A century ago, a Melbourne man named Bill McGeary bolted seats into the back of a truck during the 1924 tram strike and started carrying commuters. That improvisation grew into APT, now one of Australia's biggest family-owned travel groups, celebrating its centenary under third-generation leadership.

Lou Tandy, who took over the business alongside her brother Rob in 2023, recently shared the story at the company's 100th birthday lunch at Berowra Waters Inn — and it is a striking one. When COVID grounded every tour and cruise, APT's revenue went to zero overnight and stayed there for roughly three years. A cyberattack knocked out systems at the worst possible moment, and her father Geoff McGeary, the man who built the company into an international brand, was living with her family after a stroke, unable to grasp that all travel had stopped.

Tough calls followed: partnerships and acquisitions sold at distressed prices to protect the core APT brand. Tandy says she always knew the company would survive — her father's dinner-table lesson about the family's horse-and-cart origins, where his own father favoured horses over trucks, was all about constant reinvention. "You can't stand still."

Interestingly, some of APT's darkest months produced its boldest ideas. With no ships sailing, the team designed new river vessels, and Tandy pushed for a gathering space at the front of each one — the Conversation Lounge, inspired by people telling stories around a campfire.

There's a family footnote worth savouring. In 1962, after Bill's death, an accountant told Geoff's mother Hazel to sell the business because Geoff — who had dyslexia — would "amount to nothing." He asked for a couple of years instead, ran school bus routes, then launched camping expeditions through Central Australia that grew into global touring and cruising. He earned an OAM and was named an Australian Tourism Legend; this year, an accounting firm rated APT among Australia's best-managed businesses.

The next chapter is ambitious. APT has named its first purpose-built ocean ship: Capricorn, a nod to Geoff's expedition boat Beyond Capricorn, itself named for Tandy's mother's star sign. Launching in early 2029, it represents the company's biggest single investment, sailing the Mediterranean before chartering to Quark Expeditions for Antarctic expeditions. Business is booming too — a record year in 2025, the strongest fortnight of sales in October 2026, and a billion-dollar revenue target by 2030, with Tandy freshly named EY Entrepreneur of the Year in the consumer category.

For travellers, this matters because APT's expansion means more small-ship river and ocean cruising options from a company that stayed family-owned through a near-death experience — and whose ships are being designed around connection rather than just capacity.