The four people who own Great Aussie Bush Camp have sold the Hunter-based business to three investment funds for $60 million.
Family members Sarah and Brad Love and Simone and Brad Higgins bought the former Leyland Brothers World and bush camp site an the Pacific Highway at Tea Gardens in 2009 and now operate two other camps at Kincumber and Morisset.
Investment fund managers MA Financial, FinCap and Pengana Capital completed the buyout in November.
FinCap chairman Christian Ryan said in an investor presentation that the Great Aussie Bush Camp freehold properties at Tea Gardens and Kincumber and leasehold on the Dora Creek camp at Morisset represented half the value of the transaction.
The three sites occupy about 73 hectares of land.
The former Great Aussie Bush Camp owners approached an advisory firm in April 2022 to broker a sale.
The investment firms have paid $47 million up front for the business and will pay the former owners another $13 million over the next two years if the bush camps meet forecast targets.
The former owners bought the 28-hectare Kincumber site in 2012 for $10 million.
The 16-hectare Morisset camp opened early last year.
The bush camps have survived despite a fire which destroyed the replica Ayers Rock tourist attraction at the Tea Gardens site in 2018 and prolonged closures during COVID-19 lockdowns.
Mr Ryan said the bush camps catered for about 65,000 schools students a year ranging in age from year four to year nine.
He told investors that the school camp industry was an "unloved" sector of the investment market but Great Aussie Bush Camp was a "market leader" in Australia.
He said the business was "probably" the largest privately owned school camp operation in the nation.
"We think we've found the best one in Australia," he said.
Mr Ryan said the new owners hoped to "roll out" the Great Aussie Bush Camp operating model up and down the eastern seaboard.
