Clyde Packer

Counter-cultural involvement After Clyde Packer's resignation from the family's media interests in 1972, he became briefly involved in the counter-culture, famously donning a kaftan and claiming that it was "better than dieting". In March that year, he explained his motivation for launching the new magazine in the context of changes in the role of sexuality.

He moved to California in 1976 and rarely returned to Australia thereafter. In America, he pursued interests in film, surf culture, and magazine publishing. He bought Surfing Magazine in 1976 and, during the mid-1980s, he expanded his interests by establishing the sister magazines, Bodyboarding Magazine and Volleyball. In 1984, Packer released a book, No Return Ticket, in which he interviewed nine fellow Australian expatriates: Robert Hughes, Gordon Chater, Graham Fraser, Dame Judith Anderson, James Wolfensohn, Germaine Greer, Maxwell Newton, Zoe Caldwell, and Sumner Locke Elliott. According to Mark Thomas of The Canberra Times, the book was a "quirky, frothy anachronism", in which the interviewees "whinge about the Australian cultural cringe in terms which no young Australian would find comprehensible".

Also during 1984, the Costigan Commission issued a draft report into its investigation into the Painters and Dockers Union which implicated a prominent businessman, codenamed the "Goanna", in tax evasion and organised crime activities. In September that year, news reports published leaked case summaries and Kerry outed himself as the "Goanna" but denied all allegations.

In January 1987, Packer told Ali Cromie of The Sydney Morning Herald that he had left Australia because he "would have a better future in America than Australia". Initially Packer had made documentaries but most of his subsequent work was in publishing. Angela was the elder daughter of Dr. Rex Money, a Macquarie Street specialist and neurosurgeon, and Dorothy "Noppy" née Wilkinson. The couple were married at All Saints Church, Woollahra with Kerry as best man and David Halliday as groomsman. In 1972, Packer and Angela divorced.

Packer had relocated to Los Angeles by 1976 where he married his second wife, Kate Clifford, a former model from Brisbane, on 7 July 1977.