Crews control: the celebrity power of Bill Crews

A young homeless woman suddenly begins shouting effusively about the 79-year-old.

“He has a smile for everyone, even me! It doesn’t matter who they are, he will smile and welcome them here … not everyone does that, god bless you Bill!” she says, having just received a bag of free toiletries. A couple of homeless men, here for lunch at the Loaves and Fishes Cafe, nod in agreement.

Crews, looking a little awkward, explains that his high profile – bolstered by his 2GB radio show – has been critical in securing a staggering $70 million in fundraising over nearly 40 years, a fair chunk of it from the likes of millionaires Marcus Blackmore and John Singleton. He’s spent a lot of it on serving nine million meals to those who need them most.

Unquestionably, his fame also played a role for those of far fewer means bequesting the “family jewels” – as one anonymous donor did in the mid-1980s – which ended up raising $10,000 and kicked off Crews’ greater philanthropic ambitions.

“She wrote a letter saying she was never to be identified because her kids would “kill” her,” he laughs.

More recently 75-year-old pensioner Malcolm Mawhinney, who died in 2021, left his derelict Clovelly home – with uninterrupted ocean views – to Crews’ charity. It sold for $4.55 million, though Crews adds bluntly “that only kept us going for six months!”

“We always need money,” he says, adding somewhat sagely, his high profile has also been a factor in his worst personal lows, away from the pulpit and volunteer kitchen.

“There has been a lot of personal sadness,” he concedes, his vocation impacting every relationship of his life. “I have two failed marriages and I often question if I’ve failed my own children as a father.”

But he insists it was a question of his charity’s survival rather than ego that made his name famous in Sydney.

An acolyte of the late Ted Noffs and his Wayside Chapel, Crews first heard “the calling” during a volunteer shift at Wayside’s coffee shop in the early 1970s.

“It was not so much a voice as a knowing. Bang! Bang! Bang! It was like an instant, a millisecond and an eternity all at once. I knew I would leave my job and devote myself to the poorest of the poor. I knew I’d become well-known, but not to worry about that because God would be with me. Likewise, I also knew my personal life would not be terribly happy … and that’s what made me realise the calling was true … because it wasn’t all rainbows and bullshit.”

Crews soon gave up a promising career as an engineer at AWA, much to his parent’s and workmates’ bewilderment, to devote himself to those less fortunate and study theology.

“They thought I was giving my life away, my father was dead against it,” he says, explaining his younger brother Bob, the “apple” of his father’s eye, had been killed several years earlier in a car accident in Tenterfield.

That tragic event, along with his father’s bankruptcy and its lingering impact on his previously middle-class family, provided key lessons about the fragility of life.

He arrived at Ashfield in 1984 to a parish in the grip of faction infighting and a congregation which soon became wary of Crews’ methods.

“A lot of them left. Then it was just me and a core group of 10 old gals who came to church in hats and gloves,” he says.

“I’d been going out with the ambulances at night, to see what was happening around the area. It was pretty tough, things were not great. I told the railway police at Central Station to bring homeless kids to us. We had kids sleeping on pews. I was breaking protocol, but we didn’t care. Those old gals, they were wonderful … they were my angels, like a group of loyal aunts supporting me. They gave those kids unconditional, motherly love. They agreed we had to keep going, to keep helping, especially the kids.

“I knew the church would end up getting pissed off with me, I knew the only way I would survive was if I became really well known.”

Crews had witnessed his mentor Ted Noffs ruffle feathers. Despite having an equally high profile, Noffs was tried by NSW Methodist Church on charges of heresy amid claims his teachings were not in line with official church doctrine in the mid-1970s. It was a sensational story at the time, but Noffs prevailed and was eventually cleared by the church.

Crews admits his actions over the years have created “tension” among his colleagues in the Uniting Church and the broader welfare community.

One of the sticking points has been his ability to raise money. Crews founded the Exodus Foundation within the auspices of the Uniting Church, but around a decade ago set up The Bill Crews Foundation and The Bill Crews Charitable Trust, which are both separate to the church but work “hand-in-hand” with Exodus to care for the tens of thousands of vulnerable people they interact with each year.

He insists the end justifies the means, and that his relationships within the church hierarchy are “much better now”.

“Certain people in the church didn’t like what I was doing. They told me I had to close down some of the services. So what I did was close those bits down in Exodus on the Friday and opened them up on the Monday in the Bill Crews Trust,” he said.

“The ‘mission’ is the person in front of you, that is our core purpose … the rest of it, the structure and all that, yes it’s a bit complicated, but who cares? It really doesn’t matter.”

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