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The Begining
Mr Wyllie was born in Perth, Western Australia in the Depression years of the early 1930s. His parents separated and divorced when he was 8 years old and, for a short period while his mother worked in the country to try and support herself and his three younger sisters, he was placed in an orphanage operated by the Methodist Church in Victoria Park, and then later into the care of the Salvation Army at their children's home in Nedlands. Shortly before his 10th birthday, the family were reunited and moved to a small rental home in Scarborough.
Mr Wyllie's business career started at a very early age. In 1943, the local Post Master put up a sign at the Scarborough Post Office seeking a boy who could deliver telegrams after school. Just 11 years old, Bill Wyllie successfully applied for this job which paid the princely sum of 15 shillings per week, the same amount as the rent on the family house.
Shortly afterwards he approached the local newsagent and obtained the job of Paperboy delivering the afternoon newspaper, THE DAILY NEWS, and combining both jobs on the same round. This added a further 15 shillings per week to his income.
Not long after his 13th birthday, he left school and for the next two years worked in timber mills owned by a close family friend near York and in the karri forests in Karridale, south-west Western Australia. This work was physically demanding but the pay was excellent. At 15, with the family on a much stronger financial footing, he returned to Perth to learn a trade and took up an apprenticeship as a motor mechanic. At the same time he started night school and day release classes at the Perth Technical College studying automotive and aeronautical engineering as well as correspondence home studies which he continued into his early 20s.
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At 17 he put his age up by a year to the entrance level of 18 and successfully passed the entrance exam to enable him to join the Citizen’s Air Force 25 Squadron, based at Pearce, as a flight mechanic.
In February 1952, shortly before his 20th birthday, he was invited to travel to Singapore to join WEARNE BROTHERS LIMITED, an Australian owned group of automobile, truck and heavy equipment distributors. The Group controlled a major network of sales and service outlets and branches throughout the then Federated States of Malaya.
For the next 12 years Mr Wyllie climbed steadily through the ranks of the WEARNE GROUP management working in various branches in Singapore, Malaya, Sarawak and British North Borneo. It was during this period that he learned and honed his now renowned management skills and business acumen.
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Mr Wyllie was also a gifted and very successful racing driver and it was his fearlessness and numerous wins behind the wheel of his own designed and built racing car, the powerful WYLLIE SPECIAL, that eventually resulted in him being sponsored by the SINGAPORE STRAITS TIMES newspaper group to represent Singapore at the 1958 Macau Grand Prix.
Although the mechanical failure of a rear wheel hub caused him to crash while in third place midway through the race, Mr Wyllie's performance had attracted the attention and respect of two powerful and influential Hong Kong businessmen, both of whom owned successful racing teams. They offered him sponsorship as one of their team drivers.
This led to a number of spectacular successes in production car races and Grands Prix in Singapore, Macau and Johore Bharu over the next few years and, more importantly, to a lifelong friendship between Mr Wyllie and one of his sponsors, an American, Mr Robert (Bob) Harper.
Bob Harper had lived all his life in the then British Colony of Hong Kong and was the principal of WALLACE HARPER AND COMPANY LTD, the FORD and LOTUS distributor.