MISSION BEACH

---

Tuesday 30th November

While i was sleeping on this fine and peaceful morning Jill had got up early and changed our Skydive from tomorrow too today. So my wake up call sounds a bit like ' Leon, wake up, we're skydiving in a hours time!'
Great! I thought.
It dawned on me that its best its been forced upon us a day early as i would not have slept so well last night had i kinow i was jumping out a plane today.

We had breakfast and a bus came and picked us up and took us around to the Mission Sky dive centre which was only a hlaf mile down the beach from Scottys hostel. Its a bloody gorgeous day by the way, at least 35oC and not a cloud in sight, perfect for skydiving.

We are looking at each other and asking the same questions over and over 'what are we doing?' 'Are you nervous?' ' How you feeling?' '
We then got the bombshell that our travel agent has messed up our booking and marked us down for a 14,000ft instead of the 9,000 that we had paid for. We should have been $150 more for this jump so we're ok with it even it means jumping higher and longer.

We have forms to fill out and its a struggle to even hold the pen and write as we've both tensed up somewhat and the nerves are starting to show.
So we are given the good news that they are running behind on schedule and we would be jumping at 1pm instead of 11pm. Thats Perfect for us as we have forgotten our money to pay for the certificates and some juice so we decide to walk back along the beach to Scottys and maybe come back later. 😊

We walk the lovely beach back to the hostel and its far to hot for me as the adrenaline is flowing fast and the old ticker is about to explode with excitement! We could hear then see the plane flying over head and its a mere dot in the distance. We could just about see the people jumping out at 9,000ft and we watched as they tumbled through the air until their chutes opened.
We took some photo's and hauled into scottys, picked up our cash and headed back to the jump base via the shop for some water.

Mission Beach is a very small place and quiet with some very nice houses dotted along the beach front. The popular tourist destination of Dunk Island lies 4 km offshore along with many of the other smaller islands which are protected. We should get a good view as we drop out the plane at 80mph! Arg!! i had almost forgotten about our jump as i was admiring the views!!

Well we are now back at the jump station and we watch the previous jumpers come into land and its got our heart rates up again somewhat. Its looks like its going to be one hell of a ride as everyone we speak too that has just landed have all said they were shitting themselves on the way but its a totally magical experience coming back down.

We are introduced to our Tandem partners who are all older guys with years of skydiving experience and we get our harnesses and parachute gear loaded up. The straps are fitted quite tightly and a second guy checks them again soon after.
We've got our dvd to make of the jump experience and my jumping instructor has his dvd camera pinned on me every so often and interviews us before the jumps. Im actually struggling a bit as ive had to take my hearing aids out for obvious reasons and I can quite hear whats going on or whats being said to me so im relying on Jill to keep me right. Christ, could it get any more scarier?

So we have a joyous twenty minute bus ride to the Airstrip while the jumping instructors are all having a blast listening to music and eating lunch as Jill and I plus 5 others sit in silence crapping ourselves. To be fair looking back now, we were fine and held it together long after the plane took off. Getting sick and tired of planes and helicopters now! haha, never thought i could ever say that. Ive just noticed the pilot thats flying the plane is wearing a Parachute too. Lovely, it doest install much faith does it?

The little turbo prop plane has two rows of seat from front to back rather than side to side as you would normally find in a plane. Jills in first then myself followed by another girl who is doing the dreaded 14,000ft! Behind us are four young girls all about 18-21 who all look scared to death already, they will be leaving us at 9,000ft.

We take off from a little strip in the middle of the rainforest and climbed up to about 3,000ft and it feels blooming high already. All i can hear is Jill shouting 'that's only 3000 feet!' That's 4000!' and so on. Its blooming making me worse and she stops telling me at around 6000 as its so high now we are both wondering if this is even possible!
More dvd camera action on which im trying hard to pretend I aint scared and I turn to Jill at 7000ft and lip sync the words 'halfway!'. The response is a muted one.

We are a bonnie shade of white now as the doors open and the rush of air and noise terrifying. The four girls we recognise from scottys are jumping out at 9,000ft and one by one i watch their poor little faces along with loud screams, disappear out the door. Oh....my.....god.....!! What have we done?

The door closes and we climb past the 10,000ft mark and we can honestly say at this point we are looking at each with real fear but we are smiling and the buzz is electrifying!
The views out the window are awesome as the Coral sea is bright Blue and the islands that dot along the coast look pretty. I can see Dunk Island which is all but a dot now and also i can just about see Mission Beach through the window. Im torn between looking out the window or looking at the ground as i cant see Jill who is two seats behind me.

My jumping instructor clips me onto him as he sits behind me and triple checks everything which helps take my mind off the actual jump for all of 30 seconds.
11,000ft, 12,000ft, 13,000ft........seconds feel like minutes and that last 1000 ft before jumping was insane to say the least!
We look at each other as i turn around one last time and the dvd camera is on us and after a lot of swearwords worthy of any Billy Conolly stand up show, the doors open.....whoooooshh!! 13,500ft....

The girl beside me is first to go and Ill be next followed by Jill who will be the last to leave the Plane...shame that. 😊

A quick instruction on keeping my head back and arms crossed is followed by another check of all straps which are now digging right into my crotch like you wouldn't believe! Goggles on!
I turn and hear a deafening scream as the other girl gets the ready, steady, go! And she's gone!

The noise of the plane and the rushing of air past the door could not drown out the beating of my heart right now and i quickly glance round at Jill who's lipping 'I cant do this''i cant do this'. Shes got a big smile on her face and i know she's fine, we cant back out now we've come so far.

I've no time to worry about her anyway as i have problems of my own as i'm being slowly shifted to the door of the plane and couldn't help but realise how high up in the air we were as i look out the windows on the way to the door.
'swing your feet over the edge' is the shout. What feet? i cant feel them. 😊
I swung my feet over the edge, sheer terror took over and the next twenty seconds was a blur.
I heard him say 'head back''cross your arms' 'ready, steady.....go' and then a rush of hard, fast air pounded my body and all i could think of was Jill above me watching me leave the plane.

Ten seconds later im in the arch position i was shown back at base and Im skydiving!! wooohooo' wooohoooo' woooohoooo' was all i could muster up in the first twenty seconds! The force of air is just about bearable until you get your senses in check and start taking it all in. Its like being on a motor bike at 80mph with no visor is the best i could describe it.

I look all around me and its awesome! I can see the reef far out to sea, the islands, the beach and also the rainforest beyond that. Woooohoooo!
We freefall for about another 45 seconds which felt like 5 minutes and then theres a big jolt and a pain in my crotch as the main parachute opens up and slows us down considerably.

The guy on my back instructs me to put my hands in the steering chords which i do and then hes helping me to steer the parachute from left ot right doing little tight circles which is amazing as you get a slight G force pull on your body which is ace.
Still circling down and he takes the reins off me and i try to look up and see if Jills behind me but i cant see her so i concentrate on our descent.
We come hurtling towards earth in what feels a tad fast for a landing and we do a sharp right turn and head towards the trees and then circle round the back of the tree line narrowly missing them and coming into land perfectly on the beach. That was almost as crazy as the jump out the plane to be honest!
Before i know it i'm unhooked and the cameras on me and im totally buzzing trying to spit words out without sounding totally bonkers.

I turn and see the next parachute coming into land here's Jill with a very large smile coming in a fair rate of knots. We both go a little bit crazy as we hug each other on the beach. 'we did it,we did it!' we proudly shout. So much for us being scared of heights!!
Time to get the harnesses off and leave the beach towards base to wait for our dvd and photo's.
We have big smiles all round and we talk frantically to each other for a few minutes and then decide to go for a walk to the supermarket and come back for our photos and dvd later as we need to burn off excess adrenaline.

It was so funny in the supermarket as we were still jacked up from the jump and we were hurling around the supermarket aisle like you wouldn't believe! We clocked ourselves doing some daft things and couldnt wait to get to the drive through off license next door for a couple of cold beers to see if that would take us down a peg or two. On the walk home the first beer didnt even touch the sides before the second one was cracked open, thank god for screw top bottles!

We got back to base and watched our dvd's with mixed reactions as Jills dvd is fantastic whereas mine isnt as good. They use a random music playlist on the dvd and mine had poor music whereas Jills had great music that really suited her dvd. Plus Jills tandem had her doing all sorts of things on the way down whereas my tandem guy did nothing except film me and missed some good photo opportunities.
All in all i really enjoyed the jump and im not overly bothered about my dvd as Jills one has us both in it and i'm really proud she skydived with me in one of the best locations in Australia.

Im glad we got upgraded to 14,000 as the experience was totally awesome, if you did 9000ft you will not get any time to compose yourself to enjoy freefalling as with 9,000 there's only 25 seconds of freefall compared to 70 seconds at 14,000.

We got back to Scottys hostel and showered and changed and sunk a couple of beers reflecting on our day. Time flew by and we ate dinner and sat up on the sofas around the pool relaxing to some fine music. Jill headed to bed early so I caught up with things back home via the Telephone. I dont think ill sleep easy tonight and it was 2am before i finished my last phonecall.

Wednesday 1st December

We slept on and off through the night as we kept reliving that final minute before jumping out the plane and we both still cant believe we did it. I think today will be a day of chilling out by the pool.
The weathers creeping into the mid thirties again so we grab some seats and lazed by the pool. I joined in a game of water volleyball and its not long before im burnt out and needing food so i knocked up some dinner and we took a walk down Mission Beach one last time.
We are contemplating another Skydive before we come home depending on our finances.
We are headed off to Magnetic Island in the morning so when we got back to Scottys we booked our hostel and also made sure we had sorted out our ferry tickets.


P.S Ive only put some of the skydive photos on here as i had to resize them. There are lots more at the following Flikr site.



Either open link or right click and open link.

---

Comments

[fred]

Red Devil
Very exciting and equally well written you captured to perfection the mounting tension the high octane buzz and the suggestion of risk and danger, I was on the edge of my seat, I called Sammy and stopped him from going to his bed, well judged length which held the interest and enabled you to stay focused, well done.

[Ang]

Totally out of this world!!!!! How will you beat that experience??!! Was getting excited reading that! How brave the pair of you. Lovely photo of the two you both looking so well. Jill you looked gorgeous with your bronzed bod! Look forward to next instalment. Lucky you've not been here last 2 weeks you would have froze your bollocks off doing burger van. Xxx

[leonandjill]

mental
yeh, we still get the heebie jeebies thinking about that final few minutes in the plane before being launched out. totally awesome experience. still lots more to do and explore but probually not as high octane as a skydive but you never know, ive still to have a 50/50 fight with a croc or kangaroo!!