He’s the world’s richest king : 17,000 homes, 38 private jets, 300 cars and 52 luxury yachts

The first number that stops you in your tracks isn’t even the 17,000 homes. It’s the 38 private jets. You try to picture them all lined up on a tarmac somewhere—sleek white bodies gleaming in the sun—like an airshow that never ends. Then you add the 300 cars, the 52 luxury yachts, the palaces, the art, the gold-plated everything… and your mind does what minds do when faced with absurd scale: it simply gives up. Yet behind these numbers there is a real person, a real country, and a very real question for the rest of us—especially those of us watching from a big, weather-beaten island at the bottom of the world.

The King Who Owns a Thousand Sunsets

Somewhere between the heat haze of the Arabian desert and the blue shimmer of the Gulf, a king wakes up and chooses which coastline to call home for the night.

He can step out onto a marble balcony in one of his thousands of residences, or descend to a private dock where one of dozens of yachts rocks gently against the pier. If he’s in the mood for altitude, there are jets warmed and waiting—38 flying lounges able to leapfrog him across the globe faster than an Australian red-eye from Perth to Sydney.

It sounds like fiction, the kind of excess a screenwriter would be told to tone down for being “unrealistic”. But the world’s richest king is very real. His estate is estimated to include around 17,000 homes, 300 high-end cars, and 52 luxury yachts—floating palaces in their own right.

Where most of us count homes in single digits and cars in ones and twos, he collects assets the way the rest of us collect memories. Each property its own climate, its own scent, its own skyline. Imagine having so many bedrooms that you could sleep in a different one every night from now until retirement and never repeat a view.

Desert Wealth, Ocean Dreams

If you’ve ever flown into Dubai or Doha from Sydney or Melbourne, you’ll remember the feeling: the plane crosses the dry guts of Australia, glides over endless blues of the Indian Ocean, then finally that strange moment when sea gives way to sand and glass—skyscrapers rising out of baked earth as if someone rolled a futuristic city straight onto a dune.

This is the setting for royal wealth on a scale that makes even well-heeled Aussies blink. Oil and gas, real estate, sovereign wealth funds—this is not the story of a single lucky strike, but of an entire nation built around a subterranean river of money.

Where we in Australia talk about “the mining boom” and “housing affordability”, in this corner of the world the scale feels almost mythic. Here, instead of a beach shack on the coast or a fibro place in the suburbs, the royal family can choose between mansions that look like someone tried to recreate the Taj Mahal, the Louvre, and a Bond villain’s lair all at once.

It’s not just the architecture—it’s the atmosphere. Air-conditioned marble courtyards, fountains that never run dry, private zoos, chandeliers the size of small cars. Outside, the desert heat shimmers at 45 degrees. Inside, eternal spring. For an Australian used to cracked earth, El Niño, and Level 2 water restrictions, it’s like stepping into an alternate universe where scarcity has been temporarily placed on mute.

The Numbers That Make Your Brain Itch

Numbers this big start to lose their meaning, so let’s lay them out in a way that might actually land. Imagine you, an ordinary Aussie, juggling a mortgage, a car loan, maybe the lingering smell of last night’s bolognese clinging to your rental. Now compare that to the king’s catalogue of possessions:

Each jet has its own interior mood: cream leather and polished timber, Champagne on standby, the faint sterile chill of recycled air swirling with expensive cologne. Each yacht carries its own horizon, tailored decks where the ocean sighs against the hull like it’s trying to get in on the conversation.

Back home, we argue about whether it’s okay to park a jet ski on a crowded beach. Here, entire ports quietly accommodate floating palaces—helipads, swimming pools, and crew bedrooms stacked like a cruise ship for a single extended family.

What Does a King Dream of Owning Next?

Once you’ve collected nearly everything that can be bought, what remains? This is where the story drifts away from the raw spectacle of cars and jets and slides into something more unsettling—and more human.

In Australia, we’re used to measuring success in experiences: the lap around the country in a dusty 4WD, a season picking fruit, the first surf lesson at Bondi or Torquay, the family camping trip where you half-slept on a blow-up mattress that kept deflating. Here, our wealth—when we have it—is usually measured in time and freedom: the choice to knock off work early, to take a weekday off for a fishing trip, to renovate the old weatherboard instead of moving on.

For a king whose fortune stretches across continents, the dream shifts scale. Ownership isn’t about a better car—it’s about territory, influence, legacy. Private islands, stakes in global companies, skyscrapers in cities that most of us will only glimpse through an airplane window. It’s no longer about “stuff”; it’s about an imprint on the planet itself.

And yet, even here, the basic human questions don’t really change. Is there peace in all this? Does waking up with 52 yachts at your disposal feel any different, in a deep-down way, from waking up knowing the swell looks good and you’ve managed to wrangle a day off to surf? Does a new palace land in the soul any heavier than a first home bought on the outskirts of Brisbane or Adelaide?

The Australian Lens: Sunburnt Country, Measured Luxury

Australians have a complicated relationship with wealth. We’ll side-eye a show-off, but happily cheer on a tradie who “has a go” and ends up with a holiday house on the coast. We joke about “the rich” while pouring our spare cash into utes, caravans, and trips to Bali and Tassie.

So when we read about a king who sits atop a mountain of possessions so colossal that it distorts the numbers, our reaction is a blend of disbelief, curiosity, and a faint, uneasy awe. We compare it—almost instinctively—to our own lived realities:

• The couple in western Sydney calculating every interest rate rise.
• The FIFO worker flying to and from the Pilbara, not in a private jet, but in a packed commercial flight with high-vis jackets and tired eyes.
• The farmer in drought-stricken country counting every cloud.

That contrast, between a world where 300 cars sit under shaded roofs and a world where one ute is nursed through another year of rego and repairs, is where the story sharpens. It doesn’t mean wealth is evil, or that success should be distrusted. But it does ask us quietly, under the hum of the air conditioner and the rustle of gum leaves outside: how much is enough?

The Sound of a Jet, the Sound of a Kookaburra

Picture this: one of those 38 jets streaks silently high above the Indian Ocean, a barely visible dart of white and silver. Inside, the cabin glows with soft lighting. Champagne flutes tremble lightly on polished tables. The engines are a distant roar, more felt than heard—a constant, powerful thrum.

Now switch scenes. Just after dawn in regional New South Wales, the air smells of eucalyptus and damp soil. A kookaburra breaks into that laughing cackle which somehow always sounds like it knows more than you do. A magpie warbles from a power line. Out the back, the neighbour’s dog shakes off a night’s sleep, tags jingling.

From orbit, those two moments happen on the same spinning globe, under the same thin blue film of atmosphere. One life conducted at 40,000 feet, another at 400mm above a dew-wet lawn. Both real, both human, both—if we’re honest—defined not just by what we own, but by what we notice.

Our king might have the means to chase eternal summer around the world, never feeling cold rain on his face unless it’s falling on a private helipad. But an Australian standing barefoot in the backyard, cup of tea in hand, watching the sky go pink over a line of gum trees, is rich in a way no spreadsheet can tally.

Why This Story Sticks With Us

We keep telling stories about the ultra-rich because they sit at the outer edge of our imagination. They test the limits of our ideas about fairness, possibility, and the purpose of money. They force the question: if you had all of that, what would you actually do with it?

For many Australians, the honest answer would be surprisingly modest. Pay off the mortgage. Help out family. Buy a reliable car. Travel a bit. Maybe finally get that block by the beach or in the bush. Most of our fantasies stop well before the 38th jet or the 52nd yacht.

That’s what makes the king’s story feel almost like a fable. It isn’t simply about envy or outrage; it’s about perspective. It invites us to look at our own lives, our coastlines, our messy cities and stubborn bushlands, and ask: what do we truly value?

In the End, What Can’t Be Bought

Strip away the headlines, the eye-watering numbers, the gleaming catalogues of jets and yachts, and you’re left with something surprisingly simple. There are sunsets this king will never see: the ones falling behind red cliffs in the Kimberley, the light spilling gold over the Great Ocean Road, the soft fade of day on a quiet Tasmanian bay.

There are dinners he’ll never have: the slightly chaotic family barbie where the snags are a bit burnt and someone forgot the tomato sauce. The cheap plastic plate on your lap, the mozzie coil burning down beside an old esky, the sound of kids running barefoot on concrete.

Wealth on this scale can own almost everything: bricks, steel, engines, marble, whole slices of skylines. But it can’t own the feeling of laughing with mates under a Hills Hoist at midnight, or the sharp salt smell of the sea when you jump into cold water on a hot day and feel your whole skin wake up.

The world’s richest king has 17,000 homes, 38 private jets, 300 cars, and 52 luxury yachts. You may have one bedroom, a second-hand hatchback, and a favourite rock on a local headland where you go to watch the waves hammer the shore. Somewhere between his plenty and your enough lies the real question for our time, quietly waiting for an honest answer: which version of wealth do you trust with your one, wild, finite life?

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it really possible for one royal family to own this many homes and assets?

Yes. In some monarchies, especially those enriched by oil and gas, assets are held across vast portfolios that include palaces, private residences, commercial buildings, land, and investments. When tallied together, the figures can reach into the tens of thousands of properties.

How does this level of royal wealth compare to wealthy Australians?

Even Australia’s richest individuals and families generally don’t approach the sheer scale of royal wealth fueled by decades of resource revenues and sovereign investment funds. The difference is not just in millions or billions, but in the types and quantities of assets owned globally.

Who actually pays for all these jets, yachts, and homes?

Funding typically comes from a combination of personal royal fortunes, state-linked investment funds, and income from national resources such as oil and gas. In some systems, the line between private royal wealth and public funds can be blurred, which is often a subject of debate.

Why are Australians so fascinated by stories of extreme wealth?

Australians tend to value fairness and modesty, so extreme wealth sits at an interesting crossroads of curiosity, scepticism, and moral questioning. These stories also provide a stark contrast to local realities like housing affordability and cost-of-living pressures.

What can Australians take away from hearing about the world’s richest king?

For many, it sharpens perspective. It can highlight the gap between excess and sufficiency, and prompt reflection on what we actually value: time, relationships, place, and experiences—things that aren’t easily measured in jets, cars, or palaces.