Kerry Packer by Michael Stahl (i read books .txt) 📕

‘James knows quite well that I regarded Kerry as a bloody good driver … He was always competitive in the karts, and for a big, heavy man—he was using the karts quite hard, and it takes a bit of skill for a heavy man to get a kart to go fast. And I never saw him make a mistake on them. He just had that natural ability.’

The motorised fun didn’t stay on the ground, though, as Packer was quick to get onto the new-fangled flying machines called ultra-lights.

He bought six of the spindly, rasping machines—apparently owning a variety of makes, as they were damaged and replaced—though very few guests were qualified to fly them. Trevor Sykes laughs: ‘You didn’t want to be a guest at Ellerston, because suddenly, with no training whatsoever, you’re shoved into one of these things and, “Fly it, you bastard!”’

ON SEA AND AIR

F. Scott Fitzgerald was put on this earth to say it: ‘Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.’ What Fitzgerald didn’t say was that the very rich can be different from each other, too.

Among several of the world’s wealthiest there has been a long-running battle for supremacy on the high seas. The superyacht contest has no shortage of high-stakes players. But at the head of the fleet in recent years have been men like tech kings Paul Allen (Microsoft) and Larry Ellison (Oracle), Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and the expected Middle Eastern and south-east Asian royals.

It’s mostly about size: the 180-metre Azzam, the largest private superyacht in the world when launched in 2013, is roughly two-thirds the size of the legendary Cunard ocean liner, Queen Elizabeth II. Owned by the Emir of Abu Dhabi, Azzam usurped the previous size queen, Abramovich’s 162 million Eclipse, which boasts around 100 rooms, 70 crew, a three-man submarine and space for three helicopters.

But it’s also about beauty. The staggering size of these floating palaces is concealed by their sleek and elegant lines, more resembling oversized speedboats than scaled-down ocean liners.

None of this seems to have impressed Packer, when he overcame years of nautical indifference—he had always regarded Sir Frank’s sailing exploits as a waste of money—and went looking for a boat.

Packer could have taken the usual route and commissioned a new design from one of the leading German or Italian superyacht specialists. He looked instead to an old and extremely unusual vessel, to be internally transformed and refitted while retaining its original character.

At 87.6 metres in length, Arctic P still ranks around 50th in the list of the world’s biggest private yachts. Among its sister superyacht fleet, however, Packer’s pleasure craft stands out like, er, dogs’, for the simple reason that it’s an ugly bloody bastard of a boat.

This observation of Genghis Khan—‘he wasn’t lovable, but he was bloody efficient’—might be applied to Arctic P, which began life in 1969 as one of the world’s largest ocean-going, ice-classed tugs. Yes, a tugboat. If your 11,000-container super carrier or five-star Queen Mary 2 breaks down in the north-Atlantic, the Arctic is the nuggetty, grimy-faced Charles Bronson character that comes to the rescue.

Packer bought the vessel in 1993 and initiated a year-long, $40 million refit in Malta, during which its interior was transformed into that of a luxury yacht.

Arctic P is said to include accommodation for 12 guests with spa baths in each suite, along with a cinema, indoor swimming pool and the obligatory helipad on the aft deck, along with a sizeable speedboat and a smaller watercraft. She retains a crew of up to 25.

Arctic P’s snub nose, low sides, upright superstructure and forest of radar domes and observation towers are the pure antithesis—or the Packer anti-statement—of superyacht styling. But from the sunny shores of Sydney to the ice floes of Alaska, there’s virtually nowhere that Arctic P need fear to float, and Boat International magazine once named her among the world’s top five expedition yachts.

Businessmen of Packer’s stature need to be able to travel at will. In a one-day round trip from his Sydney office, via chartered plane and helicopters, Packer once personally inked a deal with Rupert Murdoch, who was luxuriating on his 48 million yacht Morning Glory in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands.

He maintained a small air force of his own, the centrepiece being a McDonnell-Douglas DC-8 that had served its first 16 years as an airliner in the US with United Airlines before passing in 1985 to Hawaiian Airlines. In 1991, ‘N897OU’ was converted to VIP private-jet spec for Packer’s Australian Consolidated Press.

This DC-8 was the long-range ‘62’ version, which featured an extra-large wing and forward-raked engine mounts—modifications that gave it a fuel capacity of some 95,500 litres and a range of 7400 nautical miles. By coincidence, or perhaps not, that range accommodated a non-stop flight from Sydney to Las Vegas (around 6700 nautical miles).

Not that he needed to burn his own petrol money: the Vegas casinos maintain their own fleets of biz-jets, to scoop up high rollers when they feel the itch. More than once, Packer was ferried from London in the MGM Grand’s Gulfstream V.

According to Paul Barry’s The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer, the DC-8 was leased at a cost of $4 million annually, and featured a main bedroom with en suite, a dining table for 12 and separate quarters for the crew. It’s also been suggested that Packer’s polo ponies were frequent DC-8 flyers.

In 1998 the DC-8, by now re-registered as VP-BLG, was fitted out as a sort of flying hospital to ferry Packer to New York for heart surgery. (The DC-8 left Packer’s hands in 2001 and was most recently plane-spotted as the official government jet of the Republic of Togo.)

Meanwhile, Packer’s smaller Falcon 200 jet stood in for shorter trips—including, most generously, those for which it was on 24-hour standby on behalf of St Vincent’s Hospital in