That is exactly what happened in 2006 after a video of the 1971 reunion with Christian the lion appeared on YouTube.

Yesterday, the Bundeena art curator, now 62, graduated from the University of Wollongong with a Master of Arts by Research - his other passion.

His thesis focused on three historical exhibitions he has curated and explored his personal links to colonial history.

Mr Bourke said his direct ancestor, Philip Gidley King, was on the First Fleet and left behind the earliest journal entries of the First Fleet's contact with Aborigines.

But it is his stories about Christian the lion which are most intriguing.

In 1969, the young traveller and mate John Rendall travelled from Australia to London and bought a lion from Harrods.

"He was just so irresistible. Who would have thought you could even buy a lion?" Mr Bourke said. "We thought we could do as well as anyone in caring for him."

The men raised Christian in the basement of their London furniture shop Sophisticat and exercised him in a graveyard.

But after being introduced to lion saviour George Adamson, who inspired the film Born Free, Christian was returned to the wild.

"We weren't lion addicts but we had become them," Mr Bourke said. "We were very lucky he got back to Africa and lucky he survived the first couple of years in the wild."

The pair returned to Kenya in 1971 and an emotional reunion was filmed for a documentary. There was another reunion a year later but by 1973, Christian had moved on.

An American girl posted the 1971 reunion video on YouTube in September 2006 and after someone added a Whitney Houston soundtrack, it took off.

"We stopped counting at 60 million hits on the internet six months ago," he said.

Mr Bourke has done media interviews around the world and appeared on Oprah. The original book, A Lion Called Christian, was relaunched as an e-book online.

The book has been published in 14 languages and a movie is planned.