Give a man enough rope (January '03)

My Contiki bus pulled out of Arrowtown, New Zealand, about 11am on a sunny January day. The group had had a mid morning stop at the town to look around, but it was sold to us by our guide as a chance to stock up on some dutch courage - on tap at the local bar, open this time of the morning probably only to serve this demand. Years later I'd find out that most dutch people were completely unaware that we made jest of them in this way in the southern hemisphere. Never the less, I stayed away from the beers that morning, certainly not because it was before midday, but because I was sure it would only make what I was about to do that much more messier.

I was headed to a bridge between Arrowtown and Queenstown - a small but famous bridge: the home of the bungy jump. Only to "look" of course... my parents had forbade me to jump off that bridge in the weeks leading up to the trip. But I was 22, and over 2500kms away from their influence here in New Zealand. Of course I wasn't bloody here to look.

Checking in at a building nearby, I paid my dues and walked myself down to the orderly queue stretching to the centre of the bridge. I reviewed the score card I'd been given when I weighed in; 73.5kgs, clothed. Yep, I was still a beanpole. Leaning up against the rail, I followed the screams echoing up from the canyon down to a body dangling above the river surface below. Yep, I was still going to do this.

It takes a while to properly strap someone to a bungy cord, cross check, get them to the edge and coax them to jump. Not everyone is so keen when they're standing on the edge looking down. That's where the challenge of bungy differs so much from other experiences with height - no one is going to push you over that edge, you have to decide to jump. A girl further up the line got all the way to that edge before she decided it just wasn't for her, and the crew dutifully brought her back from the brink, unstrapped her, and sent her back to the office for a refund. The waiting line of people smiled sympathetically as the queue shortened this way. Some don't make it even that far: sometimes being at the head of the queue and watching someone disappear right in front of you is enough to send you on the walk.

My turn at the head of the queue was spent with my fellow travelers trying to lend what encouragement we could to our friend who was struggling to reconcile her pact with gravity. Shaking, she stood at the edge for a long time, convinced she couldn't do it. Scared of death or permanent injury, the crew did their best to reassure her that she'd still be alive in another 30 seconds. A few tense minutes and she'd managed to roll her self over the edge. We all knew she was okay, because the screaming went on much longer than the fall could possibly have taken.

I clipped into a safety harness and stepped beyond the rail. Sitting down on a small platform perched just below the level of the bridge, I handed over my weight card. The guy running the show then asked me: "Would you like to get wet". I heard this question asked many times in the preceding 20mins, so far no one had taken him up on the offer. For most people it's enough to just get yourself over the bridge. I replied to him, "I'd like to keep my shoes dry". A wry smile came across his face - one that I've gotten to know well in businesses like this. The "game on!" smile.

A towel wraps around my legs before a carefully selected rope comes close to cheaply amputating both my feet at the ankles. All the while I'm receiving my crash course in bungy: "Now, to hit the water, you don't want to jump out, you want to just roll over the edge.", "Put your hands forward into a dive to break the surface tension of the water", "and most importantly, chin to chest when you hit the water. We don't want any snapped necks today".

Two of the crew held me steady while I lifted my legs up to the edge of the platform. They released me from their grip, and I was now standing out there; just me, the fresh mountain air and the river. As directed, I looked up to the camera perched on top of the canyon wall over to my left, struck a pose, then returned my undivided attention to the Kawarau river below. It flowed at a moderate pace, small eddies of current giving the moment shape as it bubbled downstream. I took a deep breathe and let myself roll forward into its arms.

Leaving my stomach on the platform, the river's surface sped towards me before the rope caught and pulled me into a sharp deceleration. By not jumping out, you get none of the rag-doll whiplash as characterized by any decent media beat-up of adventure sport. With the pin-drop, the rope starts to stretch much closer to the water, and the water... it still approaches oh so fast. Holding my arms in a dive I strike the surface nearing the end of the rope's elasticity, my head, stupidly forgotten as an appendage that needs proper positioning, is still looking at the water and gets pulled uncomfortably back as it passes the boundary. Ice cold mountain water exploded into my sinuses through my nose, temporarily curing me of the hay fever that had, and would go on to plague me for the length of that holiday.

For that split second where motion doesn't exist, my body was held immersed in New Zealand's finest yet-to-be bottled - up to about my waist.

But as fast as I came to be here, I was wrenched back out again - flying halfway back up to the deck above, only to become weightless again. With outstretched arms, I brush my hands across the surface of the water when i reach full stretch this time. Bouncing upside down less and less, my weight comes into a slow swing ten or so meters from the water.

Dripping with icy water, I let my arms hang towards the water as I took the experience in - semi aware of the inflatable boat that was now approaching with the flow from up stream. Two sets of hands guided me to a safe head first landing as the rope lowered me down to the craft. The pressure on my ankles was released before the boat was winched back against the current to the launching point. "How was it?" I'm asked by the crew. Bloody amazing.

Full of adrenaline, I took the stairs two at a time back up the canyon to my girlfriend, who carried both a towel and an expression of mock disapproval. She'd been worried for a time, but had quickly come around.  It would take the folks much longer to forgive me, but luckily this being at the beginning of the trip, telling them immediately allowed them this time while I was off doing other stupid things.

No, you don't let disapproval stop you. You just plan for it.

A 'perfectly good' plane and a parachute (December '01)

Back in December 2001, I was young, stupid, unemployed, newly single - and on a Contiki tour - so also inebriated or hungover, mostly alternating between the two... sometimes not. I was also fast approaching 'very poor' to boot. That two week trip from Sydney to Cairns was in many ways a pivotal foundation stone on who I am today; without it I would never have become the person that would meet my wife, or probably drink beer, let alone drink beer on every continent of the earth. It also cost me everything I owned, save the $5.13 that was left in my bank account - and that was possibly only because it was inaccessible by ATM.

Three days from the end I did as any self respecting twenty year old does at some point on a Contiki. I called home and pleaded for a parental loan. Even though they might tell the story differently, I assure you I never lied to them - I merely neglected to share the full details of the situation to them in case they didn't see eye to eye with the rest of my trip schedule. Sure the money would be bringing me back from the brink of starvation, but it wouldn't be until well after that money appeared in my account that anything was said about a plane and a parachute.

So the next day I found myself killing time in Cairns waiting for the phone-call that the weather was looking good enough for a little skydiving. And soon enough, with the wind dropping and the cloud cover lifting, I was in a beat-up courtesy bus (if you've ever done any adventure sport, you'd know the type... With ripped upholstery and seatbelts that don't work) full of other crazy people heading to Paul's Parachuting.

It seemed simple enough. The guy that I'd be strapped to for a good part of the afternoon, Jason, had me suited up and on the floor practicing different positions I'd need to know in free-fall and landing. Easy right? It wouldn't be until almost ten years later when I had four minutes in a vertical wind-tunnel that I found out how difficult it is to get right, and just how little idea I really had. But I was twenty, invincible, and pumped like you wouldn't believe.

Pretty soon I was back in the bus of questionable appearance arriving on the tarmac of Cairns airport. Now, when I first told my Dad what I did that day, he said to me: "why on earth would you want to jump out of a perfectly good plane?". Well, quite obviously Dad, you weren't looking at the same plane I was.

It stood before me: a doorless, beat-up twelve seater (without the seats) double prop that was probably white, once, but was now covered with the smudge of twenty years worth of grease rags brushing against its sides. Once it was in the air my guide-to-gravity, Jason, informed me that they don't budget for the extra fuel needed to bring this much loaded-weight back to the ground, so there was only one way back down for me. I was secretly relieved, because after that take-off, let me tell you, there was no way I wanted to be in that thing when it landed. I sat and watched the ground grow more distant through the open door cavity.

Shit gets real the first time you see someone disappear out the side of a plane. They're there one moment, then there's a loud rush of air and the doorway is empty again. At 10,000 feet, three of my fellow passengers were disembarking - and the first rush of real adrenalin hits. But I've still got 2,000 more feet to climb before I take the same exit.

Checking his altimeter one more time, Jason taps me on the shoulder: "lets GO!". Strapped tightly together, we crab-shuffle to the rear of the plane. I cross my arms as he moves forward and grips the sides of the door. As you might imagine, that meant I was almost entirely out of the plane at this time. Even if I wanted to, there was no going back now - but I was still pumped. I could see the wing and prop of the plane in my peripheral, and wisps of cloud racing across my vision of the cane fields below. "Ready!" came the call from behind. "1!", rocking back and forth, "2!", back and forth. Then my stomach dropped.

A tightly packed ball on a new trajectory, we twisted in the air as we searched for some stability. For a split second, almost as soon as we were free, we rolled to the side and I watched the plane drop away - it was completely surreal, shrinking in size more rapidly than could be believed. Freefall is so loud that there's nothing else but the wind and gravity. The next tap came to my shoulder - we'd leveled out, and now was time to spread my arms and legs to catch our fall.

I settled in to what I will always describe as the longest 45 seconds of my life. Not because it was traumatic and life scarring - but because everything slows down to almost a stop when you find yourself in a situation so completely outside the usual. Every last second is felt intimately as you float weightless in the air, everything so small beneath you, so slowly drawing closer.

The photographer spreads his body out and catches the air, floating up from below to hover right in front of me. I try my best to smile, but opening your mouth even a little blows your face up like a puffer-fish. For posterity, I have several photos that testify to this. The rest show my face flapping around like a loose sail. Lets face it (no pun intended), no first timer will ever look good in a freefall photo. After being prompted for a double-thumbs-up shot, I turned my attention back to fall.

The cane fields were noticeably closer now, occasionally fading in and out of white as I fell through shallow banks of cloud. I might have been imagining it, but for those few milliseconds, I swear the air feels thicker. Coming out the other side I feel the next tap on my shoulder: brace for impact. The photographer waves goodbye, then falls away as the breaks slam on hard. I feel the biggest wedgie I'll ever have, and say my thanks to the harness. Not just because it held, but because it was correctly place around my groin. I'd carry bruises for a week where the harness broke my brief affair with freefall.

It's all smooth sailing from there. Maneuvering, swinging side to side, doing doughies in the air. We talk freely about the drop now, and two or three minutes has me pulling my legs up for a graceful buttslide along a small paddock surrounded by sugar cane. The camera man is down there catching every undignified moment. Unstrapped I weakly stand, battling the adrenaline for control of my legs. The pros start discussing landings that weren't so successful. It couldn't have been much more than five minutes ago that I was sitting in a plane cruising three and a half kilometres from the ground. I shake hands and say my thanks to my single-serving skydiver, before clambering back into our friendly courtesy bus.

Three days later I would be back in Sydney, but for now I was on top of the world. I really was invincible. The next day I'd scuba dive for the first of many times, and tomorrow night I'd be dancing on the tables at a steak restaurant, and saying teary farewells to a ragtag group of revellers who in two weeks had gone from being randoms to the closest of friends. There haven't been many times in my life that I've felt so completely free, and maybe I'll never be quite so again. So I hold those moments close for when reality is too much, and quietly plot my way back there.

In the Cheetah's Den (June '10)

There's not much that draws me to Canberra these days, mostly because I've reached the stage of my life were I can't take another museum, and certainly not one I have to drive round in circles to find. In the most part that just leaves things that only look good-to-do on glossy brochure pages, or the "nightlife". I hope you see the problem.

It was June 2010 when I used up my last good excuse to travel to Canberra - to visit the National Zoo. Or more importantly, a specific enclosure at the National Zoo.

We arrived late on a Friday night after a post-work drive from Sydney. The Quest apartment suite that Lyndall had scored cheaply on a last minute website was more than accommodating, and located on the second floor of the old Melbourne building. With its cafes and bars opened late below, it would have been an oasis of activity for the weary-but-not-quick-to-head-to-bed traveler - if only we weren't both battling a sniffle. One drink at PJ O'Brians and we were cowering under the covers of our comfortable temporary bed.

After randomly finding ourselves deposited down a dead end road outside the Kenyan embassy - as only you can in Canberra - we finally arrived at the zoo. Zoos usually depress me, and the National Zoo didn't exactly have a new song to sing. There's only so long you can watch a tiger stalk the same path of its enclosure before you realise your enjoyment is paid for by the miserable insanity of some of the less-suited animals within. For me, that realisation was long before this day. It's a small zoo, but we checked in at the front desk early so we could have a look around before finding a seat in the small pergola outside the cheetah enclosure at about two o'clock.

Over the last few years, animal experiences have been popping up at almost every zoo that can't attract a large slice of the world population and would otherwise have trouble cutting the budget. They're not cheap, and at $150 per fifteen minutes, this one was no exception. About ten people per day visit the cheetah enclosure, so it doesn't overly exert the animals, but a few thousand dollars a week doesn't go astray in further developing their care. But it felt like it would be a high value experience, and as good a reason as any to get away for the weekend.

Two keepers passed us through the double-gated entry and we stepped up through the low scrub, ushered towards a small copse of trees shading the ground occupied by three lazy cats. They regarded us indifferently.

The most common response I receive from people when I tell them I'm doing something like this is "you're crazy". But there really is nothing too crazy about the things I do as a general rule. In particular, walking towards a group of cheetahs isn't so crazy, not only because they're more or less domesticated cheetahs, but because your average human adult is just too big to be considered easy prey. Sure, they can run fast - but tell me, have you ever seen any cat do something that didn't require the minimum effort for a result? And really, I shouldn't just pick on cats - because that's the trick to getting close to any carnivorous animal. Never fall on the wrong side of the effort-to-reward equation.

Still, these are animals with sharp claws and pointy teeth, so best to be on the safe side. Foot placement is always geared towards backing up quickly should the keepers feel the cats aren't so impressed with what you've done to their fur. Running your hand back along a cheetah doesn't reveal much substance; even these cheetahs of pleasure are built very lean and slim-lined. A deep purring reminiscent of a diesel engine is a sure bet that you've hit the right spot, and that you can keep doing what you're doing.

Kneeling there under the trees minutes passed quickly. The matriarch of these three girls was sitting furthest from us and had a reputation for her grumpy temperament. I could detect nothing of it, even when she decided to move off it wasn't anything to do with us so much that we weren't sitting in the sun when she decided she'd like to work on her tan. The remaining two stood and yawned right beside our position, begrudgingly passing up further grooming and deciding that sun was a good idea. We let them settle again, and I retrieved my camera from the keeper.

Its an amazing opportunity to photograph any exotic animal so close, and me being who I am, snapped a hundred or so exposures in the next few minutes. I only stopped because the keepers were beckoning us over for one last pat before it was time to leave. The cats sensing their source of affection was gone, moved off down the enclosure as we disappeared back behind the fence.

I often find it amazing how quickly you can be pulled away from normality when you step outside its usual bounds. Fifteen minutes is all it took on this occasion to find myself back on a path I'd been on only moments earlier, not knowing where or what I was going to do next. Or that could have just been Canberra exerting its force. But I already felt like my batteries had been charged with the power of a week's holiday. And if you ask me, that's 150 big ones well spent.

Hunting the Whaleshark (July '08)

In 2008, about the time I had planned to be swimming with the world's biggest fish, I was instead sitting at a BBQ table, legs pulled up on the seat, drinking goon from a blue plastic picnic mug.

I was devastated.

Lyndall and I had traveled all this way for only the purpose of this swim, and a near monsoonal front was delivering high wind and rain, buffeting down on our hostel. The covered BBQ area that we occupied only transferred the odd spray of rain towards our centrally placed table, which was an island above the uniform three inches of water that covered the entire courtyard. The goon was cheap and made the situation easier to bare, even if the real cost is always paid the next morning.

The root problem was that said hostel was in very close proximity to the body of water our boat could only operate on in swells less than three metres, and it appeared that conditions weren't going to be favourable for days to come. Aside from trying unsuccessfully to stay dry, we spent that afternoon trying to rearrange our trip to accommodate this disaster.

The town was Exmouth, and the month was July. Hundreds of kilometers from anywhere, it's a town whose prominence rests on the nearby coastline, which is home to the longest fringing coral reef in the world - Ningaloo. It's not an easy place to get to by any means, and we'd shacked up overnight in Perth waiting for our connecting prop plane to convert lots of our hard earned cash into the 1500kms between the two. What books the hotels around here solid at this time of year is that this is the only place in the world that multitudes of whaleshark reliably congregate each year, for the grand and worthy purpose of nomming on bucket-loads of delicious plankton.

Vlamingh Head Lighthouse

Planning to drive back to Perth over the next week and a half, the weather proved to be a considerably large spanner. Exmouth is a miserable place to be waiting when you can't go outside, so the next best option we were facing was to instead spend a week traveling to Broome and back - then trying our luck with the weather in Exmouth one more time, before significantly increasing the profit outlook on the local regional airline for our passage back to Perth. Luckily our worries were unfounded with the weather coming good the next day, so we found ourselves instead waiting out in the Indian Ocean on a boat.

Cape Range NP

That's because hunting whaleshark is all about waiting. Despite the numbers in the area, its not every day they decide to venture to the surface for a feed. Planes fly the coast daily to spot whaleshark for the flotilla of vessels full of tourists like us. After killing a few hours snorkeling inside Ningaloo, the call came through that the banquet was being held some fourty kilometres to the south. And then the waiting starts a new.

Some two hours later our boat joined the small queue of craft waiting to dump their passengers into the path of the whaleshark. It's a very orderly process; when your boat gets to the front of that queue, they get to drop the regulated ten people into the water who then madly kick as long as they can to keep up with the shark once it passes them. The boat then circles back and picks up passengers when they've fallen from the trail.

It's a daunting feeling, sitting on the rear of the vessel waiting to hit the water. It's certainly not like you could do-it-yourself and swim from the shore. We're kilometers out to sea, and the rich, dark blue abyss extends to eternity beneath you. Even a seasoned madman like me gets to wondering what else might be lurking in those depths. Or if the plane mistakenly called in an oversize tiger shark.

But you don't come this far and hesitate, so I'm soon in the spreading wake of the boat, kicking in the direction I had to blindly accept as the correct one. At first you can't see much more than the turbulence kicked up by the flippers of your fellow swimmers, but as you spread out, you find yourself staring expectantly into the open water. It's hard not to let your heart race when you see shadow and shape forming from the sapphire haze, especially a mass as big as a whaleshark.

The first priority is to get out of its way. Aside from not wanting to collide with its bulk or its largely inert but potential power, swimming straight at the sharks tend to make them dive for deeper water. Being eaten isn't of so much concern unless you're near the size of a phytoplankton. Safely out of its path, the goal is then to turn and swim with the animal for as long as you can keep up.

The whaleshark is a slow and graceful beast in the marine world. Their enormous mass glides easily through the water on a tail movement that could best be described as "Sunday morning stroll". That said, it is incredibly hard for human legs to come anywhere near matching their slow pace. But its and incredibly serene experience to share the water with the gentle giant.

Falling off the trail, you bob around in the water with your co swimmers waiting for the boat, hoping that safety in numbers means something to whatever else could be swimming beyond your vision. Then you keenly await your next drop off.

(this isn't just some random's video... we're in there somewhere)

With six or seven drops, there's so many ways to enjoy the experience. Swimming alongside the sharks massive, drooping pectoral fin - stopping in the water to just watch it pass - slipping into its wake and watching the gentle but powerful movement of its tail. But no matter how you wish for more, six or seven swims is enough to exhaust any but the most accomplished Olympic swimmer. By the end it's a real effort to pull yourself back onto the deck.

At the end of the day it's a long way home, but it's easy enough to loose time starring back across the waves after a solid experience like that. A large tray of nibblies often helps, too. Beers are had in the warm tropical air that night, a sense of comfort returning to the trip. And in twelve hours we'd be jammed into our Hyundai Getz, cruising south again on the open red plains, searching for the next box to tick.

Urban Thrillseeking (October '11)

After everything, this is what it had come to. It was an otherwise beautiful sunny Saturday morning in Sydney, and I was standing on the edge of a 28 story building looking down at the pavement. A crowd of nervous onlookers stood down on the street behind the yellow tape, looking back up, wondering how this was going to end. It didn't matter now. I was committed. Turning my back on them, I let my body fall back over the precipice.

And that's when I felt the full weight of the rope falling away beneath me. But lets step back onto the edge and look back at how I found myself here.

I work in the tower next door - my office looks over the top of this building and out over Circular Quay; the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House - The coming and going ferries. And roughly twelve months earlier I stood up there staring down at person after person abseiling down the AMP building below on a Friday morning. They were raising money and awareness for the Sir David Martin Foundation, a cause I'd only learned about a few weeks earlier - not long enough, I had judged, to raise the $1500 required to qualify for the jump. Next year, I thought. Next year.

And so six months later I found myself in the same office with three colleagues, thirty box's of fundraising chocolates, a few kilos of sausages and an eager workplace looking to lighten their wallets proportional to extending their waistline. $6000 for the four of us seemed like such a daunting task for someone who'd never tried fundraising before.

But now we were right there in the moment, leaning back into the first step downwards. It's all easy after that, with the rope taut holding your weight. Standing on the edge with the rope slack, holding your own balance in the wind - it feels like you could easily fall to your death, no matter how much you know you're shackled to the building. It's the same feeling I experience on the Auckland Sky Tower in 2010.

 Its a small building by today's standards, but still reaches some hundred or so meters into the sky. And that much rope, if you could throw it that far, probably weighs more than the cow you're trying to lasso. So each step from the top could only be made by lifting all that mass up so the next foot of rope could slide cleanly through the whale-tail at my waist. A few more steps and I stopped to look around.

Once the tallest building in the Sydney skyline, the AMP building at circular quay more closely resembles an over sized monument to the 60's bronze brown they coloured everything in those days. Much like the lino on your Grandma's kitchen floor. The sides are a rough granite-white stone, and from my position perched at about the 26th floor, I could look up Young street to the flash new CBus building, or out over Circular Quay station and over the water. I had a look up, and a look down, tried to spot the family who were no doubt much more concerned than I was right now.

Pushing away from the wall, and letting a length of rope slide through the rig induces a sense of exhilaration and freedom you can only find in stepping this far out of the norm. On this much rope, it was surprisingly easy to put several meters between me and the wall, searching for the moment where your motion slowed and that split second when you weren't moving away or back to the wall. Hanging free in the abyss between the morning sun and the gentle breeze. My knees bent to take the speed out of my return to the wall, and pushed back for the next slide.

Time passes incredibly quickly that way, and soon I was pushing out over the third floor balcony and onto the lower wall. By this stage the rope would pass freely if you let it, and I smoothly lowered straight down to the ground.