15000ft High

Again one of these things that a couple of years ago I had never seen myself doing. Not that I am afraid of heights but never ever had I imagined to get the opportunity to skydive! When I arrived in Australia is was one of these things that somehow everyone was doing at one point. Scuba diving, going on a rainforest tour, Sailing around the Whitsundays or visiting Fraser Island, so many amazing things that you could do on the east coast and nobody wanted to miss out on.

After working for a couple of weeks I also treated myself with a day of skydiving. The skydiving place was located in Innisfail about an hour south of Cairns and also a famous place for farms and people finishing their farm work. I don’t even want to think back about how much I paid but it must have been around 300 AUD plus another 130 AUD or so for the Video + pictures. The company was called Tandem Cairns.

I did feel guilty spending so much money on something that only lasts a couple of minutes but I just really wanted to do it and I did save up for it. That I was actually going to jump out of a plane 15000ft above the ground did cross my mind but I waited until the very last day to actually start panicking. When the big day arrived we all met inside the skydiving office from where we would leave to go to Innisfail. First though we had to take care of all the paper work such if we want to book extra insurance and our contact details.

I had actually booked a beach landing for another 30 AUD, it was an expensive day. But since it was rain season and unsurprisingly it was raining my beach landing was cancelled and instead I got an upgrade from 14000ft to 15000ft. I just went with that since the that upgrade alone would usually by 90 AUD and what difference would another 1000ft make anyway.

Arriving in Innisfail I did get really scared. There were three groups of people since not everyone can fit in one plane. Of course I had the luck to be on the last plane, had a lot of time to panic even more and could listen to everyone coming back and telling me how awesome it was.

I was starting to feel a little sick but not sure if that was because I ate too much or because I forgot to eat. The only thing I could think of was how scared I was. After what felt like hours and actually might have been about two hours ,the last group (mine) got called and we got to go to the place were they stored all the equipment and put it on. We were seven people and each of us got their own instructor. Made sense since it was a tandem jump.

The instructor started filming by that time so later it would make a nice little video. I always like watching this video just because you can see how scared I was and it is just too funny to watch.

We started boarding the plane and me and my instructor where sitting in the very back since I was the only one jumping out of 15000ft. I did start to regret this decision, especially because it was so crowded in the airplane it got really uncomfortable. It really took forever to get high enough, just when I thought this would be it we kept going higher. At least in the end we were above the clouds which was good so then I couldn’t see the ground.

At one point they finally opened the door and the first person plus instructor just went out and disappeared, by far the most terrifying moment but this was when I started to get really excited and just wanted to get out of the plane. While we kept going higher the other five pairs jumped out. We were the only people left now in the plane (apart from the pilot of course) and I do not believe we actually made it up to 15000ft but at this point it did not even matter. We started walking forward to the open space and while the instruct was still sitting on the edge of the plane I was already hanging in the air. It was one of these moments that you just never forget and when we started falling I thought maybe I should scream since this is scary but then the screaming got weird and I stopped. Now I know what flying must feel like, we were falling for almost a minute. The air got really cold and it was difficult to breathe but that was all fine. However, my glasses that everyone needs to wear didn’t stay put and started to move up. I couldn’t see a thing.

A while later I just felt a pull and I knew the parachute must have gone up. I finally got to take of the glasses and could see again which was pretty much all I was thinking about.

By this time it had started raining a little and I could see all the other participates gliding around underneath us. We started going in circles while it took a couple of minutes to reach the ground. Somehow I was glad when my feet got to touch the grass. I managed to not screw up the landing and stay on my feet, which I was pretty proud of.

All in all, it took me a few seconds to finally realise that I had just jumped out of an airplane. It was such an amazing feeling and I wish I could have gone again. It wasn’t as scary after all but the fear was what made the excitement even bigger and better.

Since I was on the last plane we kind of immediately went back to Cairns after I had gotten rid of the equipment. It was an amazing day I felt like I could do anything from now.