Two weeks ago I experienced probably the most exhilarating feeling of my life, when I embarked on a completely ‘yolo’ adventure and decided to jump out of a plane from four-and-a-half kilometres in the air.
Along with my three best mates, it was arguably the most surreal moment of my 24 years.
Strapped onto my instructor Kras, I surprised myself with my new-found resilience. I prepared myself for last minute jitters, that would inevitably come with the nerves and panic that would surely consume me, but that didn’t happen.
The whole process was far too exciting and quick to let fear overcome me.
Squashed into a tiny propeller-fuelled aeroplane, 13 of us like sardines, with six attached to instructors and one solo jumper, who at 5,000 feet was casually testing his parachute as he plummeted (a feat I never dare experience), we were lucky enough to be braced with blue skies and slight cloud.
I was the first in my group to jump. I didn’t know what to expect really, and as I sat perched waiting over the edge, I realised I wasn’t at all seated on the plane. Instead I was quite literally hanging, attached to Kras by the safety of four hooks, and before I could react I found myself plummeting back toward planet Earth.
Sixty seconds of freefall at 220 km/h over Barwon Heads, roughly 100 kilometres south of Melbourne, with the infamous Great Ocean Road under me, it was surprisingly peaceful and the closest I have come to an out-of-body experience.
At the sixty second mark the parachute was pulled, and a steady decline, much less intense than the rapid speeds a few seconds prior, allowed me soak in some of the most pristine views Victoria has to offer, from 2,000 metres in the air.
I have always looked from atop in commercial flights at the fluffy white clouds below and pictured a calming comfort, and it was exactly that. Going through a sea of white, Victoria’s skies offered nothing but silence from the time we left the plane to the time we landed.
And would I do it again? At the drop of a hat (or a drop from a plane in this case).
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