In a railway arch in Hoxton, the trendiest part of north London, a lively party is in full swing. In one room, under a giant disco ball, shiny young people are shouting happily at each other over the music of a live guitarist. In another room down a corridor, where the background ambience is quieter, a bunch of mostly septuagenarian Australians are enjoying a rare reunion.
Long before founding Flight Centre, which Turner still runs today, they – along with the absent Geoff “Spy” Lomas – bought the bus in Yorkshire, recruited the passengers at bacchanalian Antipodean parties in west London, charged them £100 a pop, then set off for Dover without drivers’ licences, insurance, or even much idea of where they were going.The Top Deck story has often been told, so what happened next is pretty well known.
The film, which premiered in London the afternoon before the party, mines a trove of old photos and Super-8 film footage to tell the story with renewed vivacity and humour. As with Top Deck, though, he had his share of good fortune. “The head start I had was that the project was started many years ago, and that the filmmaker involved had actually done many of the interviews,” he says.
“I’d already formed a vision of Skroo in my mind,” Bill James says in the film, at this point. “Every now and then he did something like this, he just didn’t take no for an answer. Life is not going to be like it used to be, if you live in proximity to Skroo.” In 1975 came the trip to Kathmandu, via Iran and Afghanistan. The footage of a creaking old bus on the Khyber Pass and the Grand Trunk Road, with its gormless crew of Aussie ingénues, has to be seen to be believed. The stories are equally incredible.