It was SA's first ever public display of the new sport of skydiving and Col, 25 at the time and a member of what was then known as Freelance Skydivers Club, had got out at 3,500 ft, jumping a basically modified 28 ft military surplus C9 canopy.
A photographer from The Advertiser was on hand to grab this shot of Col on top of the "knock-em down" tent and to record how close he came to decorating the ferris wheel.
The following extract from an interview Col did in 1999 with Donna Berthelsen, who was compiling an oral history for the APF, covers the demo in detail.
The Crystal Brook Show Society contacted us so we went up there to do the first sport parachute display in South Australia.
The DZ was an oval which is quite small even by today's standards with a grandstand on one side and a railway siding behind it.
On the other side were all the sideshows with a ferris wheel.
At one end they had all the agricultural machinery with the stump jump ploughs and nasty things sticking up in the air, and at the other end there were trees and a creek.
So it was pretty damn tight. Remember we were jumping cheapos of course.
The other three guys had 7-TUs mods and I had a 5-TU.
We arrived on the Saturday morning about mid-morning just as a gusty northerly wind began to develop and I think all of us secretly thought this is not too good, but we were filled with daring and wanted to be the first heroes.
So off we went.
Brownie had a natural talent as a spotter and he dropped out the paper drifter.
Because I was good at accuracy I was nominated as the first guy out – the drift marker as we used to call him.
So out of the aircraft I went – you know 24 jumps ....
DB: Did you draw for that or you just jumped?
No, I was nominated to do it. And remember I couldn't fall stable until I had about 50 jumps.
So after a 10 second unstable delay, I opened up and saw that because of the gusty northerly wind I must have been three quarters of a mile from the damn oval.
When I looked at how far I had to go I thought – no, I'm a dead man.
But as I starting drifting back I could see that I was going to make it. I couldn't believe it.
I thought, Brown you amazing person, I'm going to land right in the middle of the oval.
And the closer I got the more confident I got about this. The worries about landing in the trees, which were at the closest end, disappeared.
I was going to be famous.
My big error came when I reached the edge of the oval where there was a double row of parked cars all the way around.
I started to tum into wind to land in the centre of the oval, but those TU modified canopies didn't exactly turn on the spot.
As the canopy began its slow arc around into the wind there was a nice gusty blow from the north and the next thing I knew I was heading out over the side of the oval, back over the row of parked cars, descending all the time.
When I looked ahead I saw this Ferris wheel coming and just lifted my legs up and shut my eyes – a great deal of skill there.I shut my eyes, expecting to be dead in seconds, but then had this amazingly soft landing, associated with a big cracking noise.
I didn't feel any pain, so opened my eyes to find myself up to the waist through the top of a tent and hanging over the ridge pole.
It turned out that I had landed in sideshow alley, and all the people there were stunned with amazement. The intrepid birdman descending from the sky!
They didn't know whether I was hurt because they had also heard the big crack, you see.
However, it didn't come from me but from the ridge pole which I had broken.
I realised I wasn't hurt so I looked at them and I waved.
They immediately burst into relieved cheers and applause. The intrepid birdman lives!
It was at this point that a little woman ran out from the tent through which I was hanging and looked up at me, literally stamping her feet on the spot and as red as a beetroot, and said, "I hope this is not going to go on all day."
The irony of it all was that the tent contained a Knock'em down stall. I was told later how her husband had been out the front saying, "Come on ladies and gentlemen, five shots for two bob. Don't worry about the parachutist."
Then ... crash.
The next day on the front page of The Advertiser were the headlines “Sky jump ends in tent tangle".
DB: Did the others get in? They must have been okay.
Oh yeah, Brownie landed right in the middle or close enough to it. One of the jumpers was Ted Crowther. He landed in the children's playground and hurt his back.
I didn't jump on the second sortie. I think that was done by Burns, Brown and Dave Shearer – and they all landed on the oval.
Those guys were just naturally good. Just a final embellishment - you weren't supposed to do display jumps unless you had 25 jumps in those days, so I got hauled over the coals by DCA.
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