Billy Graham spent six months preaching to a third of Australia while his children waited at home.
Franklin Graham just told Sean Hannity what that homecoming actually cost the family.
The question young Franklin asked his mother when his father came home hurt Billy Graham.
Billy Graham's 1959 Australia Crusade Reached a Third of the Nation
In February 1959, Billy Graham boarded a plane for Australia. Getting there meant stops in Hawaii and Fiji – jet aircraft hadn't yet made the world smaller – and he would spend months preaching across every major Australian city before coming home.
Franklin Graham described the journey to Hannity in his own words. "You would fly to Hawaii, then you'd stay a couple of days, then you'd fly to Fiji and stay a couple days, and then you're going down to Sydney or Melbourne or wherever you're going," he said.
By the time Billy Graham touched Australian soil, weeks had already passed.
Over 3 million Australians – nearly a third of the country's entire population – attended a crusade event in person. Melbourne's crowd at the Cricket Ground hit 143,750 on a single day, a venue record that stood for decades. Sydney drew nearly a million. Half the country heard Billy Graham's Gospel message either live or over the airwaves and telephone lines.
The 1959 Southern Cross Crusade was the closest thing to a national revival Australia had ever witnessed – crime rates slowed, long-overdue debts were repaid, and churches across the country were revitalized for a generation.
And Billy Graham's children were at home in Montreat, North Carolina.
Waiting.
What the Billy Graham Family Paid for His Ministry
Franklin Graham joined Sean Hannity for a recent episode of Hang Out with Sean Hannity and shared what happened when his father finally came home.
He had been away so long that his own child didn't know who he was.
"Mama, who's that strange man in the bed with you?"
That's what a young Franklin asked his mother when Billy Graham walked back through the door. She later shared the question with the family. Franklin relayed it to Hannity – noting that it hurt his father to hear.
"But my father spent all that time in Australia," Franklin told Hannity, "and so when he came home … we just didn't recognize him."
Every one of the Graham children has spoken about what it cost to grow up with a father who belonged to the world. Billy wrote letters and postcards to each of his children from every city he visited and loved them unconditionally.
But he wasn't there.
Ruth Graham raised five children largely on her own through his longest absences. She supported the ministry without reservation and spent decades holding a household together from a house in the North Carolina mountains while her husband preached to the world.
The Australians who found their way into those crusade meetings had no idea there were kids in North Carolina counting the days. They just knew their country wasn't the same. Nobody hands you a receipt for that kind of trade.
How Franklin Graham and Samaritan's Purse Carry Billy Graham's Legacy
He looked at that life – the absences, the postcards, the stranger in the hall – and chose it anyway.
At 74, he leads both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse, the international Christian relief organization that deploys into warzones, earthquakes, and famines across the globe, answering the same call his father answered six decades ago.
He has made the same trade.
Samaritan's Purse has worked in more than 100 countries – earthquake rubble in Turkey, field hospitals in Ukraine, flood zones in Pakistan. Franklin Graham has been on the ground for much of it. The planes leave on schedule whether he is home or not.
He also knows what those six months in Australia produced. More than 150,000 Australians made decisions for Christ during the 1959 crusade.
The leaders shaped by those meetings influenced Christian ministry across the Pacific for generations. Billy Graham preached in person to an estimated 200 million people in 180 countries before his death at 99.
Billy Graham gave what God asked of him, and so did Ruth and their five children – including a boy who once looked at the man in the doorway and didn't know his own father's face.
The world on the other end of that price still bears the mark.
Sources:
- Taylor Penley, "Franklin Graham shares toll of Billy Graham's time away evangelizing, recalls not recognizing own father," Fox News, October 15, 2026.
- "A Look Back at Billy Graham's Groundbreaking 1959 Australia Crusade," BillyGraham.org.
- Judith Smart, "Billy Graham Crusade," eMelbourne Encyclopedia.