Anything is Possible

by Hazel Flynn

  Just think about that for a moment: while weighted down with chains, and with his hands behind him, he dived from a significant height headfirst into water a mere three metres deep. If you ask me that’s the scariest part of the whole stunt!

  The Yarra being what it is, he was out of sight from the moment he submerged. There was some good theatrical activity on the surface, with officers in police boats reaching for grappling irons, ‘in anticipation of the coroner’s inquiry’. But not long after he went in — forty seconds by one newspaper’s account, seventy-three seconds by another — he surfaced, smiling and holding the chains from which he’d freed himself. According to The Leader newspaper, Houdini admitted the escape had been a trick.

  I became fixated on the idea of doing a big public stunt to commemorate the centenary. Whenever I was in town I would go to Queens Bridge and stand there staring down at the river. More than once I stepped over the barricade. I wanted to feel what Houdini had felt. A couple of times I sat down on the little stone ledge that pokes out over the water, exactly where he had been, and once I even lowered myself so that I was dangling down holding on by just my fingers. I think in that moment I half wanted to accidentally-on-purpose fall in. A friend who was with me captured it on his mobile, otherwise I might afterwards have been tempted to wonder if I’d dreamt it. Oddly no-one tried to stop me or said anything or called the authorities, that time or on any of my other visits.

  Safely back on my feet I ran through the possibilities. The most obvious idea was to recreate Houdini’s shackled jump as closely as possible to the original. Or I could tweak it by doing it in a straitjacket rather than chains. But the problem with any form of bridge jump was that my version was going to be a genuine escape, not a trick, so being pushed around by the tide would be an issue and so would visibility. I needed to see what I was doing and I wanted an audience to be able to see too, but thanks to falling in while rowing for school sport, I knew first-hand that under the surface the Yarra is a murky mess.

  I tried approaching it from a different angle. Rather than what he had done then what would Houdini do if he was around now? With this question running through my mind I lifted my eyes from the water below and looked ahead, along the course of the river. If I was a cartoon character a huge glowing lightbulb would have appeared above my head right at that moment. In my line of sight not 200 metres away, backing directly onto the river — in fact designed to look like a moored ship — was Melbourne Aquarium. What an interesting alternative for an underwater escape.

  State Library of Victoria P.7/NO.25 (top left); State Library of Victoria P.7/NO.26 (top right); State Library of Victoria P.7/NO.27 (bottom)

  Adam and John knew the Houdini anniversary had been occupying my thoughts and when I told them about the Aquarium they immediately saw the possibilities. We hadn’t been there since we were kids so the first thing to do was make a recce as normal paying visitors. The three of us went together and we were pretty excited by what we saw. In particular there was a central area called the Fish Bowl where viewers could see into the huge Oceanarium tank full of colourful and striking marine life including sharks and rays. If I did an escape in there, everything would be in full view. There’d be no question about whether I was holding my breath or not, or whether I was genuinely picking the locks. And it would look stunning. Whether it was feasible or not was a whole other question.

  The fact that I’d never done an underwater escape in saltwater was a relatively small stumbling block. The logistics and how the Aquarium management might feel about the idea were the really big unknowns, but there was only one way to find out. Adam called and set up a meeting. John, Adam and I brainstormed the proposal we might take to them, considering and rejecting possibilities including me being dropped down inside a cage and doing an escape lying flat on the tank floor. None of them felt like they were capturing the Houdini spirit. I kept coming back to the fact that Houdini had been weighted down by twenty-five pounds of metal. My stunt needed to involve some kind of weight that would plummet me to the bottom. The answer came to me in the form of the ‘sleep with the fishes’ threat from gangster movies: concrete boots.

  Right from the first meeting the Aquarium management were interested and encouraging. They were fascinated to learn about the historical connection to Houdini and could clearly see the promotional potential. They understood how much work we’d have to put in to make the idea a reality — that’s why we were starting a year ahead — but our track record reassured them of our capabilities. The head of marketing asked what I was hoping to get out of it: she was very surprised when it became clear that I didn’t want any money, I simply wanted approval to use their facility and hoped that the stunt would give me exposure and lift my profile. I could tell they all thought I was a bit bananas putting in all that effort and time without being paid.

  What we saw when some of the staff took us on a behind-the-scenes tour after the meeting made us think we were going to have to forget the whole thing. The Oceanarium is, of course, just an enormous tank or pool. Its walls rise up to almost the height of the ceiling, with a relatively small space between it and the top of the water. There was nowhere to install rigging or get in the winch which would be needed to lower me and my concrete boots. The alternative was for me to perch on the edge and push off, careening into the tank walls on the way down.

  When we spoke to the curator and head diver another obstacle emerged. They didn’t want me dropping down weighted for two reasons. First, because of the disturbance it would cause to the fish and the sand, rocks and plants mimicking the ocean floor on the tank’s bottom. Second, because they felt there was too much risk of me hurting myself, either by hitting so hard I broke my ankles or by tilting and landing face-down, unable to free myself. While Adam and I set to work thinking about a way of incorporating concrete boots that was acceptable to the Aquarium, John and Dad applied their engineering brains to the problem of getting me into the tank in the first place.

  We went through various possibilities and scrapped them all. I started to realise why no-one had done anything like this before — it was so damned complicated to plan, let alone execute! But I had the incredible advantage of having in-house structural engineers and, sure enough, they came up with a solution. Even without being able to do any drilling or screwing, John and Dad figured out how to create a bridge from one side of the tank to the other with the kind of lightweight aluminium trussing used in stage lighting.

  Each side would overlap the concrete wall; it would only be resting in place yet would be secure enough to take the necessary weight. Pre-drilled wooden planking, secured with zip ties, would go over the top to make a walkway. Finally, again using the trussing, a platform just large enough to take two winches would be built on the bridge. Everything could be brought in as separate pieces, assembled and then removed with no damage to the Oceanarium or its inhabitants. There wouldn’t be room to stand upright while we were assembling the bridge and using it, we’d all have to move around stooped over, but we could deal with that.

  For my entrance into the pool we came up with a small round steel plate to which the concrete boots would be attached. The plate would in turn be attached to four long chains. I would sit on the bridge while I was being locked into the boots and then I would stand as best I could and the chains would be slowly lengthened using the winches, giving me a controlled descent five metres to the tank floor. The concrete boots themselves would weigh sixty kilograms in total, made up as two equal sections. My feet and ankles would go into custom-fitted gaps in one half before the other half was slid into place. They would be joined by three steel hasps, one on each side and one on top, fitted with padlocks.

  The Aquarium’s decision-makers were agreeable to the plan, with a couple of provisos. The first was that they would need to inspect the concrete and steel along with any other material that would go into the tank, to make sure it wouldn’t affect the very specific pH balance the sea creatures need. The other was that I submit t
o an independent health check. I did so and as well as assessing my overall fitness the doctor ran detailed checks on my breathing.

  The results were surprising in the best way. The average person of my height, 175 centimetres (five feet nine inches) has a lung capacity of four litres. I have five. I thought this might have been a side-effect of the training I’d done for Water Trap, but apparently not — the doc told me it’s just a quirk of my body. However, being able to take in more air doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to hold it any longer than the average person — the fact that I could was unquestionably the result of training. Barring any health problems, most people can comfortably last about thirty to forty seconds before gasping for the next breath. For Water Trap I had trained myself to get to a little over one minute and forty-five seconds.

  That was good as far as it went, but in order to succeed with ‘Anchored’, as I’d named the tribute escape, I was going to go far beyond that. The crucial difference was that Water Trap happened just under the surface while Anchored would take place at a depth of five metres. If you’re not a diver that might not sound like much but it has a very big effect on the human body. At that depth there is what’s known as ‘half an atmosphere’ of extra pressure being exerted on the body. Right now, if you’re reading this book on land (and not on the top of a mountain), you are experiencing one atmosphere of pressure. It feels normal because you’ve been feeling it every day of your life. But every ten metres you descend underwater adds another atmosphere’s worth of pressure. Mostly you won’t notice it because it’s distributed evenly across your whole body but there is one big exception: air spaces — lungs, sinuses, ears. This you will feel big time. Your lungs feel like they are being crushed — because they are — and your ears and sinuses hurt for the same reason.

  There are all kinds of risks associated with this pressure, both when you’re at that depth and when you start to ascend to the surface. Most people have heard of nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream resulting in decompression sickness or ‘the bends’. But handled carefully the bends can be treated without causing permanent damage. There are worse things to fear than that. For instance, if the pressure on the tiny sacs in your lungs tips over the half-an-atmosphere mark, oxygen — the thing that normally keeps you alive — becomes toxic to you.

  Then there’s the dangerous time when the air sacs try to expand again as you rise to the surface. Unless you release the pressure by fully expelling the breath you’ve been holding they will burst. If that happens the consequences will fall somewhere along the spectrum from a collapsed lung at the ‘you got lucky’ end to a fatal embolism at the other. This was the world of freediving and clearly I needed expert help to keep me safe. Martin Owen hadn’t practised it himself but he gave me some very good initial advice and recommended further reading. We devised a training plan and then John and I set about it.

  I needed to practise at depth. The best option was an indoor suburban public pool complex that had a dive pool, since these are generally five metres deep. We found a suitable place, hired the pool for the hours we wanted to use it and embarked on the training program. Unlike the Aquarium it wasn’t saltwater, it didn’t have sharks and rays, it didn’t have a winch and it wasn’t cold — the pool was heated to a comfortable 28°C while the Aquarium was at the fishes’ preferred chilly 20°C — but it was the best we could do.

  When we arrived at 6 a.m. each morning we had to pass by the reception desk with all our gear. We weren’t keen to start a conversation about what we were doing beyond ‘some diving practice’ so John and I developed a routine a little like the one Adam and I had when we were smuggling the animals into hotels. We had a trolley loaded up with all the gear, including the sixty-kilogram concrete boots, covered with a towel. We made sure our air tanks were visible and, in a classic bit of misdirection, added flippers. We never used the flippers but they were a nice piece of set dressing designed to deflect any curiosity. The final step was that as John was wheeling the trolley in I’d be distracting the person on the desk with some question I already knew the answer to.

  Fortunately, the diving pool was in a corner away from the Olympic pool, with its kids’ swimming squads, loud coaches and early morning exercisers, so we were left to our own devices. We would tie a rope around each thirty-kilogram concrete block and lower them and the steel base plate to the bottom of the pool, then dive down and get everything set. It was exhausting dragging those heavy weights around so when it was ready we would come back to the surface where I would do five minutes of special breathing exercises and prepare myself mentally. Then we would go back down, John wearing the tank and giving me oxygen by sharing his regulator with me. I would lock myself into the boots, get one last breath from John, then set my stopwatch going and start the escape. As always we began simple, with just one lock, and worked our way up.

  Now that’s what I call cutting edge magic!

  When I got to the point where I could comfortably hold my breath with ample time to do the escape it was time to take it up a notch. In the real escape I wouldn’t have the comfort of John and his regulator standing next to me ready to come to the rescue. I needed to get ready for that so he began staying on the surface. I got progressively better and better as we continued to push hard, training week after week for six months. Unlike magic tricks, which get shorter the better you get, this got longer as I built up my breath-hold ability and my confidence. I added handcuffs and more chains and locks and stayed down longer just because I could. Far from resenting these early morning sessions before he went off to his paid job working on engineering projects with Dad, John absolutely loved them and we had a great time together.

  Getting into the right headspace was a fascinating challenge for me. Although they were both underwater escapes, my mental state for Anchored needed to be almost the opposite of Water Trap, with its frantic movements. Here the motion was slow and steady in order to conserve as much oxygen as possible. The real battle was dealing with the pain and potential for panic that came with the sensation of having your lungs crushed. When I got into the right frame of mind it became almost an out-of-body experience.

  Working on my fitness out of the water was also important. Lean physiques are the best for breath-holding (as they are for marathon running) because bigger muscles require more oxygen. I was already in good shape but now I worked incredibly hard to get ‘shredded’ so all fat disappeared, leaving only muscle — but not bulky weightlifter-style muscles. I trained intensely every day at the gym or outdoors, doing high reps with low weights, sprinting up sand dunes, running or doing squats while carrying a tree log, and doing sit-ups hanging from a bar by my feet. I pushed myself to my very limits and beyond. My body fat came down to under five percent and I felt like I was made of iron.

  I continued to push my lungs by using a breath restrictor. This device, used by elite athletes, has a mouthpiece connected to a cylindrical intake valve which can be adjusted to allow in less and less air. The idea is to build up your lungs by making them work harder for every breath. You start out at the maximum flow and gradually, as you get used to that and your lung strength builds, you tighten it. I began by using the device while I was sitting at my computer, then built up to using it when I went for a light jog and eventually got to the point where I could use it while I was lifting weights at full capacity.

  While all this was going on Adam and I kept the money coming in by doing school shows, since that seemed to be all that was on offer. But one day we got a call from a tour promoter called John Nicholls, whose company was bringing the British comedians Hale and Pace out for a month-long tour of Australia. John had received one of the PR kits we’d sent out and filed me away in his mind in case something suitable came along. Now it had — he was ringing to see if I wanted to be the support act on the tour.

  I gladly accepted even though it didn’t seem a natural pairing. Gareth Hale and Norman Pace are firmly in the British tradition of stock-character-based comedy, just raunchy enou
gh to feel daring but not enough to alienate their audiences. Their tour would include a few capital city dates, including Hobart’s Theatre Royal, the Adelaide Festival Theatre and Sydney’s Lyric Theatre, but most of its twenty-one shows were to be in regional centres or suburban venues like the Wyong Leagues Club.

  Cosentino family collection

  We started at Geelong’s Performing Arts Centre on 1 August 2009. I had a twenty-minute spot which, bizarrely, came not at the beginning but smack bang in the middle of Hale and Pace’s act. They would come out and do a first half, there would be an interval then I would come on and do my bit, after which Hale and Pace would return to finish the show. I also made a final appearance in their closing skit, walking across the stage on my hands. It was a requirement that all my equipment fit in one suitcase. I put together a punchy act that included the dancing lights, a floating neon cane, a straitjacket escape and, for the first time, a piece where I swallowed razor blades.

  I enjoyed the challenge of winning over an audience who were there to laugh, not to watch me do magic. Hale and Pace were absolutely lovely guys in real life and Norm in particular gave me some great tips for getting the room on-side, including a couple of suggested lines. One of them was a response to hecklers — a possibility at any time but much more likely with a well-oiled crowd. He told me that saying, ‘Hey, now. This is a night out for you, but it’s my career,’ might seem a bit stiff but it would work, and he was right. He also gave me a line to follow my razor blade act: ‘Now that’s what I call cutting edge magic!’ The man knew his audience; the line never failed to get a laugh. In my downtime I trained for Anchored, sitting on the bottom of hotel pools for up to three minutes, waving occasionally at startled fellow guests to let them know I was fine. Soon enough the tour was over. John Nicholls and Hale and Pace were extremely happy with the job I’d done but when they went back to England that was that.