He’s based in France nowadays, but recently popped over to help his Cairns bungy site celebrate its 21st birthday, so we said hello…
Did you know the Oxford club? I didn’t, but a friend of mine was inspired by them and he was like, “we’ve got to sort this out”. I used to do a lot of rock climbing so I knew about ropes and stuff. Were you the first guinea pig? No, [my mate] Chris was. We just drew straws. But the first jump was only 19m high into deep water so we figured that if it went wrong we’d just go for a swim. We weren’t nervous, it was more about hoping it would work. In 1987 you jumped off the Eiffel Tower. How did that come about? I was in France, as I was in the New Zealand speed skiing team, and I remember driving past the Eiffel Tower and just thinking, “that’s beautiful, I’ve got to jump off the thing”. So I went back to Paris a number of times, measured it up with fishing line and then started practicing off a bridge near where I was staying in the Alps. Then I had to organise how to raid the tower, because it was illegal. We managed to jump off without any problems except for the Gendarmes. How did they react? They were completely confused! All they saw was a person hanging on a rubber band underneath the tower. They couldn’t even figure out there must be people up on the tower still. They were just lost. Why did you turn it into a business? Well, basically the more I jumped in places, the more other people wanted to jump and it was costing a lot of money. Why Queenstown? Queenstown was, and still is, New Zealand’s premier tourism destination for people looking for a good charge, and we knew there were a couple of good bridges there. Plus I used to ski in Wanaka all the time so knew lots of people there. The Department of Conservation (DOC) owned the bridges, they started us off on a 30-day trial period, then we got 60 days, six months, five years and so on. Was the DOC a tough sell? Yeah, it was. They’d already said, “don’t talk to us about the Kawarau Bridge, we’re not going to let you use that”. But then we stopped at the bridge and it was in a really terrible state, it was going to fall into the river, so we brought that up, what if we raised a bit of money to help you fix it up. Their ears pricked up and within days they let us use it. Still got your eye on records? There’s a couple of things I’d like to do, but I’m not really ready for them yet, a couple of high jumps. How high? Ah, like 1.5 to 2km. We’ve got the technology now. Like in our site in Macau, the 233m jump there, it’s tapered cords. The problem is you need a really, really big helicopter. Your highest so far? My highest is 280m, but that was from 500m up. What’s your most memorable jump? The one that really stands out is one that didn’t actually come off, which was the Statue of Liberty in New York. I tried to jump off that but we got caught. That would have been amazing. The idea was to climb the outside of the tower and jump from the torch, then try to get out of the country before they realised. What’s the attraction of extreme sports for you? I suppose I just love the environment that you do that sort of thing in. I love the land, I love the ocean and the bush, I’ve been brought up in it and I’m kind of lost without it in a way. I like to push the limits a little bit, you know. As long as you’re just having pure fun and it’s not affecting anybody else then it’s alright. I think it’s good for human beings to go beyond their comfort zone, I think that’s really what the essence of bungy is. It’s all about getting past that thing of what if it all goes wrong. Take the plunge with both the bungy and the Minjin Swing at the AJ Hackett site in Cairns. http://www.ajhackett.com[www.ajhackett.com]
