An active jumper right from the kick-off in November 1961 until 1995, when he had a hip replaced, Col has witnessed all of the sport's progress.
As chief instructor for the SASPC for many years and later as founder and CI of the State's first truly successful commercial operation, Skysport Parachute Centre, Col introduced many hundreds of South Australians to skydiving.
In this extensive interview Col looks back on the birth of the sport and the characters who got it off the ground. Sadly, Col died in 2018.
Transcript of a recorded interview with Col Parsons by Donna Berthelsen in 1997.
The interview was one of 45 recorded with early jumpers from all over Australia as part of an oral history project for the Australian Parachute Federation.
Col made his first jump at Aldinga, on November 19, 1961 at the age of 24.
DB: When did you start jumping and how did you come to start jumping?
CP: I started jumping on the first day of parachuting here, which was on 19 November 1961. I was in the original group that was brought together by Ted Harrison. Ted was actually a former school acquaintance of mine although we hadn't seen each other since leaving school in 1952.
I just happened to notice in the back of the Sunday newspaper here in Adelaide one day a small advertisement inserted by Ted which suggested that people who were interested in parachuting might like to go to Parafield the following Sunday to talk about it.
I had been interested in parachuting for as long as I could remember so I went along and found 120 other like-minded people there.
That was the start of the South Australian School of Parachuting (as it was then) which later became the South Australian Sport Parachute Club.
DB: That was an amazing number of people to turn up?
CP: Yes, it seemed a huge number. We then trained for about three months I think it was. We used to meet every Sunday morning for three or four hours. The reason it took so long was that we were waiting for the gear to come from America.Amongst other things, we learnt how to do parachute landing rolls off a ramp which went up about 3ft off the ground. We got so bored with training that we had contests to see who could run up the ramp at full pelt and leap the furthest through the air and then do a landing roll on to the bare ground.
DB: No one got hurt or anything?
CP: Sunday morning training always resulted in bruised hips on both sides and no skin on your elbows but the result was that everybody in those days could certainly do a good landing roll.
DB: But obviously not that many people stayed the distance.
CP: Many did, but I don't think we had the full 120 when we actually got to the first jump stage, although I do remember that in order for everybody to do their first jumps it took two full weekends out of a Dragon Rapide.
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| Col Parsons kitted out in all the latest gear, circa 1961 |
Then, in the usual way, once everybody had done a jump or two the numbers thinned out pretty quickly.
Things settled down from my memory to about forty to sixty people in the first few months. They did not all come to the drop zone on the same day, of course but there was a solid core of about twenty people who were there both days of every weekend.
DB: You were jumping out of a Dragon.
CP: Yes, a fabric-covered twin-engined biplane which would carry about eight of us.
DB: So you had to wait for the gear to come. How many sets of gear arrived?
CP: The club bought some and a lot of us bought our own. We all started off using old Army X-type club chutes from World War II which Ted had got from somewhere, but pretty soon we all went on to the surplus US Air Force B4 stuff with 28 ft C9 canopies.
The club's X-type chutes were modified with a simple single blank gore.
Most of us who were keen and bought our own gear had 5-TU or 7-TU steering modifications.
DB: And who were the core people that you remember?
CP: Ted, of course, was the driving force. He was the chief instructor in practice, but on paper another guy, Stan Kruszewski, was the official chief instructor.
The DCA (Department of Civil Aviation) regulations back then required that the chief instructor have a whole 50 jumps.
Ted didn't have that many. Through the CMF, he had done the Army parachuting course which amounted to about only eight jumps, but had come back so enthused about it that he got things going and dug around until he found this guy, Stan Kruszewski, who had done 400 jumps during the last war with the Polish Army.
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| Col with his 28 foot C9 canopy after a jump in the 1960s. |
Stan had never done freefall. He had only done static line jumps, whereas Ted, as inexperienced as he was, would go up with a book about freefall parachuting in one hand and a parachute in the other, and work it out and come back and tell us all how to do it.
Getting back to who was involved, the core were Trevor Burns, Brian Brown, Susie Wright, Dave Shearer, Cathy Williamson and her brother John, Max Chaplin, me and given a bit more thought I could probably think of others.
DB: Joe Mutch, where did he fit in?
CP: Joe was a very keen individual. He had been in the British Parachute Regiment during the last war along with a few other guys of that time, but I don't think he ever jumped with the club.
He was the club president or something, yes he was the president, and was a useful force in the sense of keeping things moving along and wanting to be associated with it, but he never did any jumps as I recall.
DB: What happened from there in terms of your personal career?
CP: It makes more sense to talk about what happened to the organisation as compared to what happened to me. Things went along fairly well until Alf White got killed, I think in 1962, at the Australian Parachuting Championship at Goolwa.
His was the first fatality that occurred in SA. He just got out at three and half thousand feet and went all the way in without any attempt to pull the ripcord.
DB: How old was he?
CP: Mostly likely in his late 40s – ex commando type.
DB: So he'd done Army jumps?
CP: I really don't know about that. I think ... well I can't say that he had.
But that fatality knocked things around a lot. Immediately there was big reduction in the numbers of people who were involved.
Things then went into a bit of a decline. However, in the meantime, in fact only six months after the whole thing started back in 1961, Max Chaplin, John Williamson (Cathy's brother) and a couple of other people had started a break-away group called South Coast Skydivers .....
DB: So the original group that came together, you actually formally constituted a club?
CP: Yes, the South Australian School of Parachuting, then about six months later (I could actually look up the date for you from my log book) Max formed this breakaway group, South Coast Skydivers.
The reason why it happened was that Max, of course, was a strong personality. Ted also was a strong personality and, as is the way in parachuting, they couldn't get on together so Max formed a splinter group.
I had friends in both groups so I jumped with both clubs.
Then Brian Brown, Dave Shearer, Trevor Burns, Phil Edwards and I formed a third little group called Freelance Skydivers whose objective was really just to do parachute displays.
So we did the first parachute displays that had been done in South Australia, in 1962.
We were just a few guys who were trying to become famous. Getting back to the beginning, from about 1962 onwards the SA School of Parachuting, which became SA Sport Parachute Club, gradually dwindled in size.
It seemed to become quite small in the period from 1963 through to 1967 and Max's South Coast Skydivers group probably operated at a more active level.
However, he was drowned in a parachute display at West Beach in February, 1968.
After that, I was certainly the most senior parachutist in South Coast Skydivers, and Phil Edwards had become the guy who was more or less running the SA School of Parachuting.
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| Col demonstrates to students correct exit procedures from the 172, wearing his new Security piggyback system. |
There weren't too many people jumping by then – because of rivalries and a few fatalities things had lapsed into the doldrums – and so we combined both groups into what we called South State Skydivers.
Eventually, as things settled down, we resorted to the name of SA Sport Parachute Club.
DB: And when about was that?
CP: Sometime in 1968. Max drowned in February 1968. His South Coast Skydivers had been operating at Lower Light, so we continued jumping there with the amalgamated clubs. The SASPC has been there ever since.
DB: So where did you start jumping?
CP: Well that's a story in itself. The original SA School of Parachuting started off at Aldinga.
When Max's South Coast Skydivers split away they set up a DZ about three miles further on. Then DCA closed down that area to parachuting because of air space problems, so Max moved his group to Mallala on the other side of Adelaide.
The SA Sport Parachute Club moved around a fair bit from one farmer's paddock to another, but also jumped for a while at Mallala.
I remember doing a few jumps with Phil Edwards at Roseworthy. They did not seem to have a regular base.
Max was eventually moved on from Mallala by the farmer who owned the property. There were a couple of fatalities out there – Don West for example .....
So Max got moved on by the farmer. I think the farmer might have had enough because of the fatalities and didn't want to be associated with parachutists anymore.
Max then wandered over to an area nearby called Lower Light, looking around for a possible DZ, and found a farmer who was happy for us to use his paddock. This was in about 1967, and the DZ is still there.
DB: George Quigley.
CP: Yes, George Quigley was the farmer, and the present South Australian Sport Parachute Club now owns the land. So there's quite a history there.
DB: So where did Trevor Burns fit in. I mean he was jumping up at Port Pirie, so that was another group?
CP: Yes, that's right. Trevor lived at Pirie, he worked as an insurance agent up there and he set up Spencer Gulf Skydivers to provide local jumping and avoid the long trip to Adelaide.
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| Col exits the 172 during the State Meet at Port Pirie in 1970. |
Trevor was quite active throughout the whole period until he left Adelaide and went to Sydney in about 1972.
DB: So virtually I mean you were the senior person right from ....
CP: Yes, I was an active parachutist right from 1961 until 1995, when I had a hip replaced.
By virtue of having the most jumps and having been involved the longest I ended up becoming Chief Instructor of the South Australian Sport Parachute Club in 1968 I think it was.
With the help of Steve Swann, Bernie Keenan and Mike Tonks we kept it going.
We built the club house at Lower Light on George Quigley's land and things gradually developed again because these guys had enthusiasm and energy and worked well together.
DB: So how long did you stay as chief instructor?
CP: From 1968 right through until 1979 I was Chief Instructor of the SA Sport Parachute Club.
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| Skysport Parachute Centre's 180 in action during early the 1980s. |
And it boomed. So I operated Skysport from 1979 through to 1986 when I sold it because I was going off on university study leave to England for a year.
I didn't really think that I would be able to sell it, but a wealthy tuna fisherman who had just started jumping with the SA Sport Parachute Club heard that I was interested in selling and made me a good offer, with the intention of putting one of the instructors from the SA Sport Parachute Club in as Manager and Chief Instructor.
DB: Who?
CP: Steve Boldog. Steve was an excellent instructor and a lovely guy.
He shifted Skysport to Strathalbyn where it still operates under a different name.
When Steve moved on, Skysport was sold back to the club members, and then the club committee asked me to become chief instructor when I returned from England. This was in late 1987 or it might have been early 1988.
And so I was chief instructor again, and remained so until 1994 when the writing was on the wall about my hip.
To keep the ball rolling I trained Tony McEvoy and his wife, Laurie, who were ultra keen and who now fill the positions of full time chief instructor and DZ manager down there. It's now called Skydive Adelaide.
CP: At the moment there is the SA Sport Parachute Club at Lower Light. Skydive Adelaide, which was my Skysport Parachute Centre is at Strathalbyn, and at Murray Bridge Greg Smith is operating a flourishing tandem operation.
Greg Smith was most recently the chief instructor of the South Australian Sport Parachute Club.
DB: Did you know Don West at all?
CP: Oh yeah. He was one of the originals. He and Bob Palmer were bosom buddies and both of them were quite smitten with parachuting.
Those of us in the hard core were all pretty keen and it nearly consumed our everyday lives, but those two were smitten by it.
West left Australia and went to the States and did some jumping at Orange and other places I understand. He came back here as a bit of a skydiving guru ... and then died in an attempt to beat the world baton passing record.
I wasn't present on the day so can only piece bits together according to what I've heard.
However, I understand that Phil Edwards had taken the baton close to opening height and passed it to Joe Larkin (who later was executed as a mercenary over in the Congo for stealing a plane full of something).
Larkin and West just kept on trying to do the next pass below opening height.
It wouldn't have broken the record anyhow because even if they had successfully completed the pass it would have only equalled the record.
Larkin evidently went for his main ripcord at some ridiculously low altitude and opened up just in time, whereas West went for his reserve and hit the ground with the canopy still coming out.
So totally avoidable.
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| Col Parsons sporting the very latest gear (as usual) circa 1971. |
Unfortunately, soon after there was another fatality in Max Chaplin's club which as operating in the same district. He was a novice jumper who was in the early stage of freefall or perhaps even on static line, I can't recall the details.
But the deaths and the poor publicity which followed from both accidents certainly led to a marked falling off in membership and virtually no recruiting.
Those sorts of things decimated the ranks pretty well and parachuting entered the doldrums in South Australia for a number of years. When did Don West die? About 1963, I think.
DB: 1963 I think. Because he had been at the World Championships in 1962 and although he wasn't an official Australian representative I think he did jump at the Orange World Championships, which were the second ones or whatever.
The first ones were in 1958.
The early jumping days can you talk about the starting of relative work and what you were doing then?
CP: Well, it is interesting if we go back to the training. The training we had was extensive because we were waiting for the chutes to come from the US.
However, it was static-line orientated because nobody knew much about freefall. Most of the instructors were ex-wartime military jumpers and we learnt their techniques for exits and landing rolls and so on.
So we were very well set up for static line sorts of operations.
Freefall was pretty much pioneering territory, and it was Ted who went up and experimented with exits and positions and got things going there.
Somebody developed a freefall progression table. You started off with a 3 second delay, then a five, then a seven, then a ten and so on to 30 second delays from 7000 feet.
DB: But were they stable?
CP: They were supposed to be but I didn't do my first completely stable 30 second delay until I had about fifty jumps.
DB: But were they just thinking stability wasn't an issue – that there wasn't a connection between stability and malfunctions.
CP: Well, Ted would have to answer that. I can remember him getting very exasperated with me. 7,000 was the altitude we operated up to then and I'd go up and jump out and arch like crazy in the way that I had been told, and then spin all the way down to 2,500.
Ultimately somebody took a film of me exiting the aircraft and this showed that my problem was that the arch was so severe that there was really no arch.
That is, there was nothing stuck out from the side. My arms and legs were pulled so far back and so stiff that there was no real arch.
Anyhow, what I am getting at is that as soon as you had done a 3 second delay, you went on to a five and if it was unstable so what, you know
You just kept going up in altitude to do longer delays. That was the story for people like me who were slow learners.
On the other hand, the naturals like Susie and Ted and Brian Brown were baton passing within weeks. I don't recall too much about freefall formation building in those days: that came later.
DB: Well it was baton passing. That was the first form I suppose. When did you do your first baton pass do you remember?
CP: The first one I did was about three years later, long after they'd done it because my freefall skills weren't good enough.
But in those early days I put an 8 mm movie camera on the side of my helmet and got Brian Brown to use it in freefall.
He would have taken the first bits of movie freefall photography that were taken here.
He got some footage of Phil Edwards, or was it Bob Palmer, passing the baton to him.
DB: So you have still got that film?
CP: Yes, although it's pretty blurry and wobbly. Apart from a lot of blue and green, all you see is a reserve and a hand with a baton going past at one point.
The problem was that the camera wasn't sighted well.
Nevertheless the image was there. So we were doing that in 1962.
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| Col makes a downwind accuracy approach under his PC (Paracommander) into the seaweed pit at Lower Light in the early 1970s. Downwind was the conventional approach for serious accuracy jumpers in those days. |
They did eventually and there was huge excitement to think that people were able to put ten together.
That was about 1969 or 70.
Prior to that of course people had been building three ways and four ways but even that was regarded as an achievement then.
I remember that Steve Swann, Phil Edwards, Bernie Keenan, Trevor Burns and I went up to Port Pirie in about 1967 or 8 to try to build South Australia's first five way out of a Cherokee Six.
We all piled out but the exit was so spread out that we didn't even see each other in freefall.
DB: Back just to the 1960s ...... You started doing rel and starting doing style. Did you go to the 1966 nationals and what do you remember about them.?
CP: No, I didn't. Trevor would be the one to tell you about that because he went to those as a judge I think. The first nationals I went to were at Labertouche, but again I would have to look up the date. Probably in about 1969 I think, or 1970.
DB: I don't think the first ones there were until 1971 actually.
CP: Well it might have been 1971. I remember it was very hot, and then it poured for seven days, but that was the first nationals I had been to.
DB: So you participated in other nationals.
CP: Only one or two, I didn't go to them all that often because it conflicted with family commitments at that time of the year.
However, we had the annual state championships which, as time went by, I just kept on winning because there was no one else with the same experience.
DB: So accuracy has always been the thing that you really enjoy?
CP: Yes, the thing I enjoy most.
DB: You became involved in the organisational aspects of the APF, just by default?
CP: I didn't become an APF member until about 1964 or 1965 and that was largely at Phil Edwards' suggestion.
In fact I tended to jump with South Coast Skydivers more than anywhere else after the split away.
The reason I did that was that they were operating more often.
To give Max Chaplin his due, although he was a very irascible and domineering guy, he made sure that we operated on at least one day every weekend.
The SA Sport Parachute Club seemed to gradually become an ingroup sort of thing and tended to jump irregularly and only when and where it suited a few particular people. Max's operation was more predictable.
DB: I asked you about when you started your involvement in the APF.
CP: So I didn't join the APF until the mid 1960s if not later. It was certainly before I became chief instructor of the SA Sports Parachute Club in about 1968.
By that time the APF was very well established in everybody's mind by then and Phil persuaded me to join. Again it was just through being the most senior guy around that I eventually became the chairman of the state council and organiser ......
DB: Organiser and serious minded sort of person?
CP: That was it! Those of us who .... There are always some people in each club who are prepared to move things along and take responsibility. They come to expect a bit of authority out of it as well.
So I was on the board for probably a period of ten years or more. But again this would be from the early 1970s through to the mid 1980s.
DB: So what do you think the APF's contribution has been? What are the issues that have been salient in terms of South Australia and the APF or your position?
CP: It did, of course, provide the structure for development. Claude was the one who had the vision and the drive in the early days and subsequently he was the main ideas man, the one who saw the need for a national body to set up standards and training tables – to have a policy.
That, of course, made a lot of sense to anybody who saw some sort of need for rules in jumping. In the early days the Board was a group of experienced jumpers who got together to pool ideas.
It developed a bit like Topsy but that was a natural starting point and it has subsequently become more and more influential and, of course, it is an extremely professional body now.
DB: What are your thoughts about the role of clubs and the balance between commercial and clubs as operators?
CP: I think most of the present clubs operate commercially in the sense that each club has a guy who owns the aircraft and the aircraft is dedicated to club use.
The aircraft was bought specifically for jumping but it has to make money for the owner. Also the clubs themselves operate commercially in the sense that the instructors are paid and some do that full time.
Skydive Adelaide has got a full time chief instructor. He gets paid, although it may be true to say that he has to generate enough business to get an income.
All the same there are guys now who by their instructional activities can make a living, perhaps not a terribly good one, but it is what they want to do.
I think that without the commercial thrust jumping would never have developed into the sort of sport it is now.
When you travel overseas and see the facilities the commercial operations have got over there you realise that it's the commercial thrust that has produced a lot of the development.
On the other hand you can also look at the achievements of the rebel jumpers and see that they're the guys who have tested the edges and pushed things in a new direction.
When it was first suggested that we might do this accelerated freefall stuff, there were those who poo pooed the idea. It was thought to be far too dangerous ....
DB: And Dave McEvoy putting students out on squares with piggybacks.
CP: Yes, that's right. So it's sometimes been the guys who are not just commercially concerned but who are more individualistic who have pushed the sport along, you know.
Clubs or commercial centres, I don't know. There probably is a place for amateur clubs but I can't see that they'll ever operate at anything except the very elementary level of a few people having a bit of fun.
To provide good facilities and regular jumping, the costs are such that the operation has to be professional and commercial.
DB: Although as a psychologist I mean the individual who develops this taste for parachuting never gives it away – it stays in their blood.
CP: That sort of enthusiasm you find in all sports of course. You only have to talk to the gliding fraternity to see that they are equally smitten.
Talk to people in a yacht club, talk to footballers – a lot of people get huge satisfaction out of intense dedication to some particular activity.
As a psychologist I have been fascinated by this over the years and in fact, to find out more, have run a whole batch of tests over everybody I could lay my hands on in the club on two occasions.
DB: Is this back in the 1960s or the 1970s.
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| Col conducts polygraph tests on skydiving guinea pig Steve Swann in the early 1970s. |
It showed what so many other studies of the same kind had done using those instruments: that skydivers were of above average intelligence, and that they do not have a specific personality profile but rather a wide range of personalities.
If there is some element in the skydiver's personality that differentiates him from people in general or those who are keen about other sports, it certainly is not detected by a test like the 16PF.
DB: You've got no personal opinions about it?
CP: Skydivers tend to be people who like intense involvement, who enjoy the sense of skill and getting better at things, and are open to the challenge of the activity.
They are also there for the social benefits. They like the company of other people with the same interests, but not necessarily the same personality.
There is such a range of different personalities from the lively brash-natured individual to the quiet, unassuming person who nevertheless still make a good skydiver.
DB: But, you know, there has always been that issue and I think in jumping there is an element of competitive jumpers versus the person who jumps just to have fun, but each contributes in their own way.
In some ways the rivalry seems detrimental and I can still see it on drop zones. I think it is disruptive to the sport in some ways.
CP: I think it is a sport that breeds conflict because there is so much scope for individuals and individualism.
In fact it is encouraged in many ways. So I suppose a dominant person is certainly in the right environment to be able show it.
You can look back to the early days here when Ted Harrison – an effervescent and charismatic but volatile person – would show his temper and the plaster would peel off the walls.
He had an infectious humour but was quite a dominant individual.
Nevertheless he got on extremely well with people – with guys like Brian Brown who was an entirely different character. Totally laid back, without the same showcasing effect as Ted.
Not that I want to play that down: Brownie is a larrikin in his own way. Ask him about the time he flew a Mirage 10ft above the ground towards an ABC photographer at 600 knots ... that's the extravert in him.
So you get that wide range of personalities and most of them get on extremely well.
DB: Certainly in terms of the friendships they're the last thing one would expect. Anyway well we'll get back to South Australia too.
The Gulf Meet how did that come to start and what do you know about that?
CP: I think Trevor Burns originated it, because he set up Spencer Gulf Skydivers at Port Pirie and Whyalla.
There's another guy, who was a huge driving force and had a liking for responsibility and organisation and authority and was extremely confident. He was the one that got it going I think.
The name Gulf Meet came from the name of Trevor's club and the location of the two drop zones on the edge of Spencer Gulf at Port Pirie and Whyalla I went to my first Gulf Meet at Whyalla in about 1966 or 67.
They had a huge seaweed pit - it was lovely and soft - in the middle of sandy waste near the beach with an elementary enclosure for packing.
You just got sand in everything. Gillard drove across from Melbourne to be the judge. There were the likes of Laurie Trotter among the competitors.
DB: Was he around here very much?
CP: Well, off and on in those days. Trotter and Andy Keech, of course, were the two originals.
DB: Two original what?
CP: They were the two who did the first freefall jumps at Cessnock back in about 1958 or something or other.
DB: Well that's a moot point but certainly they had the first sort of demo team travelling around the two of them.
CP: Completely different characters those two.
DB: Yeah. What did you think of Laurie Trotter. I mean you're a conservative guy I suppose but....
CP: I though Trotter was a wonderful fellow. In fact I can tell all sorts of stories about him. I mean he is the first guy I met who would split words with 'bloody' or 'fucking'.
It wasn't unusual for him to say something like "Was I ever sur-fucking-prised ..... "
Laurie was just one of those infectious, enthusiastic guys like Ted whose only interest seemed to be skydiving and skylarking.
Despite all his swearing and swaggering, you had the sense that he was a really genuine individual.
I met him at the first Gulf Meet I went to at Whyalla in about 1966.
I had just bought my first PC, Paracommander, and had only done four jumps on it.
I was using an old B4 system with two-shot capewells, and when I arrived at the DZ and unloaded my gear, Laurie came over and said to me "Ah, two-shot capewells. What are you jumping a PC with two shot capwells for?"
I said, "Why not?" He said, "What happens if the PC mals and you have to cutaway."
I said, "What's a cutaway?"
Nobody had told me that PCs had horrible mals and I had never heard of a cutaway.
And he took me aside and said: "Look these things have got a bit of a reputation. If they don't open up correctly you'll spin around the sky so fast you'll see the horizon over your toes".
And he went on to say: "Look here's a technique to use if it happens. Hold your left riser in your left hand and release the left capewell with your right hand. Then let the riser go up to the full length of your arm and undo your right capewell with your right hand.
“When the right riser flies up let go of the left riser".
And do you know on the very next jump I had a mal.
Just as he said, I spun so violently that I could see the horizon over my feet.
If he hadn't told me all that I guess I would have deployed the reserve into the mess and become a statistic.
When I landed all Laurie said was: "That was fan-bloody-tastic. Didn't I tell you so".
DB: When was that?
CP: It was about 1966.
DB: So where might have that knowledge come from. Who might have told you about cutaways. Do you think that was an interesting issue as to how that knowledge was then being transmitted?
CP: I'm not too sure who could have told me. I had the first PC in South Coast Skydivers. The other PCs were owned by people jumping with SA Sport Parachute Club whom I saw nothing of at that stage.
So in a sense I was on my own: keen to jump the latest bit of gear but ignorant about its vices.
When the PC arrived in the post all it had was the packing instructions with it.
DB: But nothing about how to deal with a malfunction?
CP: That's right. Mind you, I read those packing instructions plenty of times.
And I packed it, and opened it and repacked it and so on about ten times before I did my first jump on it.
Before I went to Whyalla I had done four jumps on it and all the openings had been perfect. Probably packing in the sand at Whyalla without tension on the lines let the upper control lines tangle with the apex, causing the mal.
DB: Back to the 70s. Steve Swann was talking about the Golden Arrows, so tell us about your skydiving team.
CP: I am pretty sure Trevor Bums set up the Golden Arrows. Yes, he did, because I remember he adapted the name of the famous Golden Knights in the States and made it the Golden Arrows here.
The team started off with Trevor and Phil Edwards and somebody else, and then I got involved in it, then Steve Swann, Bernie Keenan and Mike Tonks.
It was specifically a display team through which we tried to become rich and famous.
DB: Have you got any stories from that? You' enjoyed that in those days.
CP: Go back earlier. I can tell you my first display jump here in South Australia was done in 1962. I had 24 jumps and you've got to remember that Brian Brown, Dave Shearer, Trevor Bums and I set up a group called Freelance Skydivers.
DB: Yes, you said that.
CP: That was around early 1962. I think jumping started in November, 1961, so by about April '62 we – Burns, Shearer and Brown and I – had a few jumps more than most others with the exception of a few people like Ted.
The other three had 25 jumps and I had 24. So we regarded ourselves as comparative experts and set up Freelance Skydivers - parachute display team.
I think it was Trevor who wrote off to all the country horticultural and agricultural societies and tried to convince them that this skydiving team could come to their show to do the first-ever parachute display in South Australia.
Sure enough, the Crystal Brook Show Society contacted us so we went up there to do the first parachute display in South Australia. [See the separate item on this historic demo and Col's unfortunate landing]
DB: Actually there was a whole issue that I remember - correspondence between Claude and Ted Harrison about a high altitude jump in South Australia. Do you remember those high altitude jumps?
CP: Yes, but I wasn't involved in it. I remember them happening. They were the very first jumps done here in South Australia and were done by Claude and Hans Magnusson and a few others.
I think Bill Kenny might have been in the group. And Claude's best mate at the time, Bill Molloy. I know they jumped out of a Beaver from 24,000 ft.
We started training in about June or July 1961 and we jumped in November, so they came here just before we got our gear.
24,000 ft in 1961 it wasn't bad was it?
And then, of course, much later Bill Kenny did another one in Victoria. 30,000 ft or more and that was out of a Navajo wasn't it?
DB: Yeah, I talked to Dave Millard so I've got the story of that jump. But you've always been closely involved with instruction here.
Can you talk about how you think instruction has changed and what have been the big issues or any stories?
CP: Well again, the APF is the one that's been responsible for and achieved the development there.
In the early days some of the training was pretty rudimentary. When I was jumping with South Coast Skydivers in the early 1960s the training was being done by Max Chaplin.
He was his own man and just did things his way. His training was done by talking to students over a cup of coffee in his kitchen.
There was no practical training, just all talk.
Because I was an educator and working at a Teachers College, education and training was of great interest to me, and I thought there had to be a better way.
Because a friend of mine wanted to start jumping I asked Max if I could train him.
You know I didn't know anything about instructional standards and technique apart from being a trained teacher and a 50-jump parachutist.
I don't think Max did either, about any requirements for instructors at that stage.
That was about 1963 or probably 1964. So I trained my friend and that was fine. I did a lot of practical training. Built a harness with a few risers hanging down and became really interested in training then.
I didn't do much more, however, until Max died and then I more or less moved into the CFI's role.
At that stage I remember Phil Edwards and I got together and put things back together.
Phil had qualified as an instructor through the APF and I watched what he did and realised that there was then a syllabus for training and I followed that from then on.
Training of course has developed enormously since those days, from being a lot of talk with little action, through the period where we introduced slides and a bit of movie, to the present period where the APF has purpose-made videos.
So, again, it's become very professional now both in terms of the qualifications expected and the things that students are introduced to.
DB: But I mean there's a leap from the sort of pioneering stuff you are talking about and when I started jumping in 1965, so I remember a lot of those things but students nowadays, you know, it is just so enormously different.
I mean, I can remember all that issue about refusal even when I was an instructor.
When you have refusals, you know, go around tap them on the shoulder. Having people to refuse to jump these days just isn't an issue. It is just a different mindset. It is interesting, you know, that somehow they were stages that you go through.
You learn to instruct in a different way or something like that. But even the mindsets of the instructors have changed as they have come into the course.
CP: I think there is a much greater awareness now of what the students mentality is. In the early days it was pretty macho sort of instruction.
DB: It still had that element of the army training that training had to be rigorous. It still had that hangover from the military style. Don't you think or - you're looking doubtful.
CP: Well no, in the early days it was very much that. I don't know that it is now. Here, with the group that I'm with now, I don't think it is too military.
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| Col under his Paraplane, the first ram air square parachute owned and jumped in SA. |
CP: Until the squares starting appearing that's when all the big changes occurred isn't it.
DB: Can you remember your first square jump?
CP: Again, I had the first square in South Australia. I bought that from Gillard as well. A Paraplane – what a monster? 25ft long lines and weighed a ton. Wasn't all that reliable.
But that first jump on it was one of the most exciting jumps of my life. Again it came with packing instructions: didn't know anything about it, just read the book - as with the PC - sat down and packed and repacked it until I thought it would work, and it did.
But it was a living animal that thing - it vibrated and whistled as it went through the air and had such an enormously improved performance over the PC - you couldn't turn back.
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