‘Quick, you blokes are lucky, there’s been a cancellation so you can go now,’ he said.
A feeble attempt to offer my spot at the head of the queue to someone more deserving fell on deaf ears. As I waddled past those stupid polite people with their stupid empty stomachs, I looked up and saw three tandem gliders soaring effortlessly above us. And the queue of people with awe in their eyes followed their every move. I couldn’t help but think that pretty soon they could have a little more than awe in their eyes.
I signed my life away and was handed a helmet. A helmet! If I plummet a thousand feet onto rocks, that’ll be a great help.
In no time at all, I had all sorts of harnesses around almost every piece of my anatomy and a condom-like apparatus plastered to my back, making the pilot and me look like we’d just emerged from our pupal stage. My legs, however, were left free so I could run full bore to the cliff edge and leap. Not something you do every day. My heart was pounding and so were the cow, the rock and the milkshake in my gut.
Clinging desperately to the front strut with one hand and the camera with the other, I ran as fast as possible straight to the edge of certain death. Suddenly my legs were running in thin air and, amazingly, the lift-off was as smooth as silk. It was a magnificent feeling. We wriggled into our condom to relieve the pressure of gravity from our legs and sailed into the wind.
But gravity isn’t easily conned. Whenever I tried to lift my eye to the camera, good old gravity had other ideas and forced my face earthward, aided by the heavy helmet on my head. Not to mention the swirling mass in my stomach that was my lunch. It was a nightmare. My neck muscles were killing me. Forget shooting pictures, just looking ahead was impossible. The only place to look was straight down.
Suddenly we made a sweeping turn to the left. The horizon, and my lunch, turned right. I knew immediately that I was about to throw up. Should I tell my pilot, or just let the people below be the first to know? This was going to be extremely embarrassing and so, like a three-year-old, I closed my eyes so that the pilot wouldn’t know I was there.
The closed eyes actually did the trick. With the horizon no longer moving perpendicular to my lunch, my stomach began to calm down. I kept my eyes closed for the rest of the flight but kept telling the pilot how magnificent the view was. It was the least I could do.
We eventually had to succumb to gravity and land. Which we did, with amazing finesse. The glider headed straight for the ground at a speed I figured was way too fast, but at the last second, with our feet inches from the ground, the pilot aimed the glider back towards the sky, we ran a few steps along the ground, and came to a gentle stop. It was a work of art.
I was wondering how I would tell John and the bosses in the office about my dislike, nay, hatred, of hang-gliding. Somehow I had to get out of this assignment. But there was no need. I told John it might be a little difficult to shoot, but the next day before I needed to fully confess, the story was mercifully cancelled. I never found out why. But I did let them know of my huge disappointment.
•
The closest thing to feeling like you can actually fly is flying in a Robinson R22 helicopter. If you’re not superman, it doesn’t get any better than an R22. It’s much more fun than a hang-glider, even before lunch. The R22 can go wherever, whenever, it wants. It has glass or perspex all around so it gives you the feeling of being inside a bubble. With all that clear vision in front and above and the doors on both sides retracted, it’s the perfect flying machine to shoot from, with a rifle or a camera. Filming a cattle muster from one of these little beauties is amazingly exhilarating. The angles some of the hot-shot young pilots put the chopper into, without plummeting to the ground, says a lot for them and the machine.
Best of all is flying in the Kimberley, heading for beautiful waterfalls through deep, narrow gorges, with steep rock walls zooming past, inches from the chopper blades. Who needs to be superman? I’m doing what he does. And I’m sitting down. Flying doesn’t get any better.
In my 30 years as a cameraman, I spent a lot of time in choppers, from snow-covered polar bear territory in the North of Canada through tropical hail storms at night in the New Guinea highlands, to oil rigs all over the world, and I was never scared. I never gave it a thought. But now, thanks to ‘Human Resources’, I shit myself when I’m anywhere near a helicopter.
Some time in the early 2000s, the HR department in their wisdom decided it was now compulsory for film crews to do a ‘helicopter crash landing in water’ course. Without it, there would be no more chopper flying. So we all headed off to the local pool for training. It was the first time I was scared inside a helicopter, and it wasn’t even a real one.
For an hour we sat and watched videos of helicopter crashes, and there were some doozies. Dramatic shots of rotor blades slamming into the dirt or water while the rest of the helicopter spiralled like a tornado. There were many images of choppers plummeting to earth then exploding into massive fireballs, and in the majority of those cases the passengers were film crews. I knew a few blokes who had survived crashes and some who hadn’t, but as usual you just think it will never happen to you. After an hour’s worth of crashes, however, I began to think that maybe my time was up and it was definitely going to happen to me. I had no idea that helicopters plunged out of the sky so often.
Our brains overflowing with horrific crash scenes, we moved to the pool, and smack-bang in the middle, floating neatly on the surface, was a mock helicopter. Trying hard to look like the real thing, it boasted two front seats with a joystick between them and room for three people in the back. There was netting around the frame of the chopper with an opening on the right side where a door might be.
Four of us climbed in and took our seats. Sitting waist deep in water, we were told we would be tipped over and we were to find our way out. Can’t be that hard, I thought, I know where the door is, this should be fun.
In the pool were three beefy blokes who chatted and laughed with us while they held on to the frame of our chopper. Then suddenly without warning they tipped us backwards, and down we went. Being upside-down was a bit disconcerting for a millisecond, but with my eyes open I quickly undid the seatbelt and followed a couple of other bodies swimming through the door and up to the surface. No probs.
Next go, we all swapped positions and we now had to jettison our headphones as well as the seatbelt. This time we were tipped sideways, an odd sensation but, with eyes open, easy peasy.
For the third sinking, the cameramen were each handed a 5-litre plastic bottle half filled with water, which we had to place on our shoulder as if it was our camera. Now there was a bit more to think about—put the camera down (if it comes to the real thing, I won’t be putting the camera down, I’ll be hurling it as far away from my head as possible), take off the headphones, undo the seatbelt. Before our third go, I rehearsed ripping off seatbelt and headphones as speedily as possible so I could be underwater for as little time as I could manage.
This time we were tipped forward. And I was gone. Totally disorientated. In my confusion the headphones and the camera got tangled up and I forgot the seatbelt, but when my head cleared a bit I finally saw I was upside-down, flung off the seatbelt and headed for the door. That was a bit scary, but I’m a good swimmer and with my clear underwater vision I surfaced knowing full well that if ever I crash over water, it’d be a piece of cake.
The next crash was with camera, headphones, seatbelt and blacked out goggles. Now I was frightened. The only thing that had got me out before was my ability to see where the door was. Now I was as blind as a bat, sitting in the back seat, and thinking, Please, please, don’t tip us forward.
Suddenly I felt my face slam into the water. No, no, no, not forward, I hate that. Before I had time to take a breath, I was underwater. I’d done a complete somersault—and I had no idea where I was or where the door was. I was upside-down in complete blackness with water running into my nose and ears. I was so confused I forgot everything and tried to swim to where th
e door had been half a second ago, but the seatbelt and headphones kept me firmly in place. Fumbling around I somehow managed to undo them both, and swam for the door, but hit the netting. Now I started to panic. As I clawed my way round the netting searching for the open doorway, one of my fellow travellers grabbed my collar, pulled me out of the way and swam right over me to the door. Bastard. Okay, it’s every man for himself. I’m in a fucking council swimming pool and I’m going to die.
I don’t know why I didn’t just rip off the goggles, swim to the surface and tell all the smarty-pants instructors where they could stick their helicopters. Instead, with aching lungs I kept searching blindly for the door. After what seemed like a hundred metres of netting, I came to an opening and swam for my life. I hit the surface gasping for breath.
One of the instructors was staring down at me. ‘How did you do that? he said. ‘You didn’t come out through the door.’
Amazing what panic can do. I’d ripped the netting apart and created my own door. Obviously, it was never going to work in the real thing, but after that experience I didn’t care. I decided I was never going in the real thing again.
And guess what? This ‘safety exercise’ now has to be completed every two years. Thanks, HR—I used to love helicopters.
•
Aerial shots are tougher with video than with a compact Arri film camera. The video camera is bigger and much heavier, plus it has extra stuff, like microphone, windsock and a large lens hood attached to it. These things are not good for aerial filming. Of course, I should have removed them, but ... what can I say? A little bit of wind can lift a windsock and lens hood as deftly as a Gypsy pickpocket—I learned that the hard way.
I was filming in an antiquated Soviet army helicopter over Azerbaijan, no harness, of course, and leaning out just that little bit too far. Whoosh, my brand new lens hood took off like it had forgotten something back at base. I sat silently, waiting for the crunch and the plummet to earth, all the while thinking I could think of nicer places to die than Azerbaijan. Paris, for example. I took some solace in the fact that the cause of the accident would most likely be attributed to the Soviet Union’s sloppy aircraft maintenance. Hopefully the gaffer tape holding bits of the chopper together would be a dead giveaway and no one would notice the shredded bits of lens hood in the rear rotor. But it must have somehow slipped through the rotor, and we made it back to base in one piece.
Years later I was in a small helicopter with no door flying over the New Guinea highlands. This time I had very smartly removed the lens hood, but forgot the windsock. Once again I leant an inch too far beyond the side of the chopper and straight towards the rear rotor the windsock went. Clean as a whistle. Death was inevitable if it hit that rear rotor. How it didn’t, I will never know. Just like the pilot never knew how close to death I’d taken him. It stayed my little secret.
Throughout my career, the flying machines we found ourselves in came in all shapes and sizes, as did the film crews. And unfortunately, so did the pilots.
We were in the middle of the outback doing a story on the death of the rivers of Australia. The rivers were slowly dying, thanks to the destruction created by the noxious and obnoxious imported carp, a bottom-feeding fish species that had infiltrated our rivers, causing our native fish numbers to decline rapidly. It was a difficult story to shoot. You’ve seen one fish, you’ve seen them all. You’ve seen one riverbank, ditto. So I opened my big mouth and told Hamish Thomson, the producer, we needed helicopter shots to add a little pizzazz to our boring story. Two hours later he told me the pilot would meet me at 3 p.m.
‘Oh, and by the way, he’s not in a helicopter, he’s in an ultra-lite.’
‘How safe is it?’ I asked, rhetorically.
‘How the fuck would I know? You wanted aerials.’
Thanks to my big mouth, I wasn’t in a great position to argue.
In a small town somewhere on the border of South Australia and New South Wales, we went into the pub to wait for the arrival of our pilot. I sat with my back to the door and was about to take a swig of my nerve-calming beer when I noticed that Hamish was suddenly smirking. Staring right over my shoulder while trying to conceal his glee, he said, ‘I hope he’s not your pilot.’
I glanced into the mirror over Hamish’s shoulder, and for a moment I hoped desperately that it was one of those distorted mirrors at fun parks that make you feel like you’re on acid. Then the acid trip closed in on us and I heard him say, ‘Is one of you blokes Nick?’
In horror I turned to face him and immediately wondered, How can this man fly? His 150-kilo frame in reality looked way fatter and even more distorted than in the mirror, only reversed, which also meant his eye patch was now over his right eye.
An ultra-lite with an ultra-heavy one-eyed pilot. What have I gotten myself into?
Lucky for me, and him, and more importantly the go-kart with wings, I was half his weight. But it was still a squeeze as I strapped myself into the passenger seat.
It was a struggle for the ultra-lite to take off, hampered by the weight of one of its passengers or the intense outback heat. We managed to just skim the top of the trees with the tiny engine gasping desperately for air, though all that huffing and puffing might well have been coming from you-know-who. I managed a few aerials out to the right. Any shots out the pilot’s side looked like a solar eclipse. I love doing aerials, but after a few minutes I lied through my teeth and told him I had enough shots. Mind you, the beautiful shots were there for the taking, but I wasn’t going to be the one that took them. I wasn’t going to risk one more minute up there than I had to, though we still had the landing to go.
I’d seen footage of the Hindenburg trying to land. I held my breath as we descended. Miraculously, we landed, bouncing a few times, and we didn’t burn to death. I told the pilot I thought the landing was perfect, thanked him for a wonderful flight and staggered towards Hamish who immediately asked me if I had enough shots. It was a big day for lying.
Years after my Cyclops adventure I had another brush with death in an ultra-lite. We were in Venezuela doing a story on giant anacondas, the ones that wrap their 60-plus kilos around you and crush you to death, their habitat being the amazingly beautiful wetlands that harbour an abundance of exotic wildlife. And the best way to show all that beauty? Aerials, of course!
Again Hamish was the producer and because in Venezuela helicopters are as rare as some of the wildlife, I had to go up in an ultra-lite. I just hoped I wasn’t pushing my luck. But there was a positive side to this flight, the pilot had two eyes and weighed the same as me. Unfortunately, his ego and his not-so-secret desire to be a film director negated those positives.
Cecil B. D’ultra-lite started telling me how to balance the camera and which lens I should use. If only he would stick to the flying and leave the filmmaking to me. I asked him to take me up for a look without the camera to get a feel of it, but his constant yelling in my ear about how I should shoot, plus the noise of that shrieking engine so close to my head, gave me a piercing ringing in my ears.
On the next run with the camera, I made sure I wore a headset. No more engine drone, and no more Cecil B. But I couldn’t get the camera close enough to my head to look through the viewfinder because of the great lumps on my ears, so I pulled off the headphones and ... whoosh, straight behind me they went. I made a frantic grab for them as I realised what I’d done, and in doing so let go of the camera, which had slipped down between my knees. I jammed my knees together and held onto the camera with, I’d like to think, a vice-like grip. Immediately my legs began to cramp.
All this was happening as the headphones were flapping in the wind just above and behind my head, which was exactly where the rapidly spinning blades responsible for keeping us aloft happened to be. I fumbled for the camera with my left hand as my right hand tried to reach for the headphones that had somehow missed the killer blades and were now dangling below my seat thanks to gravity and a hell of a lot of luck. Cecil B. must have been aware
of my agitation, but hopefully not the dangling headphones, which I gently pulled up by their lead. Somehow the $80,000 camera was still with us, but only just. It was now balancing precariously around my ankles. I had no idea how or why it was still with us. It had nothing to do with me. I had absolutely no control over my badly cramped legs.
Hoping that Cecil B. was too busy flying to be concerned, I slowly managed to gain control of the camera then nonchalantly raised it to my eye, desperately trying to make everything appear normal. The shots were useless because I was shaking like a leaf. The noise of the engine was excruciating and I marvelled at how I had cheated death yet again.
Fifteen years later I still have tinnitus from that engine, but it’s a hell of a lot better than death.
10
Food, Glorious Food
Forget pictures. The race was on amongst the 60 Minutes crews for the best food and food stories. Not for television but for bragging rights. Exotic food. Food deprivation. Food poisoning. Cheap food. And the biggy? The one that made you King. The most expensive. Including wine, of course.
Food played a great part in being on the road. It’s not only a gut-filler, it’s a time filler, and often there was a lot of time to fill. I’ve never held back from trying anything on offer, though sometimes my gut would be desperately looking for a place to hide, screaming no, no, no. But the palate was always willing.
I lied in that paragraph. There were a couple of sightings on menus I pretended not to see. Ox phallus (for six), and dog. It’s not that I wouldn’t have given it a go, it’s just that I have a dog, and a phallus, and I love them both.
All This in 60 Minutes Page 12