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Where I live is boring. Why should anyone come visit?

Over the Christmas break, after enjoying the big city lights of Melbourne, a group of us headed to Northern Queensland for an experiment. Is everyone’s home someone else’s dream destination?

1:0pm. Monday.

“Townsville. Super boring. Why would anyone want to visit. Trust me, I know, I grew up here.

Townsville really doesn’t have much to offer. A big army base has dominated the town’s demographic makeup ever since I can remember. Being a teenager was hard – you kept on being muscled out of bars by rowdy army guys and getting to know girls that didn’t go to your school was next to impossible. The scenery is ok, but being much drier than Mission or Airlie Beach, and with much less stuff to do, there’s a reason the tourists tend to drive straight through.

When we touched down I was super-excited to see my family and the few friends that had stayed, but to be honest, destination-wise, I would have spent my money on going somewhere else. Remember, I know this place inside out.

We went to the Billabong sanctuary to watch animals I can see in my mum’s back yard. Roos are constantly at the side of the road, ‘cause they’re stupid and get hit by cars. Cockatoos and galahs trash stuff. Koalas sleep all day. So at the sanctuary, you can hold one. It still sleeps. The crocs are a little bit more exciting, but also one of the main reasons I can’t swim in the sea. Bummer.

Maggie Island is one of my favourite places. It was fun to go, but it’s just my back yard. Why would anyone want to go there? Yeah the beaches are nice and stuff, but you could go to Bali? Or spend Christmas somewhere that actually LOOKS like Christmas. Like Munich, or Frankfurt! Also, Magnetic Island’s not THAT exciting unless you hung out there as a kid and now that I’m an adult I’m not that sure it should be recommended. Just like that moment your brother laughed so hard milk came out of his nose. It was really funny at the time, I swear. We had dinner with one of my mum’s friends, which was super-tasty. But again, if you could go to the Taj Mahal, who wants to hang out with my mum’s friends?

We actually left Townsville to drive to Mission Beach, which is just up the road, but a REAL tourist destination. They have skydivers there, and one of us went, which was pretty awesome. The drive was lovely, we stopped off at the giant gumboot in Tully, Frosty Mango and Crystal Creek on the way back, but I won’t go into great detail cause it’s really not that exciting. So there you go. 6 days in my hometown. Really nothing special.”

10am, Sunday.

“I’m not going to lie. I was a bit dubious when it was suggested that we take the week I have after Christmas to go visit somewhere rather off the tourist trail. We could have gone to Cairns, or Airlie Beach, which I’d seen advertised many times in the Lonely Planet, Tourism Australia brochures and on the Internet. But this was going to be something different. We were flying to Townsville.

Coming from a cold and wet Frankfurt to spend Christmas in hot and sunny Australia was a real treat. All the seafood and pool parties and cycling trips to the beach – it didn’t feel Christmassy at all. We were exploring this world completely new to us, where wearing a Santa hat surfing really is a thing. Now that we’d flown to the North end of the country, it was going to get even more exotic. I spotted a huge flock of brightly coloured parakeets swing through the air above the airport arrivals lounge. It may sounds strange, but arriving somewhere that has a huge “careful about the crocs” poster in the foyer gave me this real sense of adventure.

And adventure it was – we headed to the Billabong Sanctuary that has actual, real, live wombats! I’d never seen one in my life! It was incredible! And all the birds, the cockatoos even said ‘hello!’. All these animals I’d seen photos of, but never actually seen up close, in real life, suddenly weren’t made up creatures on a piece of paper anymore. They were there – living and breathing and squawking and shuffling around, cage-free and there for the petting. And we’re not talking boring rabbits or badgers or deer… I never even knew that something called and Echidna existed! I even got to hold a small koala, it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done. You simply can’t imagine how soft and springy and dense their fur is.

We were staying with family of friends and you can’t imagine my surprise when I saw wild wallabies jumping around in the back garden. We could even feed them! I was over the moon. But there was more to come. We took the ferry to Magnetic Island and spent the day exploring. Wild koalas, beautiful empty bays with aquamarine water, flocks of parakeets flashing between rainforest trees… we had to swim in a stinger net but clambering up huge rocks to watch the ocean was just magical. I loved the warmth of the water here, and how it was so easygoing – we ended up being the only people in the bay so we just left our stuff and went for a walk along the sand. We certainly built up an appetite as we were invited to dinner with a friend of the family. It was simply delicious, and so good to hang out with a real local who was interested in me and where I come from, and showed me the difference between 5 (!!) sorts of mangos. We chatted for hours and hours, it was wonderful.

Our final big outing was to drive to Mission Beach, 3 hours up the coast. I can’t remember the last time I drove for 3 hours without stopping off; it’s such a long way to drive in one go. Mission Beach was beautiful, especially from above, as it had been arranged for me to go skydiving. I could not believe my luck that I can do these kinds of things. I’m so incredibly grateful. Most of my friends just stay where they are, but here I was, hanging 5000ft in the air with a parachute and a wonderfully entertaining tandem master. Seeing the coastline stretch as far as the eye could see below me, and the rainforest on one side and Great Barrier Reef on the other was just amazing.

The drive home was even better than the drive up. We stopped off at the biggest wellington boot I’ve ever seen – you can even climb it, what a hoot! Then we bought some fresh local prawns – the lady in the shop was completely mental, but really well meaning. She was saying all these things I couldn’t understand because her accent was so thick, and she shouted a lot, but it was hilarious – you just can’t make this stuff up. Neither can you plan or pay for this kind of real local experience, and the setting in which we ate the prawns was amazing. Up in the rainforest, a stream rolls over these huge boulders creating little pools and slides and even really deep bits you can dive into. As it was the weekend, families came with their kids and friends (via delicious ice cream shop Frosty Mango!) and just brought lunch, hung out and swam in the stream. Some of the kids even caught wild crayfish. I would have never found this place if it wasn’t for our local’s knowledge, and I feel really privileged to have been somewhere that very few tourists know is there.

Looking back, I had such a great time in Townsville. It was every day life for some, but to me everything was so exotic and exciting. I mean, wild parrots in your back garden? How much more holiday-like does it get? Words can’t describe it, you’re just going to have to go to Queensland.”

If we’ve learned anything from our little experiment, it is to not underestimate how interesting your own surroundings can be for someone from a different background. We all had a fantastic time, but here lies the secret: just because you think it’s normal, doesn’t mean the rest of the world thinks the same. Just because it’s ‘ugly’ or ‘boring’ or ‘every day’ doesn’t mean others won’t be amazed by your ‘edgy’ or ‘incredibly relaxing’ or ‘so different from where I live’ surroundings. People have different ideas about what they find inspiring, they travel all over the world to beachside holiday resorts, or icy landscapes, or North Korea, or Kazakhstan or Kenya. Or even Frankfurt. It’s often the things you take for granted that outsiders pick up on and find fascinating. What? Everyone sticks to the queuing system? Huh? You eat cold meats and cheese for breakfast? OMG! You have actual, real SNOW in your garden?!?

So if you can’t get away, and are stuck at home, in your boring surroundings, remember that someone else is dreaming of seeing the cool English pub down the road, or your sash windows, or your heated toilet seat. Invite someone to check out what makes your place ‘normal’ and see how they point out things and laugh about stuff you never thought anyone would notice. See your own surroundings with new eyes. You never know, inspiration might just be around the corner.

Forget Jurassic Park T-Rex. This is way more scary.

All, Learn

That goat scene will never leave your memory. What had the goat done to deserve this anyway? But it could also have ended so beautifully – like that Tiger in Russia who decided to not eat his takeaway-goat-dinner but befriend it instead. But according to Spielberg, it’s the dinosaurs who are out to get us. Well, we have news for you. For on two islands in the South Pacific, whose rainforest covered mountains, treacherous gorges and snow-capped peaks have fascinated humankind since their arrival over 800 years ago, it was the birds you really have to worry about.

New Zealand’s 65 million years of isolation from any other landmass and consequent lack of mammals (apart from bats that flew over the sea at some point and some seals that swam there) meant the islands’ native flora and fauna is unique to say the least. Where Africa boasts large mammal carnivores that keep the eco-system healthy and Europe’s soils are kept fertile by burrowing moles, New Zealand didn’t have as much as a single wallaby to stop the shrubs from taking over. Nevertheless, the Kiwi eco system is incredibly complex and diverse thanks to birds, reptiles and insects taking over ecological niches usually filled by mammals.

When humans first arrived in New Zealand, there were as many as 131 species of terrestrial, freshwater and coastal birds as well as another 65 species of seabirds, of which 115 were only found in New Zealand. If at this point you’re like “meh, I know what a pigeon looks like”, then take in a face-full of these awesome creatures:

1) The Kakapo

Yeah, its name might make you snigger, but so will video footage of it shamelessly humping Stephen Fry’s cameraman. This flightless, nocturnal parrot isn’t only the world’s largest and longest living, but also the world’s only non-monogamous parrot (which means he’s a bit of a slag). Its name actually translates from Maori to Kaka (“parrot”) + po (“night”) and only uses its flightless wings to balance or break its fall should it leap the wrong direction out of a tree. Not needing them for flight makes the Kakapos feathers extremely soft, which unfortunately meant they were often made into items of clothing by the Maoris, which on top of being easily hunted and eaten straight off the ground by settlers pets such as dogs, cats or ferrets, resulted in the Kakapo becoming critically endangered. Bummer. Randomly, Kakapos are also said to smell really nice (no irony here).

2) The Kea

Staying with roughly the same kind of bird, let New Zealand introduce you to the Kea, the world’s only alpine parrot. About 48cm long and mostly olive green and grey, it feeds on all kind of stuff, including sheep. Or so farmers from the 1860s believed so they could kill it for bounty. Luckily keas are rather smart and flew back into the mountains, helping each other out and preparing and using tools to get what they need to survive. Yup, it’s all caught on camera. As of 1993, so is a group of kea attacking sheep. So the farmers were right after all – Sir David Attenborough says it. Seriously. These are your sheep-killing parrot-predators.

On this note, a group of kea is referred to as a ‘circus’ and they are rarely found on the North Island, debunking claims they actually want to get somewhere warmer but are just a bit lost. Often called “the clown of the mountains”, keas will do what all parrots do: wreak havoc. Investigating backpacks, skis, snowboards, boots, clothes, cars, flying off with anything that’s light and not bolted down (including one unfortunate Scottish man’s passport) and generally trashing places are only a few reasons they are no longer kept as pets.

3) The Moa

Another bird you probably don’t want as a pet is a moa. Mainly because it was up to 3.6m tall and weighted up to 230kg. That’s a lot of bird feed per week. Moas also display different sizes for males and females, with one being up to 150% taller and 280% heavier than the other. Interestingly, it’s the female that’s the larger one. Hellooooo ladiiieeees. The difference was so big that until 2003, the bones were attributed to distinct species but those clever DNA people at CSI Miami quickly cleared that one up. Despite their size, moas fed on plants, twigs, leaves from trees, shrubs and your mum’s rose bushes. Think of filling the niche of a prairie-wondering giraffe, deer or buffalo. They swallowed several kilos of stones to help them digest coarse material and you can still find them on the beach today if you know what to looks for (ask Jonny at the Purangi winery for tips!).

The other main reason you won’t want a moa as a pet is that it will be dead. Due to over-hunting, the last living moa to grace the face of this earth kicked the bucket around 1445 AD. There are, however, thirty six whole moa eggs still in existence in museum collections, so if you want to run your own Jurassic Park style re-animation-breeding program, we’re sure there’s a kickstarter audience out there for you. In fact, Jonny has it on good authority that someone has already succeeded in his neck of the woods. There have been sightings… don’t shoot the messenger. Remember you didn’t believe the sheep-eating parrot thing either, before Sir Dave confirmed it.

4) The Haast’s Eagle

We have established that at 3.6m height and 230kg, moas are massive. Think the body mass of an average pony. So what on God’s green earth could the main predator that hunts moa look like? A tiger? A bear? An eagle? … hang on… EAGLE? You heard correctly, the answer to New Zealand’s lack of large mammal predators is… stick some massive wings on a massive raptor’s body and voila: you have your apex killer.

Interestingly, DNA evidence shows that both the haast’s eagle and the moa used to be way smaller but were able to just get larger and larger due to lack of competition. This is called “island gigantism” and resulted in a bird weighing over 16kg and a compact but nevertheless impressive wingspan of 3m. To give you a comparison, a haast’s eagle’s lower beak bone has been measured at 11.4cm vs the largest beak of modern day eagles only get up to 7cm long. We have to say ‘modern day’ eagles as unfortunately, as moas were turned into fancy new Maori handbags in the 15^th century, haast’s eagles lost their main food source and died out.

5) The Kiwi

Kiwis are awesome. We saw Atu and her friend Kevin, a great spotted and brown Kiwi in Otogohanga’s Kiwi House, who were so surprisingly fluffy, cute and actively bopping around their little night time forest enclosures, we didn’t realize half an hour had passes since we started watching them. It may surprise you to learn that kiwis are related to ostriches, emus and cassowaries, but at the size of a domestic chicken. Furthermore, kiwis more closely related to huge Malagasy elephant birds than they are to native moas. They are the only bird to have nostrils at he end of their beaks, possess bone marrow and lay the largest eggs in relation to their body size of any bird in the world. An egg will be 20% of the female’s body weight. Compare that to an ostrich’s measly 2%.

Just like Brett in Flight of the Conchords, New Zealand’s birds have got it going o-oh-ooohhhn. The Islands’ unique setting cut off from the rest of the world has made it’s animals and plants incredibly creative, so when you visit, it will look like nothing else on the planet. And if you take a closer look at these amazing creatures, their dinosaur ancestry suddenly becomes apparent. Maybe it’s the dinosaurs (in modern form) you need to be afraid of after all.

Skydivers doing awesome stuff

All, Learn

We’ve been researching a lot about skydivers recently. Last September, our project for Skydive Australia started to open up a whole new world to us, which ain’t a mean feet – we’ve been quite a few places already. We were both surprised and in awe by what you can do in the sky and how accessible and inclusive skydiving really is. We also stumbled across a whole bunch of amazing feats fliers have achieved, so, without further ado (and shamelessly un-paraphrased off Wikipedia), we simply HAD to share a definitive list of skydiving world records.

On October 24, 2014, Alan Eustace achieved the highest parachute jump in history, jumping from 135,890 feet(41,422 m) and drogue-falling for 4 and a half minutes. The previous height record was set on October 14, 2012 by Felix Baumgartner who still holds records for the longest and fastest free-fall by breaking the speed of sound achieving Mach 1.25 jumping from 127,852 feet (38,970 m) as part of the Red Bull Stratos U.S. Air Force Captain Joe W. Kittinger, the 4th highest jumper (102,800 feet (31,330 m), August 16, 1960), served as mission control for Baumgartner.

World’s record for themost tandem parachute jumps in a 24-hour period is 103. This record was set in 2009 by Chip Bowlin and Kristine Gould.

World’slargest formation in free-fall: 8 February 2006 in Udon Thani, Thailand (400 linked persons in freefall).

World’slargest female-only formation: Jump for the Cause, 181 women from 26 countries who jumped from nine planes at 17,000 feet (5150 meters), in 2009.

World’s largest head down formation (vertical formation): 31 July 2015 at Skydive Chicago in Ottawa, Illinois, U.S. (164 linked skydivers in head to Earth attitude):

Largest female head down formation (vertical formation): 30 November 2013 at Skydive Arizona in Eloy, Arizona, U.S. (63 linked skydivers in head to Earth attitude).

European record: 13 August 2010, Włocławek, Poland. Polish skydivers broke a record when 102 people created a formation in the air during the Big Way Camp Euro 2010. The skydive was their fifteenth attempt at breaking the record.

World’slargest canopy formation: 100, set on 21 November 2007 in Lake Wales, Florida, U.S.

Largest wingsuit formation: 22 September 2012, Perris Valley, California, U.S. (100 wingsuit jumpers).

In 1929, U.S. Army Sergeant R. W. Bottriell held the world’s record for most parachute jumps with 500. At that number, Bottriell stopped parachuting and became a ground instructor.

Australian stunt parachutist, Captain Vincent Taylor, received the unofficial record for a lowest-level jump in 1929 when he jumped off a bridge over the San Francisco Bay whose center section had been raised to 135 feet (41 meters).

Don Kellner holds the record for the most parachute jumps, with a total of over 40,000 jumps.

Cheryl Stearns (U.S.) holds the record for the most parachute descents by a woman, with a total of 20,000 in August 2014, as well as the most parachute jumps made in a 24-hour period by a woman—352 jumps from 8–9 November 1995.

Erin Hogan became the world’s youngest sky diver as of 2002, when she tandem jumped at age 5.

Bill Dause holds the record for the most accumulated freefall time with over 420 hours (30,000+ jumps).

Jay Stokes holds the record for most parachute descents in a single day at 640.

The Oldest Skydiver: Frank Moody, aged 101, made a tandem jump on 6 June 2004 at Skydive Cairns. The Tandem Master was Karl Eitrich. Previously, the record was unofficially generally credited (at least in the U.S.) to “Smitty the Jumper” (H. Truesdell Smith) — from around 1959 (age 61) through his last solo jump in 1974 (211th jump, age 75), to his last tandem jump in 1990 (221st jump, age 91), and even until his death in 1995 (age 96).

Largest all-blind skydiving formation: 2, with Dan Rossi and John “BJ” Fleming on September 13, 2003.

If this is all pretty amazing but sounds a little unachievable, don’t worry. Check out who we met during our project and tell us again that skydiving’s beyond your abilities…

Of natural hot tubs and screams of joy in pubs: The mini kiwi road trip Part 2

All, Destinations

Did you know that you can actually see Mount Doom from Hobbiton? Mount Ngauruhoe (the volcano’s non-hollywood name) was unfortunately not on our list this trip, but as we left Hobbiton through rolling green hills we spotted its conical shape in the distance, and marvelled at Kerry, Chris and Nick’s achievement of walking Frodo’s 6 month journey to Mordor in just one week. But outside the fantastical world of a Hollywood movie set, New Zealands flaura and fauna just kept on being amazing. There is a reason the other-worldly films were set on these Islands in the South Pacific, and this reason is that New Zealand already has an other worldly feel to it.

(if you’ve missed Part 1 of the Mini Kiwi Road Trip, here it is!)

We are used to the climates of Northern Europe, with cold ocean swells crashing on rugged cliffs, misty mornings on the moors and lush green forests meeting sweeping hills. But walking around New Zealand’s rainforests marvelling at huge ferns, thick moss and star-wars shaped trees, shrubs and leaves made us feel like we were truly on another planet. And although we’d only been here for a couple of days, due to everything being relatively close together, we had seen a huge amount of unique landscapes.

Tummys full of pizza from nearby Mata Mata, we headed northwards, past the giant LP Bottle and the Karangahake Gorge suspension bridge, all the way North East to the peninsula that shields Auckland from the Pacific’s heaviest swells. The Coromandel is covered in temperate rainforest and surrounded by stunning cloastline including Cathedral Cove best explored by sea kayak. If you’re like us and love the great outdoors, but get cold a lot, head to Hot Water Beach at low tide and dig your very own volcanic jacuzzi. And when we mean hot, we don’t mean ‘yeah it’s kind of a little bit tepid if I really concentrate on the amazingness of nature’. We mean ‘burn your feet if you don’t top your pool up with freezing sea water’ hot. As the full moon coincided with clear weather and a low tide at 11:30pm, we hardly noticed we had spent 3 night time hours sitting in a bikini and board shorts watching the stars through soft steam.

One of the great things about flexible travel is that if you meet someone, and they have a cool gig going on somewhere, or idea, or recommendation, you can go check it out. So the next day we were driving along stunning coastal roads to see our Kayak guide’s mate, who happened to own his own winery. The day which involved stopping off for Oysters for lunch and shooting lookouts at Shakespeare Cliff just south of Whitianga couldn’t have ended better than being treated to Jonno’s self-christened ‘haka’ about his Purangi winery, diverse produce, family ancestry and local popular culture. After 3 hours of chatting about the surprisingly huge diversity of flaura you can make alcoholic beverages out of, and the interconnectedness of the world as a result (New Zealand’s unofficial national fruit isn’t a Kiwi, and was brought over from Brasil, hence the name “feijoa”), resident backpackers and a dog joined as the delicious aroma of home made wood fire pizzas from the pub area wafted over us.

Returning to Auckland would have been harder, if the coastal road hadn’t been as spectacular. Cutting through mountainous terrain of the Coromandel peninsula, you really got a sense of what a scenic route should be. Over the green hills and blue ocean we spotted a city in the distance – New Zealand’s capital in fact, which would be our next and final stop on the Mini Kiwi Road Trip. Parking a massive campervan in the city is ok in parts, but leaving it overnight was going to be tricky. Luckily we’d had a suggestion to stay north of the bridge in the Takapuna Beach Holiday Park and whilst not huge it couldn’t have been a better place to bunker down for a few days. The weather had been playing up so the War Rig was able to show off its huge advantage over a smaller van: it had tonnes of space. With a double bed above the drivers cabin that didn’t need assembling, a kitchen you could really cook in, central heating and a great sitting area at the back, we were finally able to work, relax and invite friends for dinner when it was too rainy to do any filming. You may say we’re getting middle aged, but having the space to comfortably hang out with 6 friends, dinner, beers and cards against humanity whilst the rain pelted down outdoors was bliss.

Sitting on a dormant volcanic field, there are plenty of extinct volcanoes to spot or even scale in and around Auckland including Mount Eden, One Tree Hill and the Domain. Tamaki Drive along to Mission Bay has great views of the city (like the one above) and if you prefer the water, you can go on a pirate ship (or the aptly named ‘SS Puke’) for the day and spot daring bungee jumpers fall off the Auckland Harbour Bridge. As the unofficial but bad-ass inventor of extreme sports, New Zealand has tonnes to offer for thrill seekers great and small. Did you know that there is no age limit for skydivers? That the youngest skydiver on record is 5 year old Erin Hogan? Well you don’t need to look far for your next kick as you can actually freefall off Auckland’s inner city Skytower. Or just walk around the outside of it, leaning over the edge, like we did. Or sit inside and eat dinner. Or just chill on the observation deck. Or hang out at the casino.

Two nights later the spectacular views from the Skytower lay high above us, but it was exactly where we were drawn back to as the country exploded in a celebration of pride and joy. At 4am on a Sunday morning we found ourselves roaming the streets for a bar that wasn’t ram packed full, dodging drunk backpackers in worn off Halloween facepaint, runners on their way to the Auckland marathon, rowdy sports fans, and those who like us were fresh on coffee from getting an early night for an early start. After 2 hours of incredible atmosphere The All Blacks won the world rugby cup and the following day was once of the most exhilarating displays of collective delight we have ever witnessed. Kiwis take supporting their sports teams very seriously (with rugby at the heart, their basketball team is referred to as the ‘Tall Blacks”) and are comparatively good natured so Sunday morning celebrations at Best Ugly Bagles and a day trip to Waiheke Island and its wineries and oyster feasts couldn’t have rounded our trip off better.

New Zealand, a land far far away, but one you have to (and we mean HAVE TO) put on your list of urgent visits. There is something you can’t describe adequately in a postcard, and if our tiny taster of adventures to come is anything to go by, we simply cannot wait to get stuck straight back in.

Wanna go off the beaten track? How’s the sky for an idea?

All, Learn

In 1797 Andre-Jacques Garnerin strapped a large bedsheet to a basket with a balloon to elevate it to the desired height, cut the cord and returned jolting to earth. He officially invented skydiving and even got a google doodle for it. In 1919 Lesie Irvin developed his own basketless parachute for his job in the Californian film industry, which was such a success that it kicked off The Irving Air Chutes Company. IACC’s parachutes saved over 10000 lives during WW2. It’s pretty amazing how far back skydiving goes in history (check out Da Vinci’s parachute) and beginnings may have been humble, but where it’s come from since is just as amazing.

6 months ago we thought it was all base-jumpers and ex-army tandem masters taking backpacker thrill seekers for a quick plane ride and plummet, but it turns out there is so much more fun to have in the sky than we could ever have imagined. We’ve met stuntmen with wingsuits honing their flying styles for the next red bull ad, or fun jumpers that fly at night, enjoying the stars, twinkling city lights and amazing views at full moon. Apart from the standard tummy-down banana positioning, with a little experience and training you can move around in the sky a lot more than just straight down. Freefliers can often be seen practicing standing or sitting in freefall, or laying on their backs, or hanging upside down. Check out camera flier Helmi in the Byron video. You can take freefall to the extreme and fly ‘style’, which is basically freefall’s sprinting equivalent. Build up maximum speed, complete a pre-arranged set of manoeuvres in the fasted time possible (6 seconds for world champions) and get evaluated by high-speed camera which gives you points on hundredth of a second intervals.

Another discipline presented at the World Freestyle Competitions is angle flying, which is what Vance (white & yellow), Slatey, (black, blue & yellow) Travis (black) & Jonesey (grey & turquoise) are up to in the shot above. The idea is to fly in formation at the same level and angle as your mates in preparation for three-dimensional flight formations or acrobatic freeflying. Apart from base jumping (we’ll get to that, don’t worry!), formation flying (also known as ‘relative work’ or RV) is probably the most recognizable solo skydiving skill. From groups of 2 to 4 or 44 (known as a 2-way, 4-way, 44-way etc) to a record breaking 400 linked people in freefall above Thailand in 2006, hanging on to your mates in artistic ways at 200km/h needs a lot of practice, planning and coordination but is also breathtaking to behold. Cross country parachuting does what cross country skiing does, but with no skis. Jump out of the plane, open our chute straight away and get as far away from the exit point as you can to win the competition. Accuracy work is quite the opposite, because it doesn’t matter how far you fly as the objective is to land on a target with 2cm diameter and electronic sensors that measure your 1cm increments away from the centre target and award points accordingly.

Canopy piloting or swooping is usually done above a pond, where courses are set up with entry gates that parachutists need to pass through at a very shallow maximum height (sometimes measured by requiring a contestant to trail a foot through the surface of the pond during flight, creating a mini-wake with the tip of the shoe). The course needs to be navigated without being too high or so low you fall in the pond, and competitions run for the three skills of speed (measured at the beginning and end), distance (how far you get after completing the course) and accuracy (how accurate you can land on a target after the course).

Yeah, this all sounds awesome for you mere mortals, but we wanna pull out the big guns. The moment you’ve all been waiting for: Base Jumping. For those of you who think Base Jumping is filming yourself on your gopro crushing your legs after jumping off a cliff to get 10000 hits on youtube to Awolnation’s “Sail”, yeah… we can’t really say you’re wrong. But there are many successful professional base jumpers alive and what goes into it (especially to avoid getting hurt) is pretty fascinating. Base jumping is indeed one of the more radical and dangerous disciplines in parachuting, especially as you don’t exit from a plane with plenty of time to open your chute. Typically, you’ll hurl yourself off four kinds of elevated structures: buildings, antenae, spans (aka beams or bridges) and the earth itself (aka a cliff). Has the name-penny dropped? A huge amount of planning and calculations goes into base jumping as working out how long you need to fall for to gain enough speed for your chute to open but not hit the ground beforehand is rather complex once you take thermals and other environmental factors into account.

If you want to look super-cool but don’t quite have the nerve to let milliseconds decide your fate, you can always skysurf, which basically entails jumping out of a plane with a modified snowboard. In fact, if you are over a very large unpopulated area, you can organize a stuff jump. Take all sorts of stuff on your jump with you. Rubber rafts are popular as you can pose sitting in them (lolz), but bikes, motorcycles, vacuum cleaners, water tanks and inflatable T-Rexes have all been thrown out of the back of aircraft. Honestly, google it, it’s hilarious. Skydivers carefully track away from stuff before opening chutes, and make sure that what you’re taking isn’t incredibly important as it will probably disintegrate as it smashes into the ground at terminal velocity whilst you still sail high above it. All this is a huge amount of fun, if you’re inspired you can easily learn how to solo jump completing a week-long AFF course. If you want to go professional, tandem or camera flying is incredibly rewarding, but we’ll give you a lowdown in a separate post. So don’t think it ends with your first jump, there’s a whole sky out there to explore.

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