CAIT AROUND THE WORLD

April 4, 2023 — I woke to a beautiful sunny day, which also happened to be a day that I was simultaneously exhilarated for and dreading.

When I was still home, I talked about planning to skydive while in Australia. When I got here, I hadn’t booked it yet because I wasn’t sure which company I wanted to go through and I also wasn’t sure where I wanted to do it — I wanted a beach landing, and from all accounts early in my trip, there is only one place where you can do that. (Turns out, there’s not only one place, thankfully, although I will say that there may be limited places where you can do it.) When I was in Byron Bay talking to the travel desk, we decided to add on a skydive for the heck of it and see what the total cost came out to. And then I booked it.

When I was in Noosa, I had a hard time sleeping because I was so preoccupied thinking about what it would be like, if I was going to be able to handle it, if there would be that stomach-drop sensation like on roller coasters (because that remains, to this day, the only part of a roller coaster that I find terrifying), and so on. I went on to the website for the company that I was using to skydive and found a ten-page brief about what skydiving is like. That helped considerably.

When I was on my tour of the Whitsundays and was talking to the friends from Brisbane, one of them was telling about her experience skydiving as I’d mentioned that I was going to be doing it in a couple days. She told me that the biggest thing to be aware of is that you can’t breathe initially because you’re in free fall, due to the thin air. But she loved skydiving and actually said that she would have done it on this trip had the timing worked out. That was really reassuring for me. I also jumped off the (pretty high) diving board on the boat, reasoning that if I couldn’t handle that, there was no way I should be jumping out of a plane 15,000 feet over the ground in twenty four hours. I was feeling much more relaxed after having conquered that and actually slept pretty good the night before I was due to dive.

I got up that morning shortly after eight and had some breakfast, went for a walk to find a post office box, and bought a postcard, stamp, and toothbrush case at the pharmacy (as you’ll remember, I lost my toothbrush and original case in Tasmania on the last day of my seven-day tour). I got back to the hostel from that and realized I left my water bottle at the pharmacy so when I walked down to the pickup point for my skydive, I grabbed it along the way.

At the meeting point, my mind was mostly filled with excitement and “holy shit, I can’t believe I’m doing this!” In fact, here are my actual stream-of-consciousness thoughts that I wrote down while waiting for the shuttle:

At Wisdom Cafe waiting for the shuttle bus to skydiving! Been freaking out a tiny bit for most of the morning but most of all trying to stay calm and relaxed. I woke up in a good mood and I’ve been having a good morning — I figured out the route I want to take after Ireland! I had a muffin and posted my postcards and picked up one for here in Airlie Beach with beautiful pictures of the Whitsundays. Nervous but excited!

It’s quite amusing looking back now because I was documenting things as if it might be my last day on this Earth. I even took the picture below and captioned it:

The books I browsed while I waited for the shuttle. I’m coming back here after to get a book that looked really good and is by an Australian author and set in Australia!

After several minutes of waiting (I was a bit early) the bus showed up and I got on. I sat next to a girl in the front seat who was from the UK. She was campervan-ing the East Coast with a friend. We chatted for a while on the ride to the takeoff point for skydiving. It was about forty-five minutes outside of Airlie Beach, which I didn’t realize. We stopped at a service station on the way for a toilet break (apparently the toilets at the airstrip were not as nice as the ones at the servo) and then continued the rest of the way to the office.

We got checked in when we arrived and I added the photo and video package to my jump — if I’m going to scare the shit out of myself, I want to remember it! We had a while to wait for our jump after that. There were several people from an earlier group that were still waiting in front of us and there was also a training group that jumped while we were waiting.

There were also some van difficulties while we were there — when the people ahead of us finally got to head out on their dive, the van that was supposed to meet them at the drop point blew a tire and employees had to go get the people in their own vehicles and get another van en route to the drop site.

When that craziness died down, we got set up with gear and our instructors and we got on the plane. The plane, though bigger than I initially thought, was pretty tiny, and the brief that I read ahead of time was absolutely right: the nerves really start to hit you when you’re airborne.

I was absolutely terrified. I thought I was going to pass out when we hit altitude and it was time to move and jump out. My instructor, thank God, told me to take slow and deep breaths and I stayed awake.

Jumping out was actually sort of the easiest part because you literally don’t have to do anything. You just have to sit on the edge of the plane, dangle your feet, and then your instructor just sort of pushes you off and away you go. That’s also the point where your thoughts crescendo and all you can think is WTF AM I DOING AHHHHHHH! But you don’t have any choice in the matter. You’re beyond it all. There’s no backing out and all you can do is put your trust in the person behind you and go.

There’s sixty seconds of free fall before the chute opens fully (even though it’s deployed behind you in a sphere, ready to go, while you’re in free fall) and the girl I met on the Whitsundays boat was absolutely right: you cannot breathe.

I’ve always been the person who has a hard time breathing when the air is rushing at me, even at ground level. I have ways of breathing through that, but those didn’t really work in free fall. Watching the video back, if I were going to skydive again, I’m guessing that mouth closed would be a good idea, along with slow breaths through the nose. But if I ever skydive again, I’m asking the instructor how in the world they manage it.

Now, for all that I couldn’t breathe, the guide was right about one more thing: you don’t get the drop sensation like you’re on a roller coaster. But it’s also not completely accurate that you feel like you’re floating. If I had to describe it, it’s like dropping a rock from the top of a building. You know you’re falling, you can feel yourself pushing against the air, and while it doesn’t feel like you’re dropping quite as fast as you are (you can hit up to 200km/hr), it still feels like you’re a rock being dropped from some high height. I suppose floating is a decent descriptor, but not being able to breathe took the happy sensation that I associate with floating away. And you definitely don’t feel weightless.

In free fall, about the only thing going through my head was “air, air, air, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit” and hoping that the sixty seconds would be over soon.

When they were finally done and the parachute was deployed, my favourite part of the entire experience began. Everything went quiet. The wind and blood roaring in your ears stops, and you’re left floating above the world. We had what was the best view of the Whitsundays so far that day and they are quite a sight from that high up. We were suspended over the ocean and it’s so clear — and shallow enough — that you can see right to the sand. Everything slows down in those moments as you fly above the world.

I was feeling so much better by this point and we did some super fun turns over the ocean (then I got a bit dizzy) and continued to float and drift toward the landing point on the beach.

Now, before you take off, they tell you what you need to do in order to land: knees up and feet up as far as you can, and don’t let them down until they say. It is about one million times easier to do this on land than it is when you’re strapped in a harness to another person and your legs have nearly fallen asleep due to sheer terror. In fact, my left leg felt like a complete dud at that point. Miraculously, though, I was able to lift my legs high enough for landing and we touched down on the beach! Being back on firm ground felt so weird after the utter terror and exhilaration of the last six-ish minutes, but I can definitely say I was so glad to be there.

We stood around for a few minutes waiting for the shuttle back to the airstrip to grab our stuff before being driven back to Airlie Beach. There had been a little conversation after landing on the beach, but on the shuttle ride back to the airstrip and all the way into Airlie Beach we were pretty much completely silent. For my part, at least, it was a stunned silence as I sat reliving the experience, still trying to process it.

Back at Airlie Beach, I was starting to feel slightly more normal. I walked back to the hostel and ate lunch, then got my swimsuit on and headed down to the lagoon. I bought the book that I’d admired at the book store earlier and read in the fading afternoon light. I was still in a bit of a stupor, feeling like I’d defied death that day. Overly dramatic, but then, skydiving is a pretty crazy experience.

I laid out at the lagoon for a couple of hours before heading back to the hostel. I didn’t have anything more to eat since I was still quite full from lunch. I killed time until I was due to meet a friend from Noosa who had just recently arrived in Airlie Beach. We went to get drinks at 9:00pm at a bar near the beach, where they had $19 and $20 cocktails! I got one of the $20 cocktails. It was a Peach Island Green Tea — their twist on a Long Island — and it was so good. It also came in a fairly large, tall glass which made it seem more worth the price. We talked for well over an hour and got back to the hostel around 11:00pm, after finding an ATM that worked and getting some money out because I was officially out of Australian cash. (Those loads of laundry really clean you out!)

After we got back, I called home and then went to bed.

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