Australia (Part 2a)- Eastern Coast

March/April 2001

Back to Sydney and another night in backpacker's hostel. Our bus driver at the airport came from Iraq and told me about the many sights worth visiting (should, one day, I ever be allowed in). We met my Scottish relatives as planned and took over the campervan, while they flew to Melbourne. The Aussie Dollar had plunged again doing a very good impression of a Third World Currency. I was now getting $2.90 to the English Pound. It had been $2.60 when I arrived in January. Prices seemed a lot cheaper now. When I had lived and worked here in 1985, I got $1.40 to the Pound!

Jo's old schoolfriend, Caroline and her husband David had invited us to visit them in Manly, a regenerated peninsula cove on Sydney's eastern harbour. We had a lovely BBQ by Clontarf Bay where a plump pelican swooped in. Behind us was a large mansion, where I had worked as a barman for a private party one Saturday night back in 1985.

It was time to get back on the road and head north for Queensland. It poured with rain as we motored up the Pacific Highway and passed a strange sight. It was called the 'Ayers Rock Roadhouse' and was miniature fibreglass Ayers Rock about 50ft high. The question was "Why?"

Outside Taree is a little publicised gem - Ellenborough Falls. At 160m, they were supposedly the largest 'single drop' waterfalls in the Southern Hemisphere, but I didn't believe the claim. Nevertheless, they were spectacular. A torrent of white water thundered over the edge, surrounded by lush rainforests. We walked down to the bottom of the falls, then up and around the other side of the valley for another view, and finally back at the top of the falls, I climbed out onto the edge and peered over. Nice drop! One of New South Wales' best kept secrets, we had the place to ourselves for much of the morning except for a couple of large 3 ft long goanna and monitor lizards lumbering around.

This area was one of rich green pastures cut out of the forests for grazing dairy cattle. Wanchope called itself the 'Cedar Capital of Australia' and its roadsides were littered with vivid purple jacaranda bushes with a backdrop of cedar wood forests.

Port Macquarie had recently been named the 'Koala Capital of Australia' (as you can see every town needs an angle for tourism promotion). Here we visited the quiet, free, voluntary run, 'koala hospital' which cared for damaged koalas. Most were road accident victims. How much can a koala bear? A dozen pens contained koalas in various states of repair. They had sheltered perches about head level where some were fed milk by milk drop, but also gum trees to climb within the pen when they got fitter. We were able to get some great close up photos and learn a lot from the volunteers.

Koalas are tail less marsupials with no relation to the bear, but distantly related to the wombat. They are solitary, territorial animals well adapted for a life in the trees and their limbs are extremely strong and paws are specialised for grasping. Two thumbs on the front paws are opposed to three fingers giving extra strength. The back feet have 4 toes, two of which are webbed for grooming the hair and a single thumb, which acts as a lever, has no claw. They range in size from 6-13 kilos. Healthy ones have soft grey hair but these ill koalas had brown fur.

The female gives birth to a peanut sized, furless Joey which makes its way unaided into the mother's vertically opening pouch. It attaches itself to a teat and remains there for 6 months. The mother then feeds it 'pap' - a green slimy substance (not unlike a McDonalds’s Big Mac), as a transition to green leaves. It then leaves the pouch. clings to the mother's back for another 6 months until it becomes fully independent. They live for 10-15 years, and feed on 50 types of Eucalyptus trees, but the leaves are very fibrous and difficult to digest. Consequently, koalas have a highly developed fibre digestion organ that breaks its down. Their 2 metre long caecums are animal record breakers! They get 'high' off the leaves and spend much of the day dreaming in the trees. Tough life.

In the wild, they have no natural predators, but they were hunted and harvested for their fur by the colonists and Aussies up until the 1920s, when it was realised that they had nearly been wiped out. 'Wet bottom' disease (Cystitis), the destruction of their natural habitat and traffic has reduced their numbers even further. Ironically, like the Americans with their national symbol, the Bald Headed Eagle, the Aussie Koala is almost a goner! There are various breeding programs, hospitals and wildlife parks trying to protect them but your rarely see them in the wild. For all my walking around Oz, I saw only one on Magnetic Island off Queensland, which had probably been released, by a koala hospital. It’s a shame, because they are lovely little animals.

Up the coast, we drove through the Macleay Valley to the small resort of South West Rocks. This area had been hit by the effects of the Vanuatu cyclone and had been flooded so badly, it had been declared an "Disaster" area. The water had now mostly subsided, but there were acres of fields under water and the smelly whiff of land that has been covered recently by water. I had hoped to dive in the underwater 'Fish Cave' at SW Rocks, but the sea was still churned up and visibility underwater was zero. Both Scuba diving schools had cancelled their dives for a further week.

SW Rocks was set on an attractive peninsula with lovely coastal vistas of white sandy beaches with forest backdrops. We did some walking around the trails by the old 19th century 'Trial Bay Gaol' which had one of the best prison locations in the world.

Much of the scenery along the Pacific Highway is the same - endless bland fields as it traces the flattest possible route near the coast. But anytime you take a byroad into the interior, you are once again surrounded by stunning scenery. En route to Coff's Harbour, we headed inland for Bellingen, a fashionable small town for 'arty' people into 'alternative lifestyles'. Hell, they were even sitting at outside windswept cafes at lunchtime discussing Chekov.

Miles of undulating land covered in forests and pastures surrounded it. Every property outside Bellingen seemed to be up for sale. The prices at the estate agents revealed that we could have bought a 3 bedroom 'farmhouse' with swimming pool and 50 acres of land for, wait for it £100,000 ($300,000 Oz). For the same price in London, you'd get a shoebox. It was a lovely area, but I don't know what on earth I'd do there. Maybe that was why people were leaving the area for the coast - chasing jobs. It was a familiar story in Australia

Coffs Harbour was a nondescript, average Aussie holiday city which boasted the “Big Banana” - a sad tourist café with a very large yellow banana (oo-er). As far as bananas go, I don’t suppose they come any bigger than this.

‘Thursday Plantation’ produces more ‘Tea Tree Oil’ products than anywhere else in Oz and exports to 24 countries. This natural substance, used by aborigines and named by Captain Cook, is used for a variety of ailments and the promotion offered a free tour of the factory and plantation. But noone would take us through the factory and the plantation was “off-limits’ because of a plague of mosquitoes (from all the recent flooding). I found this ironic because one of their products was Tea Tree Oil Mosquito Repellent. Why not have some confidence in your product? Get the tourists to put it on and send them in. If it works, you have a ready market. But they didn’t seem so confident. There was an assortment of products including “Tea Tree Dog Shampoo”. So essential to today’s dog. Not. It was all highly uninspiring.

Bryon Bay was a popular backpacker’s centre for various activities. At the small airport outside town, I signed up for a tandem microlite flight. Technically, it is known as a ‘weight shifted controlled aeroplane’ (Trike). Essentially, it is a motorised hang glider with a 580cc engine. We walked to the machine and donned helmets (with intercom). “Dude, where’s my parachute?” I asked David, my pilot. “We don’t use them on these. If the engine cuts out we should be able to glide back down. Theoretically”. I sat behind David in a bucket seat and put my feet on two pedals in front of him. I was in my shorts and T-shirt. We taxied along the grass runway and started the takeoff. The wings are steered by pulling on a long crossbar like a hang glider.

First impression. By Christ, that was an unusual takeoff. Unlike a normal plane takeoff, we soared off the ground at a steep 45’ angle. Jo said, “You just seemed to go straight up”. And didn’t my stomach know it. Second impression. Where is the window? I am strapped into a small bucket seat with nothing on either side except a fall of 1000ft. The wind blows in your face. The engine roars in your ear. I couldn’t get used to being up in the air like this without a parachute strapped to my back. It was unnerving.

The coastal scenery around Byron Bay is stunning. Endless sandy white beaches, blue sea and a rocky peninsula with a white lighthouse on top. From the airfield, we made for the sea. Then as we reached the beach, David swung down and the next thing I knew, we were barrelling 3ft above the beach at top speed. What a brilliant sensation of speed. Then up we went to 1300ft. David let me take the controls and I found the crossbar very heavy to steer as we motored over Byron Bay town.

“How are you at rollercoasters?” David asked, taking the controls. “Give it your best shot” I said. He put the engine into a mock stall and we started plunging down, then kicked the engine in and we regained our balance. My stomach was churning. “OK, I didn’t hear you scream, so let’s do a full stall” said David. The engine cut-out and we dropped like a stone. Total silence. Just the wind and the feeling of - shit I’m going down very quickly, I am not in control and I do not have a parachute. I think I left a brown trail behind my shorts. The aerodynamics of the wings allowed the microlight to naturally grab the wind and we caught a gust, which stabilised us until David switched on the engine.

“So what’s the steering like? I naively asked. We did extreme banking to both the left and right. He pulled sharply with his left arm and we were flying sideways, looking down at the ground with nothing beneath me, not even the Trike. I thought we were going to do a ‘loop-de-loop’ it was so radical.

It was only a 20-minute flight, but it lasted a day. What a buzz. I came back down and jumped around full of adrenaline. “Jo, you have to try this”. “Not bloody likely” she replied. She opted instead for an ‘unofficial’ flying lesson with David in his Cessna aircraft. Jo had started lessons in New Zealand. I had got chatting to Isabel, David’s partner to discover that she had worked with my Australian auntie in Mildura. Small world. As Jo prepared for the lesson, David invited Isabel and I to climb in the back for the ride. So I was lucky enough to get a free plane flight right around the area while Jo learnt to do whatever it is you do in a cockpit. It was a spectacular day for flying with completely clear skies.

Avoiding the backpacker circus, we stayed at Brunswick Heads just up the coast. This was a completely untouristy, normal quiet coastal town and really pleasant. The caravan park was by a large river surrounded in lush mangroves with a lovely breeze and not a mosquito in sight. The ‘Holiday Activities Map’ boasted a walking tour of some famous international sightseeing exhibits; such as ‘Site of the first Post Office’ (why was this special? - there was now a hotel there), ‘site of the first river crossing by bullock’ (bullock sadly missing), and the ‘World War Two anti-tank gun (not many made)’. Locals went around doing their daily chores and chatting on street corners. I liked the place a lot. Unfortunately we had missed the ‘Festival of the Fish n’Chips and Woodchop Carnival’.

Heading north up the Pacific Highway we passed through the hamlet of Mooball. Some bright spark had painted all the telegraph poles in black and white cow skin designs and the Mooball Roadhouse was also covered in the same cow design. Nice to see a little originality. There was also a cute stick-your-head-through-the-board which said, “We had a wee wee at Moo Moo”.

Captain Cook named Mt Warning at sea in 1770 when he saw the towering volcanic plug and used it to warn future shipping about the treacherous offshore reefs. At 1160m, it remains an imposing edifice, covered in forests and dominating a beautiful area of wood and green pastureland. It is the largest extinct shield volcano in the Southern Hemisphere. Twenty million years old, it once covered an area of 4000 sq. km.

The aborigines call it the ‘Cloud Catcher’ because it is often surrounded in clouds. We walked up a lovely trail through different levels of vegetation: subtropical rainforest, warm temperate rainforest, New England Blackbutt and Blue Mountain Ash up to montane heath near the top. The final part was a steep scramble up a near vertical cliff aided by chains. Black Turkeys looked for handouts on top. We failed to see the ‘hip pocket frog’. From the top, through the clouds, we could just about make out Byron Bay on the coast maybe 30 miles away. A lovely walk if you ever have the time, but expect to sweat in the humidity!

We had reached the New South Wales/Queensland and holed up in Tweed Heads. Coolangatta is the first place in Queensland and a continuation of Tweed Heads. What buggers you up is that the clocks go back an hour in Queensland. So everytime we went there, they were an hour behind. Then we lost an hour going back to our campsite. How do people organise their lives there if they live in one place and work in the other? Great to arrive at work an hour earlier, but when you get home, an extra hour has disappeared over the 3 miles since you left the office. The only use would be New Year’s Eve where you could celebrate twice if you headed to Coolangatta.

We had reached the ‘Gold Coast’- Australia’s Costa del Sol, south of Brisbane. With all the high rise hotels, apartments and beautiful beaches, it looked like Miami. The 70km of coastline beaches were too nice to turn down and as we drove up the coastal roads, I’d frequently leap into the glistening water to do some bodysurfing through the crashing waves, while lifeguards posed by with their rescue jet skis. I recommend Currumbin Beach and Burleigh Heads for quiet but unbeatable beaches/waves. There are even showers on the beach so you could wash yourself down after swimming.

We drove past the four major theme parks - ‘Seaworld’, ‘Wet n’ Wild’, ‘Movieworld’ and ‘Dreamworld’. It looked like a poor version of California’s theme parks. We saw a strange sign that said ‘Yatala Pies Crematorium Drive In Theatre’ Eh? I think it was three separate places, but there were no full stops.

We drove into the centre of Brisbane along the speedy freeways. ‘Brizzy’ (pop 1.3m) is now a fully-fledged international cosmopolitan city but never seems to have much to offer me. We did a walking tour in the centre to see a few sights. The City Hall is an impressive sandstone building whose bell tower must have once been the highest point in the city, but other ugly modern towers now dwarf it. Hoyt’s Regent Theatre (a cinema) on Queen Street, the pedestrianized shopping centre, had a fabulous art deco foyer of ceramic tiles with scenes of knights in shining armour and dragons indicating how once it had been a special treat to go to the theatre/cinema. ‘ MacArthur’s Chambers’ was formerly the HQ of General MacArthur when he was Commander in Chief of the SW Pacific Area during World War II. Dripping with carved gargoyles it looked like it belonged to either Gotham City or the ‘Ghostbusters’ movie. The Queensland Art Gallery had some interesting modern art and also a lot of crap.

In the riveting ‘Bayside and Northern Suburbs Star’ I read that “a man allegedly exposed his genitals to a woman standing on a Bald Hills railway station platform around 8am on March 13th. The man appeared from behind a tree in the car park before the train pulled into the station (i.e. he was pulling out, while the train was pulling in). The alleged offender is described as being 175cm tall, black hair, tanned complexion and a solid build” (oo-er).

An hour south of Brisbane is a small farming community called Glen Eagles near Beaudesert. I had a distant family acquaintance there and we thought we’d drop in. Driving there brought back memories of how I had arrived there back in 1985. I had written to Tom Dunn from Adelaide and said we’d hitch up there to arrive a week later on the Saturday - about 2500km. It was Friday evening. We were still 600km short and had given up reaching it on time.

We walked to a roadhouse outside a town where there was one truckie tinkering under his upturned cabin. “I don’t suppose you’re going to Queensland?” “Where ya going?” he bellowed. “Beaudesert”. “Well if I can get this bastard going, I’m going right through it”. We thought our luck was in, but it turned out to be one of the strangest rides I’ve ever done.

This is the scene. This truckie had left Brisbane the previous Tuesday, drove to Adelaide, down to Melbourne and up to Sydney. He had been driving thousands of kilometres, non-stop, for 4 days and 3 nights. This was his 4th night up. He had a false ‘tachometer’ to record his hours. He looked shattered. He was trying to get back to Brisbane for Saturday to see his girlfriend. When we climbed aboard, he showed Dawn, who was a nurse, his ‘box of tricks’ to stay awake. Pep pills, speed, other goodies. He was also a diabetic and washed down his pills with codeine! I thought to myself, he’ll never stay awake and I’d better stay up with him. As Dawn climbed into the driver’s bed, he said, “Pick a tape. I like to drown out the noise of the engine”. It was all country and western. I just stuck my hand in a box and came up with ‘Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits’. The bastard played that same tape non-stop for 10 hours! If I ever meet Dolly, I’m going to slap her in the face.

The next problem was that he was carrying 22 tons of paint on a road train and a 2-ton tractor in-between the carriages. He was 2 tons over weight and was taking the side roads up to Queensland to avoid the weigh stations. A further problem was that his air compression had gone. This meant that his brakes would fail or he would not be able to get into low enough gears to climb steep hills. Oh well, what the hell, off we go.

The CB rattled out a message. There was a bush fire up ahead. Under control, but everyone was being told to avoid the road. “She’ll be right,” said our truckie. As we approached it, I could just see a horizon of flames. The fires were about 100ft away on either side of the road and the heat was intense. This looks spectacular I thought. Then I thought again. What’s our cargo? 22 tons of paint? Oh shit. Somehow, we motored through the flames and escaped incineration.

About 1.30am, the CB radio blared out about a riot by aborigines in an outback town up ahead. The place was going crazy. There was a warning to stay away. “We’ve gotta go check this out” said my driver. But when we rolled in an hour later, noone was on the streets, just a few police cars sitting around.

About 4.30am, dawn began to break. The hardest part was about to begin. There were two steep hills over the Queensland border and the truckie began to sweat when he found his air compression giving up. Somehow he had kept it going all night. We got half way up the first hill and stalled. “Quick! Jump out and find a farmer with a tractor” he yelled. “Its 5am!” I replied. “There will be someone about. Just don’t tell him my tonnage”. Surprisingly, I did find a farmer who turned up with his tiny tractor and towed the massive road train up the rest of the hill. “That’s the sixth bastard I’ve rescued this month”, the farmer mumbled to me. We got down the hill but stalled going up the second. Another truck stopped to help. Our truckie said, “you’d better get out here, because once I get going, I’m not stopping until Brizzy”. As luck would have it, the Beaudesert laundrette owner passed us on his way to work and we got a lift. We arrived at Tom Dunn’s in time for breakfast. A strange experience.

Cut to 2001. We reach the farm but everyone is out. We didn’t have time to hang around because we had been invited to visit Matt Walton outside Toowoomba. I had met Matt at Gorek Shep; just two hours south of Everest Base Camp last April and we had kept in contact. In his early 30's, he was a helicopter pilot instructor for the Australian Army. He had been in Nepal in training to climb Cho Oyo, the 8th highest mountain in the world at over 26,000ft, tackling it from the Tibetan side. Two of the team had made it to the summit.

Matt had recently rented a "house with a view". It was remote to say the least. 20km out of Toowoomba, a few kilometres past the nearest hamlet, then take a dirt road for a few km, over a couple of cattle grids and there you are. 'Deliverance' Country. As I met Matt on his veranda, I mumbled "If I hear 'Duelling Banjos' anywhere, we're outta here!”

It was the kind of place you could learn to play the drums without neighbours complaining. Matt was an excellent guitarist/folk singer and as we sat outside, drank beers and watched a large campfire, he sang some great comic and sad Aussie folksongs, while his girlfriend, Dom, (training to be a psychiatrist) cooked us excellent bush tucker food - Lamb done Thai style. They had met via the Internet where both had got to know each other without revealing their occupations. I managed to resist the urge all weekend to run up and yell, "You've got mail!” The spacious one story wooden house built on stilts was solar powered with a backup generator to boost the huge batteries if they started to run down.

When we awoke on Sunday morning, we found ourselves looking over the valleys of the 'Dividing Range' with a stunning panoramic view and the mist wafting around the forests. Pancakes on the veranda for breakfast and off to the monthly market - like a country car boot sale without the cars. I kept my eyes peeled for bucked teeth and banjos. Back at the ranch we toured the 160-acre property while Jo gave Matt a lesson in the possibilities of keeping a horse on the property. It was lovely to just sit around with great hosts and just relax. While fixing Matt's PC, my plastic chair collapsed beneath me. This was presented at our farewell inscribed "I must drink less beer!”

After our evening meal outside, Matt read us extreme Ocker poetry and we heard a recent comical poem about a Japanese promoter who booked Japanese tourists to the Olympic Games at Homebush (a Sydney suburb). Unfortunately, he didn't realise that there was also a small town called Homebush in Northern Queensland. When the Japanese were sent there by mistake, the locals put on an 'ocker' Aussie Olympics.

Here it is. Matt wrote: “This poem loses a bit so you have to read it like this....(just doing the first line): (leans forward and waves arm) Across, the Sydney harbour bridge (pause) the visitors were streaming (said in a loud raspy over exaggerated unbelievable storytelling voice) Now take a swig of beer.

The Other Homebush Games

We also saw a film of Matt's Cho Oyo exhibition last year and a film of him flying around Australia in an army helicopter, where a teddy bear did the piloting and commentary in a squeaky voice. Some fantastic shots of flying in between the '12 Disciples' off Victoria just above sea level when the surf was up. It was one of the best stays I've had anywhere. Thanks Matt. You can find his homepage at www.gpo.com/matty

North of Brisbane, lies the 'Sunshine Coast'. It was raining when we reached there. Queensland is called the 'Sunshine State' but over the next month, it rained continually on most days, or was very windy. It was the end of the wet season and generally miserable. I actually lost my suntan!

The scenic 'Glasshouse Mountains' were erratic remnants of old volcanic cones covered in forests but difficult to climb without mountaineering gear. At the 'Big Pineapple' Plantation we had the obligatory shot next to the huge fibreglass fruit, but passed on the tourist priced plantation itself. Instead, we visited the 'Ginger Factory' at Yardina which was free. Here we watched a film about ginger cultivation and production and then could see the actual factory at work. It was state of the art stuff with a 'Robo-sorter' - a laser infra red machine that scanned the chunks of ginger for size and fibre content and then blasted away the rejects with a burst of pressurised air. The ginger was stored in vast vats to be steamed or pickled. For Jo's 41st birthday, I got her a T-shirt which read "51% Sweetheart, 49% Bitch. Just watch your step!"

Noosa Heads on the coast was another tourist Mecca of resorts set around rivers and the beach. It had a lovely location but was just a continuous mass of tourist facilities. Maryborough further north still had plenty of 'old' Victorian buildings on its main street. Some of these buildings were over 100 years old! It continued to rain.

Our destination was Hervey Bay so I could attempt a 14,000ft tandem skydive with a 60 second freefall, off the coast, with Fraser Island beneath me. Fraser Island is really getting the backpacker treatment nowadays. It is the longest (124km) sand island in the world and protected by World Heritage. You have the choice of daytrips to see nothing much or overnight camping trips where your food gets eaten by dingoes and you get eaten by sandflies. I didn't feel the need to see another sand island no matter how big.

The weather was either too windy or raining and it took me 3 days to get up into the air. On Day 3, the wind seemed ok. I ran through the 'ground session' drills and did some stretching exercises with a couple of nubile Danish girls (oo-er) who were also hoping to do a skydive. Total tuition time - about 15 minutes! Woody, my tall, cropped haired, instructor (usually a Melbourne plumber but having a 4-month 'lifestyle change'), was full of loud enthusiasm and jokes. "Bob, with your weight, we're going to be SCREAMING down at 220 kilometres an hour! That's the fastest you can drop!". I had opted to have the experience videoed. This jump was a belated 40th birthday present to myself, over a year late.

I was measured for a jump-suit, helmet and harness. Woody showed me his pack. "Dude, where's my parachute?" I asked. "You don't have one", he said. "Not even a reserve?" "Nope. The reserve is in my pack". Great. I had had a few static line parachute jumps in the past from about 3,000ft, and always had a 'reserve' chute strapped to my chest as well as my main chute. This time, I would be connected to Woody's harness by 4 clips (which held 2000 kilos strain). As we fell, I would hang beneath him and he would open the main chute at 4500ft. "How many jumps have you done Woody?" I asked. He looked up and thought and lied comically, "This will be my third, no, fourth jump". At least I could wear my glasses beneath the plastic mask. "You may lose them" I was told.

Then it started to go pearshaped. Ben, the pilot turned up with his arm in a bandage. "I came off me motorbike this morning" he moaned. "Everything ok?" "Yeah, the hospital fixed me up fair dinkum". I wondered if he would suffer from delayed shock. We walked to the plane and did a rehearsal of the 'Big Banana'. This is the position you assume when you leave the plane. You arch your back, push out you hips and bend your legs like a crab. I climbed into the small cramped battered Cessna with Woody in front of me, Ben at the controls and Sid, the videoman facing back at me. Then there was a yell of 'Prop' and we rumbled down the runway. The worst thing about skydiving is knowing you are not going to return in the plane you took off in.

The wind on the ground was registering 20 knots. We started the slow ascent out over the coast past Big Woody Island and over Moon Bay on Fraser Island. The wind seemed very loud and blustery as we looped up and up. It seemed to take forever. Sid videoed Woody having fun with me. I was very relaxed. I'd jumped before. "9,000ft. 5,000 to go" yelled Woody. Then Ben got a radio message. "It's 30 knots on the ground". Anything above the ground is a lot windier. There was a brief discussion. I thought the flight was going to be aborted. 25 knots is the legal maximum for a tandem jump, but it is still safe at 30 knots if there is enough weight. With Woody and me weighing the permitted maximum, they felt it would be ok, but a definite "border line case" because the wind was getting stronger. Sid, a skinny, sun-tanned bloke with a well-weathered face was going to have his work cut out just trying to stay with us going down. He looked worried and proof filled our nostrils with his horrendous farts. "Open the door for Christ's sake" yelled Woody. If he's shitting himself I thought, what hope is there for me?

As we approached 14,000 ft, I backed into Woody and he clipped me onto his harness. "Ok, when we open the door, take two deep breathes. It’s going to be rough out there. Don't forget, do the "Big Banana" when I tap once and when I tap twice, open up those arms and get into the skydive position". The door opened. Sid climbed out onto the wing. He had a helmet with a videocamera and camera attached to it. He looked seriously worried. The wind was ferocious. "Get in the door Bob and put you foot on the pedal outside". I crawled out on the edge. "Let go of the door Bob". Let go of the door? I'm about to jump out of a perfectly good plane. There was a lot of shouting through the wind and engine noise. Suddenly the drone of the engine stopped. Just the sound of the wind. I was sitting on Woody's lap as he sat on the edge. I was in the 'fallen angel' position with my hands crossed over my chest. He signalled at Sid. There was a tap on my shoulder and then we were tumbling through the air, seemingly in slow motion....

How do you describe skydiving? I make no apology for using the best description I've read from Michael Bane's book "Over The Edge". I quote: "Your mind is like an index card file. Every one of those index cards contains an appropriate response to various outside stimuli, from current ones - like your boss is mad at you - to older, darker ones - a hungry sabre-toothed tiger is chasing you. When faced with a situation, your mind rapidly flips through the card file, looking for an appropriate response. But there is no appropriate response for falling at more than a hundred miles per hour from a couple of miles in the air. And there's no way for you to 'create' that card on the ground".

I continue his description: "In the first few hundred feet, my mind goes stark raving crazy flipping through the card file, looking for something that matches brain numbing noise, incredible speed and the ground rising up below you. Not surprisingly , it can't find the card, so it takes the only other option available - it throws its little mental arms up in the air and shuts down".

I know that mine did. I remember tumbling out of the plane and then there was this gap where I have no recollection except that I had no control over the situation. From the video, I did, upon exiting, automatically assume the 'Big Banana', but all I can remember is waiting for the second tap. It seemed to take aeons while we started the freefall. When my shoulder finally felt something, I opened up my arms and bent my legs up at 90 degrees, up in between Woody's and then we were freefalling in the skydiving position. We were like two crabs connected together hurtling towards the earth at mind numbing speed, but Woody was in total control. Just falling.

As the passenger, my mind switched on and I looked down and around. Amazing view. I noticed that Sid was freefalling with us with the video running. I had a shit-eating grin on my face looking around at Fraser Island and Hervey Bay and a 360-degree view around the clouds. 60 seconds seemed to last forever. It was like being suspended in time. The ground still seemed a long way down. Jo said that from the beach, she could see this little dot falling with a little white ball hanging above us (part of the chute) down through the blue sky at incredible speed. Not half – nearly 10,000ft in a minute.

Then after a minute, the next thing I knew was that we were hurtling upwards. Woody had pulled the parachute and the air had rapidly filled the canopy and halted our descent, pulling us violently upwards like a bungy in reverse. Fully open, we started to float down to earth. I grabbed my breath and started gabbling to Woody - "Unf***ing Believable".

Oo-er, what's happening here I suddenly thought as I felt myself coming away from Woody who had just unclipped two of the harness clips to make himself more comfortable . He was very concerned about Sid. The wind was really strong. The idea is that Sid usually pulls his chute slightly later and steers down to the beach to get ready to film the tandem landing. But as we descended, Woody felt a surge of wind dragging us the wrong way away from the beach. He had to struggle with the steering toggles to steer us against the wind. Sid had had less time than us to react and we could see him approaching not the beach, but someone's house.

He ended up landing in their front garden and missing our landing. Meanwhile I was enjoying the views over Harvey Beach. Our landing spot was very narrow. About 20ft of beach next to the incoming tide. I had an inflatable device under my jump-suit in case we hit the water. Just before we landed, I raised my legs up to avoid breaking them. A gust of wind blew us over and started dragging us along the beach. We were laughing, relieved to be down on target. Jo, the Danish girls and Stephen the organiser had come to the beach to watch and pick us up.

Sid rolled up a few minutes later looking a bit sheepish. "Any landing is a good landing" they concluded. "Jesus, that was a weird one" he said. Not only had he missed the landing but also his camera had seized up. "That's it for today boys. We can't risk it with those light girls". The Danish girls looked suitably gutted. I was full of adrenaline. A mind blowing experience, but don't try it at home kids. Back at the club, Sid put together an excellent video of the experience with a racy soundtrack that sadly did not have him heading for someone's house. I'd love to do it again. Hell, I'd love to do a proper course. There was only one thing to do after that - head to Bundaberg to do a tour of the Rum Distillery.