FEATURE
Vale Geoff Crowther Geoff Crowther, intrepid traveller and adventurer, pioneering guidebook writer, much-loved eccentric and Northern Rivers favourite, died earlier this year at the age of seventy-seven. Here Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet, pays tribute to an icon of travel who undoubtedly succeeded in making the planet a little less lonely. He sold millions of books, he played a key role in overthrowing an African dictator, he was banned in another African country, maps he drew were shown alongside a Tolkien map of Middle Earth in a display at the British Library, and he was from just outside Byron Bay. However, his death in April 2021 went virtually unnoticed in Australia, apart from an obituary in the Byron Shire Echo. 08 | SPRING 2021 northerly
Unnoticed in Australia perhaps, but elsewhere in the world Geoff Crowther’s departure prompted lengthy reports in every Times you can mention: The Times of London, The Financial Times, even The New York Times all noted the key role Geoff, from his rainforest retreat at Burringbar, played for travellers all over the world, in that pre-pandemic golden era of independent travel.
I turned up in Australia – fresh off Asia’s hippie trail – in 1972 and with my wife Maureen created Lonely Planet the following year. Lonely Planet quickly needed more writers and Geoff was clearly our man. In London, he was the travel expert behind the BIT Guides, the main funding source for the very 1960s ‘underground information centre’, BIT. Pete Townshend and Paul McCartney may have helped
