Richard Harold Smith FRSA (born 18 March 1944) is an Australian entrepreneur, aviator and philanthropist. He holds a number of aviation world records and is the founder of Dick Smith Electronics, Australian Geographic and Dick Smith Foods. He was selected as 1986 Australian of the Year. In 2010, he founded the media production company Smith&Nasht with the intention of producing films about global issues. In 2015, he was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia. He is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Early life
Smith's father was a salesman and sometime manager at Angus & Robertson's bookstore. He started a business that failed when Smith was 17, and his mother a housewife. His maternal grandfather was pictorialist photographer Harold Cazneaux.
As a child, Smith was considered academically hopeless and, having a speech defect, called himself "Dick Miff". From his home in East Roseville, Smith attended primary school at Roseville Public School at which, for the fifth grade, he ranked academically 45th in a class of 47. He attended North Sydney Technical High School. After three years of French, he managed only 7% in the Intermediate Certificate examination. He went on to complete his Leaving Certificate in 1961.
He joined the 1st East Roseville Scout Group as a Wolf Cub in 1952, aged 8 and later as a Boy Scout and Rover until 1967, earning the Baden-Powell Award in 1966.
Smith gained his amateur radio licence at the age of 16. He holds call sign VK2DIK. In his early 20s, Smith worked as a taxi radio repair technician for several years.
Aviation and adventures
Smith holds many world aviation records, made in rotary and fixed-wing aircraft and beneath balloons: First solo trans-Atlantic flight by helicopter (1982) First solo circumnavigation by helicopter (1983) First helicopter to the North Pole (1987) First circumnavigation landing at both poles (1989) First non-stop balloon crossing of the Australian continent (1993) First east-west circumnavigation by helicopter (1995) First Trans-Tasman balloon flight (2001)
Smith's first significant adventure was in 1964 when he sailed with a group of Rover Scouts to Ball's Pyramid in the Pacific Ocean—the highest sea spire in the world. Failing to top it on this occasion, Smith returned in 1980, completed an ascent and, together with Hugh Ward and John Worrall, formally claimed the land for Australia by unfurling the New South Wales state flag. He went on, in 1988, to sue the state government over its ban on recreational climbing of the spire because the "restrictions really attack people's right to have an adventure". His action was taken when the government refused an application by Greg Mortimer, the first Australian to climb Mt Everest, to make the climb.
Smith learned to fly in 1972, graduating to a twin engine Beech Baron. In 1976, he competed in the Perth-to-Sydney air race.
Smith conceived and initiated airline flights over Antarctica. His first flight was made by a chartered Qantas aircraft on 13 February 1977. In August the same year, Smith chartered another jumbo, this time to take paying passengers on a 10-hour, 5,000 km flight over the Red Centre of the Outback in search of Lasseter's fabled but lost reef of gold. The search, attended by Lasseter's son Bob and Aboriginal tracker and artist Nosepeg Tjunkata Tjupurrula, found nothing.
At the age of 34, he purchased his first helicopter, a Bell Jetranger II, and, on 23 February 1979, obtained his licence to fly it. In January 1980, with Rick Howell co-piloting the Jetranger, he made a record-setting flight from Sydney to Lord Howe Island and returned (1,163 km). The helicopter opened new opportunities for exploring places otherwise inaccessible.
In 1982–83, Smith successfully completed the first solo helicopter flight around the world. His flight began in Fort Worth, Texas, on 5 August 1982, in a newly purchased Bell Jetranger 206B.