Skydiving at Mission Beach

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Siobhan and Blair arrived into Cairns as I got back from up north, reunited to do the other half of the east coast after we left off at Brisbane back last October. We all bought hop-on hop-off Greyhound bus passes to Brissy and set off on our final Australia journey, the first stop being Mission Beach for our Skydive.

It hadn't really dawned on me what we were going to be doing until I'd watched a few of my Cairns room-mates' DVDs from when they did it.

Our first night in Mission Beach we met up Stehpania, a girl who I used to work with who's now working at the hostel. There was a real party atmosphere and the drinking games started early, so by midnight we were completely pissed and supposed to be getting up at 7:30am to do our Skydive. Luckily for us, the weather was terrible to following morning and the Skydive was cancelled.

The next morning the weather was still touch and go, but our pickup went ahead and despite rain showers on an off right up until the plane landed, we still all got harnessed up and climbed aboard the plane. At this point I wasn't worried, I normally get on a plane a few times a week so despite the strange circumstances this was ok. We went up to 14,000ft and still I wasn't too nervous and then they opened the door. The temperature plummeted, air was blowing everywhere and it was noisy. Suddenly the guy at the door had gone and everyone else was dropping out one by one behind. I sat there muttering 'fuck fuck fuck argh, shit, argh!' for about ten seconds until without a chance to change my mind my diver had pulled us to the door and then we were suddenly out! Free-falling through mid-air. It's funny because the air was moving so fast over my face, my eyes were watering and I was screaming blue murder, but in terms of feeling the movement it really doesn't feel fast at all, it was weird. The 60 second freefall was over in no time at all and with a jerk the parachute was out. This part was fairly peaceful (apart from the harness chafing my bollocks and armpits), we floated down to the ground, until the last ten seconds or so when the ground suddenly seems to come up a lot faster! I landed on my feet and that was it, skydive done! Thinking back about it now it feels like a blur because everything happens so fast and there's just so much adrenaline pumping. It was such a rush though! I bought the DVD so if anyone's interested I can show you my petrified facial expressions when I get home! You get a bit of an idea from the photos here!

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Photos

All smiles
(until the door opens)

I have control
And can't stop it spinning!

Like a bird
with chafed armpits

Thumbs up
"I survived!"