And butter me dead from day one, they were packed in.
13:01I remember thousands of school kids on the side of the road as he was coming to somewhere to do
13:07a talk.
13:08There you go.
13:10You'd think, you know, you'd had Hollywood star turning up.
13:14It was really quite amazing.
13:15I like his movies because they're action facts and he's really good.
13:20Yeah?
13:20Would you like to travel like that too?
13:21Yes, I would.
13:22What about you?
13:23He's cool.
13:25Because World Safari One had been so successful, he thought, well, great.
13:32Let's give the customers more of what they want.
13:36There's a whole world out there just waiting.
13:39Don't see no point in us, it's a thing.
13:43We are friends.
13:44We cannot settle down.
13:46I said, well, if you're going to do a second one, you need a nice, wholesome travel companion.
13:50I was joined by Judy Green, a top model with a real sense of adventure.
13:57All of us used to watch a little bit of Sail of the Century and we saw Judy and then
14:00I decided to engage her.
14:03Albie, in fact, was quite impressed at how quickly Judy fitted into her new surroundings.
14:07We got on really well together right from the word go.
14:11She's a very unusual girl that she takes anything.
14:16If they wore trousers, Albie was told, they would be safe from paradas.
14:22Oh my foot!
14:23Careful, don't slip!
14:25She doesn't have to cross all the T's and dot all the I's and have to be perfect.
14:32No, she just grabs the ball by the horn and runs with it.
14:37Well, I've never been in a situation to really test myself out.
14:41I'm used to having my hair dryer, my nice shampoo, conditioners, showers and I really didn't know how I would
14:50cope.
14:50But, I mean, if you're determined to do something, you'll do it.
14:56Well, Jude, you don't cross the equator every day of the week.
15:02Cheers.
15:06Good?
15:07Oh, it smells like it's gone off.
15:11Probably it has.
15:19We were going to do the full length of South America.
15:23And then not far down the track, we had a very bad accident.
15:29I don't know what happened yesterday.
15:32We just collided with a bus.
15:35The phone rang, you know, middle of the night here.
15:38Judy had been severely injured and that Albie was in great shape.
15:45We're in hospital now, in the middle of the Amazonia.
15:50I feel absolutely ratchet.
15:54And Judy is a lot worse than I am.
15:57She stayed in hospital over there for quite some time.
16:01There was minor improvement on each day, but it was a very critical situation.
16:06Got airlifted back to Australia.
16:09And it took about a year for both of us to recover.
16:15Well, Safari 2 is sort of two segments.
16:17There's up until Albie and Judy had the accident.
16:22And then when I started was once he was fit enough and well enough to continue the story on.
16:28Judy wasn't able to come back.
16:31She was still trying to get better.
16:36It has been arranged that cameraman Jeff Hall will meet me at the edge of the Andes.
16:40I'm starting to wonder whether I'll get out of this jungle and whether Jeff will be there to meet me.
16:47In World Safari 2, I meet up with Albie in some village in South America and I arrive on a
16:53donkey in a poncho.
16:56I didn't really meet up with Albie that way.
16:59You know, I flew to South America and away we went.
17:02But I don't think that breaks the story.
17:05You know, that's just a bit of colour.
17:09Now it was Destination Lima.
17:10I think the innocence of the films is definitely a key part of the success.
17:17They felt somewhere between a home movie and a David Attenborough film.
17:24There was a military escort on board to protect the passengers from the rebel guerrillas in the area.
17:30I don't do much research and I just go and that's when things happen.
17:37That's when things go wrong and that's good for the film.
17:44One minute later the train was ambushed by terrorists.
17:48We had a lot of scary moments.
17:51You are put in some situations that you have no control of and it's happening and you've just got to
17:59deal with it.
18:01In the second part of World Safari 2, Albie met a young lady on the journey and she became very
18:08much a part of the movie.
18:09It turned out she was desperate to get to Santiago, Chile.
18:12And that's very much Albie, just sort of meets up with someone and then all of a sudden you're in
18:16the film.
18:24People may get the idea that I was a womaniser because I had these girls in the film, pretty girls,
18:33but that was over the six year period.
18:37I think they were serious girlfriends. They were real relationships.
18:41It was sheer pleasure being in those mountains for three days together.
18:46Having the girls in the film did make a big difference. Half the audience are men and they liked it.
18:56Probably not all the women liked it, but I understand that. Can't please everybody.
19:01We will look at that in today's eyes and go, wow, that was incredibly sexist.
19:07But back then, nobody really looked twice at that.
19:11He was a young adventurer travelling the world with his girlfriend of the time.
19:15It came across as organic in a way.
19:18One of the most extraordinary journeys of our time, World Safari 2, rated G.
19:23It was a piece of cake to get World Safari 2 off the ground.
19:29We'd already done the groundwork and it actually made a hell of a lot of money.
19:37He made such an event of this and had it playing in so many places.
19:43It's quite possible that he was making as much money or more money than Hollywood blockbusters in that era.
19:54You all right? You all right, Albie? Yeah.
19:57I'm walking the plank.
19:59When we were kids, Uncle Albie used to pop in and out throughout the years.
20:03We didn't really know what he was up to. He was just travelling a lot.
20:07Yeah, it's going on low tide now.
20:10It's really lovely out here, eh?
20:13Well, Albie is more like a brother to me than an uncle.
20:17And, I don't know, he's a bit of a father figure as well.
20:21What's going on? A little cat? Yeah.
20:24I was still in high school and I didn't do Year 12 because Albie gave me a tap on the
20:29shoulder and said,
20:30Hey, do you want to come with me? I thought, wow, I'm there.
20:39Rick was in World Safari 3 with me.
20:42And after a while, he became my cameraman.
20:46G'day, Rick. G'day.
20:49Hard going around here. Rough, was it?
20:53I thought it was wonderful.
20:54And I knew that Albie, as his uncle, would take care of him.
21:00And, um, Rick would take care of his uncle.
21:07While waiting for the right moment, a freak wave knocked us both right off our feet.
21:13You look back and you think, wow, that was pretty dangerous.
21:18Help! Help!
21:22Yeah, anyway, it's part of the, part of the, the thrill of it, I suppose.
21:27We were both wet right through.
21:29Boy, was I glad to have Rick back.
21:32You made it!
21:34When I made World Safari 3, there's a feature film and then there's the documentaries that come after it.
21:44I promoted World Safari 3 as a feature film, but Channel 9 had already started promoting the series.
21:58So nobody came to the feature.
22:03I think that that old time sort of filmmaking had run its path.
22:08Up! Go up!
22:10That's what I'm trying to do!
22:11Hurry! Hurry!
22:14If you look at what's going on in cinema in general by the time he releases World Safari 3,
22:20people are staying at home now with their home video VHS machine.
22:25So I think his market had shrunk a little bit.
22:28And I think that he was perceived by the audience as doing the same thing,
22:32as opposed to taking it to a different level.
22:37Well, it cost a lot of money to set up for an exhibition and distribution of a film.
22:43And then when the ticket sales weren't there to support the early investment, what do you do?
22:51It got too big for my boots.
22:54So I went broke.
22:56Lost everything.
22:58Helicopters, planes, farms.
23:03So that was a full circle.
23:06I had a lot of debt.
23:08And I had a lot of staff.
23:11And I couldn't pay him.
23:14Albie, enthusiastic with his life and projects and getting people involved with him would promise them things that he couldn't
23:22actually fulfill.
23:23Albie Mangles seems more at home with his dogs than with people, especially when it comes time to front up
23:29to the media, which he says has never missed a chance to tear him down.
23:33People who had a grudge to settle against Albie, they sunk the boot in.
23:38Well, it's really all manufactured from beginning to end.
23:41Cameraman and chopper pilot, Graham Gillians.
23:44Creative film work.
23:45That's a kind term for it.
23:49You're actually galloping downhill there.
23:51Well, a little bit of a hill.
23:52The camera's on a bit of a tilt.
23:53Oh, you tilted the camera to make it, well, you have to do something to make it a bit more
23:57real, don't you?
23:59Of course.
24:00There's fake films sometimes.
24:02What's the big deal about that?
24:06A little bit of poetic license, you know?
24:10And it was nothing serious.
24:13Nothing.
24:14All the adventures, they were real.
24:17You're trying to make a show and you're trying to make it interesting.
24:20Keep tracking, Rick.
24:22Towards the wrench.
24:23And you have to do a few things here and there to snazz it up a bit.
24:28Albie, I'm losing control.
24:30Blaze!
24:31Come out!
24:33Come out!
24:37Albie didn't see it as trying to cheat people or deceive them or anything.
24:42As far as he was concerned, it was just tying the film together.
24:45Well, when these current affair programs came out, I think it really shocked him and took him by surprise.
24:53It was devastating to think that, you know, people could just turn on you like that.
24:59You know, they all want to can me and they all want to knock me down and they all want
25:02to, all got something to say.
25:0560 minutes, everybody, he all wants to get into me.
25:07I'm sure he was devastated.
25:09You know, I mean, you go from the top of the hill and all of a sudden you come tumbling
25:15down and your name's not what it used to be.
25:18It must have been pretty hard.
25:24Then he went overseas and forgot about Australia for a little while.
25:29But I think it really hurt him.
25:31Well, it knocked hell out of me and I just took off and went and hid in the bush.
25:41So much wind.
25:43I've always had that mentality.
25:45Nothing is easy in life.
25:48You grow in hardships.
25:52So, to me, it was about one of the hardest ships that I had to face.
25:58And I had to overcome it.
26:01Doesn't this make you want to buy another boat?
26:03Yeah.
26:05After World Safari 3 sort of didn't work out, I think he wanted to give it away.
26:10And then he just thought, this is all I know.
26:12So, he thought, I'll just give it another go.
26:15Kept doing docos because he had another market in America.
26:20Then we made our way into a tributary of the Amazon.
26:23In the late 90s, the Travel Channel bought a lot of the old Albie Mengel's television shows and films because
26:31they were cheap.
26:32But these programs worked.
26:35They started to rate.
26:37And we decided to continue by commissioning an entirely new series made for the American market called Adventure Bound.
26:46This is a feedlot in Africa.
26:51We were aware that Albie brought a sort of dubious reputation.
26:57But, at the same time, we also understood Australian culture.
27:03That Australians love to knock people off the pedestal once they've reached a certain height.
27:12Why now? There's something there.
27:14I mean, the bottom line was, at that moment, Albie was good for our business.
27:22And he was telling stories that our folks related to.
27:28My first mate decided to help out.
27:30But she got a bit of a shock.
27:33We had great success.
27:35They loved it.
27:50When he was hot, he was hot.
27:52And it did a lot for the country.
27:54And it did a lot for the people that went to those films too.
27:59Pure bread?
28:00Ah, no.
28:02He's actually off one of the reserves back home in Canada.
28:05Really? Oh, you brought him out from Canada?
28:07I just hope the rest of his life is peaceful.
28:12I think he deserves a bit of peace now.
28:14He's a beauty.
28:16Yeah, he's pretty gentle here.
28:18He's living this hermit life because he chooses to do so.
28:23Isn't it wonderful if you can have a choice to live the life you want?
28:27Never mind what anybody else says.
28:30You do your thing.
28:32I've never actually thought about hanging up my boots.
28:37Always kept the cameras and always thinking about a new idea.
28:44He's still going.
28:46You know, he talks to me sometimes about, we want to go to Darwin and on the way back,
28:49let's do a little adventure.
28:51You know, let's go and do some filming on the way back.
28:53So, it's still in his blood.
28:55So, he's got a bit of other breed in him, has he?
28:59I think Husky.
29:01Albie would have done what Albie did, whether cameras were rolling or not.
29:07Albie was who he was.
29:09I think that Albie Mangle's legacy is that he gave people the travel bug.
29:16I don't think we'll ever understand how many kids sat there and just went,
29:19this is amazing, I want to be just like him.
29:24If you have a big enough dream, you can make it work.
29:28And that's what I want to relay on to kids today.
29:34Go and see my film and then go and take on what you want to take on.
29:39and stick to it.
29:41It can be done.
29:45It can be done.
29:53And then, yeah, we will look at him as if we want to take the time after again.けれども
30:01which I've just stopped there a bit is you willOU. That's
30:02what we want to take on top of theів Scholz们, we're
30:03storytelling, yeah. And that's
30:03our website. And, yeah,
30:03we're going to have you on our website. I want it to
30:03done. All right. That's
30:03when I 한번
30:03resources you come up with, I want to allow me
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