While her first few jumps after her November 1961 debut might not have been as stylish as she wished, Cathy was a fast learner and a dedicated adherent of the new sport.
Within 17 months she had made 170 jumps – an impressive total in those days – and by 1964 was en route to the World Championships in Europe as a member of the Australian Team.
While living in London after the World Meet she wrote a book – Falling Free – recording much of the history of early skydiving in Australia.
Falling Free, published in 1965 and dedicated to the memory of SA jumper Don West, was an inspiration to a generation of young jumpers who followed her in the late 1960s.
This extract from Falling Free, captures Cathy’s observations and emotions following her first jump at Aldinga on November 17, 1961, revealing to the general public just what this brand new sport meant to those who, for the first time, were jumping for fun rather than military necessity.
Extract from Falling Free:
... That first jump – seven-eighths terror, one-eighth aesthetic appreciation. Drunk with pleasure after my initiation, I could not resist the desire to recapture on paper the wonderful sensation I had experienced over Aldinga in November of 1961.
I may laugh at it now (1964) , but yet it typifies the intoxication felt after that first jump, which marked a turning-point in my life.
November 19, 1961
Slowly it moved ever upwards-up and away from the seething mass of bystanders, from the dry Dropping Zone, bespeckled with sandwich wrappers and coke bottles.
Up and ever up – the drone of the engine competing with the inner intensity of fear. The deafening roar made hearing almost impossible, but there existed in place of the usual communication a communion of spirit – a unison in transcending the suburban life.
Below, far below, the patches swayed and grew smaller. Within the clammy space of the Dragon four figures sat still in silent anticipation.
Beside them towered the two commanders of this new ethos – the priests, the annointed.
Once, twice, the plane circled – then ready. From a rigid and intent sitting position, legs dangling in the empty space, I broke bonds with physical contact.
One swift, co-ordinated movement and I was projected into the nothingness. For three dizzy seconds I was without touch with normality; without any real consciousness, save the emptiness, the frightening emptiness.
Then – snap; the first tension in the umbilical cord which attached my lone body to its sole contact with the material world. Another second and the severance was complete, and once more, but suddenly and abruptly, the world stood still.
Now I hung suspended-alone and without contact, human or physical, but feeling, having, belonging to this nothingness; not the nothingness of mechanical living, but the nothingness of pure, sensory isolation.
At last, if only for a few minutes, I found myself completely free – free and seeing and feeling, almost for the first time. I was not concerned with control lines or liftwebs – not now, when I had penetrated the very essence of life – the vast unknown.
I could see and feel for the first time as I drifted down with the great, billowing canopy adumbrating my loneliness. Inevitably the physical world loomed up quickly and inexorably.
With this sudden awareness I was recalled to reality. The white mark grew larger as I floated down and backwards with an unexpected speed. I was over and past the rows of upturned faces, the still small, insignificant walkers of the earth. But they were gone in a flash. The road, dotted with coloured, motionless cars, grew suddenly very large.
For an unhappy moment I anticipated the cold, concrete greyness, but thanks to the strong land breeze, I was over and past.
"Number Three, prepare for back landing. You are coming in for a back landing. Prepare for back landing, Number Three. Pull down on your front liftwebs."
The strong male voice penetrated my heightened sensibility. Gone was the intangible tranquillity of the early descent. My body surged, as if by an inner compulsion, to its immediate task.
The yellow, spiked barley was a vague sensation as I forcibly hit the field, holding almost fanatically the position I had been taught in the past weeks.
Wham, my helmet struck the ground. Still I gripped the liftwebs, while my legs swung over and back, as if forced into one.
Happy, I raised myself on to one knee. Whoosh, my head snapped back and my extended body was dragged through the yellow spikes of fresh barley. On and on I was drawn at the mercy of the great billowing sail, created anew – this time on the hard crust of the earth.
Pulling with all my strength on the lower rigging lines I could make no impression on the fullblown canopy, as it whipped me along the ground, making a long, narrow furrow through the ripe crop.
Help was close by and several hands grasped the periphery to arrest my drag. I clambered quickly to my feet, very much elated, and yet a little dismayed that such beauty should end in spoilage to the golden field where the winds had driven me.
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