Ted Harrison – how SA skydiving started

A chance 1961 meeting in a Hindley Street furniture store was the unlikely catalyst for the birth of sport parachuting in South Australia.

Ted Harrison, a young Adelaide newspaper reporter and part time “weekend warrior” with the Army Reserve (then known as the CMF), had only recently completed a static line parachute course. Pleased with his novel achievement, Ted took to wearing a modest lapel badge issued by the GQ parachute company.

It wasn’t  something the average man in the street would recognise – but it was spotted by a genuine World War Two parachute veteran (the furniture salesman) who ignited Ted’s interest in turning what was then in Adelaide still seen as a military-only activity into a brand new sport.

This historic interview with the colourful Ted Harrison captures the essence of the man and the time when SA skydiving was born.


Edited extracts from a recorded interview with Ted Harrison by Donna Berthelsen in 1998. 
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. 

Ted made his first civilian jump at Kooweerup, Victoria, in early November  1961 at the age of 25.
  He died in 2004.


DB: How did you start jumping. What was the impetus?

TH: I started jumping in the army. I did National Service, and then I was in the CMF.

DB: That wasn't standard necessarily – that you do jumps when you were in the CMF? 

TH: No it was a voluntary thing. I was the intelligence officer of an outfit at the time in what is now called the Army Reserve. It was called the CMF – the Citizens Military Forces.

DB: And you had to do subsequent training in that?

TH: You didn't have to. You could volunteer to do certain training.
I volunteered to do army parachute training and I did that in 1958.

I did a five-week course at Williamtown at Newcastle, which was the RAAF fighter base and the School of Land Air Warfare at that time, and so I got what would approximate my hero's badge like a number of people in the early days of jumping –  people like Bill Molloy and Louis Johnston.

I was probably the only one in Adelaide who'd done that because there was no parachute unit in Adelaide that required parachute qualifications.

The way parachuting came to South Australia arose directly from that.
When we did basic army training we were presented with little lapel badges from the makers of the parachutes of the X-type static chutes which the army used in those days.

And these were made by a mob called Gregory Quilter and his company, GQ. We were given these little lapel badges – GQ lapel badges which I used to wear everywhere, you know. Bloody lapel badge with GQ - “I'm a bloody hero, I'm an army parachutist.”

Anyway I went to a furniture store in Hindley Street in and the salesman came up to me and said "I notice you are wearing a GQ badge. What unit are in?"

I said I had just recently qualified that year and that I was in the CMF and I was not in World War 2.
I think he thought I may be somebody in Z Special Forces like this guy was – he was probably 20 years older than me - well he would have been.

And he said "I'm a member of the Paratroopers Association, why don't you come to one of our meetings?"

It was an RSL type group – all the units that had been involved in parachuting in World War 2 – Z Special, the Commando Force and guys who jumped in New Guinea and a lot of pommies, you know, who had come out here to live – they were a great bunch of guys.

So I went to this meeting in North Adelaide – Melbourne Street – a little Masonic Hall or some bloody little hall down the east end of Melbourne Street, North Adelaide.

There I met a pommie called Joe Mutch who had a cast in his eye, a six-footer and he said he was a member of the Guards Brigade and had jumped in the Libyan Desert.

Later on I had cause to believe that was bullshit because he used to tell a story about how he did stand up landings in the Libyan Desert and ripped German guard dogs jaws apart, you know, with his bare hands.

Seriously – you know – the German Shepherd – and ripped the jaws apart.

And he never did jump, he claimed that he had stuffed his back doing a stand up landing in the Libyan Desert and he never did jump.

He just said to me "why don't we start a parachute club". I forget the context in which the conversation happened but over many beers, you know, and much piss drunk and the suggestion either by him or me “why don't we form a club.”

Ted Harrison (centre) at Aldinga in 1962, after photographing a lipstick pass by Hans Magnusson (left) and Cathy Williamson (right).
And this is actually what happened. Either he egged me on or I egged him on.

But I had been a cadet journalist and I'd worked on Truth Newspaper in Adelaide. At that stage I don't think I'd worked on News Limited for the Adelaide News.

I contacted a mate of mine who was working on the Sunday Mail and said how about doing a story for us. How about running a story about the formation of a parachuting club – we didn't talk about skydiving in those days – a parachuting club which I'm organising.

I had contacted the Royal Aero Club of South Australia and spoken to them and asked whether we could use their premises for an inaugural meeting in the hangar.

So I got onto this mate,  John Cotterell (who later worked for the ABC in Adelaide) and he wrote this yarn. It said that the following Sunday there would be a meeting at Parafield at the Aero Club – forget what time – 1 p.m. – and bloody heaps of people turned up – over a hundred people turned up – it was amazing.

DB: Were you surprised?

TH: Oh yeah – shit yeah!

Magic absolutely magic – all these bloody people came who wanted to become parachutists.

Bear in mind I had had eight bloody jumps – eight jumps, you know.
No freefalls, one night jump – all static jumps, right!

The majority were from 1,000 feet but I think one from 800, you know, with full gear from 800 and you had no bloody time to do anything if you got into strife.

We didn't have reserves – I didn't have a reserve. My first eight jumps were with no reserve.

And it was only when we were getting briefed for our seventh jump the bloody instructor called Dutchy Hollands, who was a very famous Warrant Officer – he went off and got the bloody reserve and said "this is a reserve parachute. This is what we use to train parachutists who are valuable!"

And of course it really added a lot of spice to jumping to not have a reserve, I'm telling you.
We were all petrified and I defy anyone to say they weren't. Stand at the door and shit yourself. We had never jumped with a reserve and that is what made my first sport jumps such a breeze because I had a bloody reserve.

Oh, shit, nothing can happen to me – I’m fireproof, I've got a reserve.

Anyway, what happened is we had this meeting in which people like Kathy Henderson . . .

DB: The love of your life!

TH: Yeah, she bloody was. Oh yes! And Cathy Williamson, John Williamson – her brother – Mike Soph. He is a Czech. A very tall and imposing guy and an absolute gentleman. He was a man of impeccable morals – proved a bit to me because I was married you know, at the time, and I fell head over bloody heels for Miss Henderson and ...

DB: And Col Parsons?

TH: Oh yeah Col Parsons – he was an original – and, of course, my mate Brian Brown who was a 17 year old brash youth who ...

DB: Who was a kid -

TH: Who was in everything – Brian was in everything and you couldn't keep him back. He was away – he was so bloody likeable – as he always is – you know – Max Chaplin and Trevor Burns.

And of course Stan Kruszewski who was an old Polish army paratrooper.
Even though we only had his word for it that he was on old paratrooper and no documentary evidence, I definitely believed him.

Ted Harrison at Aldinga, early 60s.
On one occasion we jumped at Kooweerup in Victoria and Stan just went off the planet – he had a relapse and started gibbering in Polish and was very agitated and crying because it brought back memories, I think, of what happened in the war. They had a pretty bad time, the Poles.

And he was an absolute gentleman. Really he didn't offer much in the way of instruction except his name and the fact that he said he had been an instructor in the Polish Army.

And the bloody Department (of Civil Aviation) accepted that – I actually went to the Department with him and put him up as an instructor and they accepted it.

They accepted the school – they accepted him as our chief instructor so we could start training and jumping.
The Department had no bloody clue – they didn't know what to do because there had been no parachuting and so they just – they were a bit wary – but they accepted it because we had this initial affiliation with the Aero Club and we got away with it and we hired a hut just near the Aero Club buildings.

DB: At Parafield?

TH: Yes. We hired a hut as our club room, we built a bloody great ramp – army type – you know, a wooden ramp for running up. Hammered hessian over it and people would race up it and hurl themselves off it and do a landing roll.

So we did military style training. We stuck harnesses, up in a tree and swung people and made them lower ... but it was fairly reasonably thorough ground training.
We did packing and all that.

It was all centred on Parafield at first and our first jumps were at Virginia which is north of Adelaide.
I think some of the Melbourne guys jumped there or one or two of us. Some people came over from Melbourne – Charl Stewart, I think.

DB: Did you do the first jump, do you remember.

TH: No I can't remember.

DB: Because what Brian Brown was saying to me, there was all that delay on gear as he remembers. And the ground training went for months.

TH: Yes, went on for ages. And we sort of went through magazines and looked at bloody disposal stores in the States and then we ordered the stuff and it came by sea, you know.

That's how we got our stuff, on Claude Gillard's and Charl Stewart's advice.

DB: So you had got in touch with the people in Melbourne ...

TH: Oh shit yes. When they saw the story in the paper. They saw the story and the story had apparently got to Melbourne. The story that was published – it was a full page yarn in the Sunday Mail and that was published over there and they got in touch with us, I think through the paper – Claude, Charlie or Bill Sparke.

They offered to come over and bring their chutes to get us jumping. But in fact what happened in the end was we got in our bloody cars and we drove over there.

So our first jumps were at Kooweerup, not far from Labertouche – where Labertouche is now ...

DB: I remember that.

TH: It has cowshit eight feet thick. In fact, I did my first sport jump from a Tripacer I think at Kooweerup.

DB: Which was before the new jumpers in Adelaide jumped?

TH: Oh yes, it was before the new jumpers jumped. Stan Kruszewski and me. There were a number of us.

Claude and Charl Stewart and Bill Sparke put us on and I landed in cowshit in a cow paddock with bulls and shit – that was absolutely bloody magic.

Stan Kruszewski – he was gibbering afterwards he was very shook up.

And all I can remember of my first sports jump  – I was standing out on a bloody wheel – it was just magic compared to the bloody military bullshit with one chute. And now having a reserve as well– oh! Christ Almighty!

And jumping from twice as high – from 2,000 ft, which is a lot different to jumping from 800 feet. And, of course, they were just circular canopies, the bloody army ones, no slots, no steering lines.

The only steering was to pull down on a riser or both risers to slow your speed. Anyway we did one jump and mate I can't remember whether it was a static line.

DB: You don't have to remember the absolute detail. It probably was.

TH: Yeah, I think it was.

DB: It probably was. But then you went back – you took on increasing responsibilities for the training of all those other people.

TH: Well yes, a number of us shared it, you know, Another guy called Jim Louth. He was a Pommie and he was very good. He was a ground instructor.

He said okay, I'll be your ground instructor. Now he was ex-British Army and I think he was ex-Red Berets – not absolutely sure about it. He may not have had any previous experience.

But Jim Louth was good. We had some bloody good people. Mike Soph was great because  – he was one of those people who'd work, work, work and he build the bloody ramp and he was marvellous – Mike Sopf.

Anyway that Virginia drop zone thing was a once off.

We couldn't use that anymore, but I can't remember why – so we went looking for drop zones. We went to Mallala, which used to be an Air Force Base where the City of Adelaide, University of Adelaide squad used to operate Mustangs.

That is now a car racing track north of Adelaide – Mallala. We went there and saw a farmer and we used once of his paddocks for a while and I can’t remember his bloody name. Maybe Brian can.

DB: Brian can't remember all these details anyway.

TH: We operated at Mallala for a short period but then we went looking – and I think we had departmental problems – they were starting to think about aeroplanes or what ...

DB: Because it is associated with Parafield but of course no one ever jumped at Parafield.

TH: We were associated with Parafield for a while, maybe 12 months. That got us going.

That's where we had all that ground training. These bloody people could have jumped off a twelve foot truck and not broken anything because they were very very good at landing rolls, stand ups.

And everybody had bloody army style boots – they never made Paraboots in those days. You know army style boots and bloody overalls. We wore King Gee Overalls and our bloody badge, we designed our bloody badge ...

When I was talking about the original people there was Don West.

DB: Was he part of that first group?


TH: I think he was. But there was another one called Bob Palmer.

We went to Aldinga. Absolutely beautiful old couple had this little farmhouse down the back. It was actually owned by the man's brother-in-law who had the farm a kilometre away.

And we had this strip at Aldinga. It wasn't a strip it was just a bloody paddock at Aldinga and we used a DeHavilland – a Dragon, the old fabric, you know what I mean.

DB: Trevor Burns and Brian only talk about their first jumps out of the Dragon.

TH: The fabric bloody Dragon! Exactly, that was our jump plane. Army style – we fitted bloody cable all the way down the thing and sat across and hooked up.

We did it all in a military way out of this bloody old Dragon. And it was a bloody mighty old jumpship, you know. It did the job for us.

And our pilot should be mentioned. He was a little Pole called – no a little Lithuanian, called Sid. Sid Koroncevicus and he was a marvellous guy. I'd love to meet him. He was absolutely a delightful little bloke. One of those Laplanders – he was like a little Laplander – a mighty guy and he was our pilot for a long time.

And it was about 4 km from the coast but no one ever landed in the bloody sea, thank Christ, because there were some great white sharks out there.

But we operated from there most of the  time I was involved. We had our first championships down there – State Championships – that was blown out after about three jumps of accuracy. And, do you know what date the nationals were held at Cessnock in those very early days. 1963?

DB: I'd say it was 1962.


TH: A whole heap of us went over there and that's where we met people like Allen Jay, Col King, Laurie bloody Trotter who was a magic character – first baton pass – a mighty mob and Harry Pugsley.

DB: So you competed in that 1962 Nationals.

Ted Harrison dumps his Paracommander while linked with Kevin Nielsen over Camden, NSW in 1970 – after he had moved on from SA.
TH: Yes, I landed on a cow – landed on a fucking cow. This was one of the early chutes. We got a C9 canopy and I decided to go one better than a double-T – I had a triple gore. It came in like a rocket anyway.

I cut three gores out of the bloody thing and cut the bottom panels out across eleven gores so I used to come down a fair rate of knots.

DB: You did that rigging yourself?

TH: Oh yeah – scissors – ching, ching, ching.
Up to the saddlery shop – “Binding tape please. Thank you.”

“What do you want it for?”

“For our parachute."

“Parachute?”

“What do you call that tape, you know that heavy tape – we should get some of that. We really need some strong stuff. I mean, this is a parachute
you know.”

We had no idea.

DB: But a lot of heaviness on packing, and yet you could to what you liked like cutting them up?

TH: Oh Jesus Christ yes.

DB: But I mean all that packing?

TH: Oh yes, ching, ching, ching ... chopped all the gores out. Sat down at the sewing machine – we'd do this ourselves, your know, and put the tape on.

DB: But were you doing you own packing right from the first day?

TH: Of course, we did our own packing. Because I'd watched packers pack at Williamtown.

DB: All right, okay.

TH: Do you think we were stupid or something? I watched them do it a couple of times in the Army. Because there's a lesson – a confidence building lesson where they take you into the packing shed ...

DB: But the students in Adelaide weren't allowed to pack?

TH: Students were taught to pack – they were all taught to pack. That was a major part of the training. And of course by the time the chutes arrived – we had old static chutes – where did we get them from?

They weren't Yank. We actually had Pommie chutes. I can't remember where we got them.

DB: Brian Brown talked about X-types.

TH: Yes, we had quite a few of those. I don't know just off-hand, but I'd say about five or six X-type static chutes. They only used those, and were completely familiar with them.

DB: We know there's not a lot to it but it was taken fairly seriously in those early days.

TH: My bloody oath we took it seriously. People would virtually get the iron out  ... very neatly pleated, absolutely neatly, meticulous.

In fact, we had cord separators. People used to have their own packs – they'd unroll their little carry-all and take out the metal base – they'd screw the bloody three prongs in ... lines go in here!

There was much packing that used to go on in that hut at Parafield. Much packing training. People certainly knew what it was all about.

DB: But none of you had any freefall experience.

TH: Absolutely none.

DB: People moved straight on to freefall. I am just intrigued about how you learnt that progression and you were more informed than anyone else because you had the Bud Sellick book?

TH: Yeah, that's right. The Bud Sellick book. We just read what we could. We had much correspondence with people – I can't remember who the hell they were.

I do remember my first freefall – I went for about a 10 seconds I think.
DB: Your first freefall?

TH: Yeah.

DB: Was that intentional?

TH: Oh yeah.

DB: Was it stable?

TH: Oh yeah, bloody oath. I remember one person who saw it and that was Mary Summers who became our secretary after Mike Soph – don't know where she is now.

DB: Do you remember that first freefall?

TH: Oh yes, I remember it very well. It was great. Absolutely magic. I mean that's when I first felt laying on air. Magic.

I had no intention of going for it.  Looking back, people may say it was foolhardy. But it wasn't.

I knew we had to get the experience to get the club going and to get other people to do it.
Someone had to demonstrate that you didn't splat in when you did freefall. Oh, Jesus Christ, I'd worked it out.

Probably the strongest influence was, of all bloody people, Charlie Horvath.

He came to the initial meeting, he was one of the originals. He was an instructor as well but it would have been Charlie Horvath who would have given the impetus to do the packing training, to do things quickly.

He certainly gave me the impetus to go terminal velocity.

DB: Because he had done freefall?

TH: He said he had, you see, he said he had. He was a loveable bloody character – there were a lot of characters around in those days.

You know what it's like – you go into a pub and people get pissed and someone starts talking skydiving and suddenly every bastard from the tables around have all been skydivers.

Oh what sort of chute do you use? Oh a red and white one! You know you've been there and done that. That is what happened when we had the flrst meeting.

All these bloody people came out of the woodwork and, you know, whether they're genuine or not it doesn't matter. They got the club going, you know.

This is the whole bloody point. But Charlie Horvath was the great impetus, because what happened was that he actually came to live with me with his wife and two kids, because I got him kicked out of his other house.

We met at the initial meeting and at the training – I went back to his place one night, drove him home, and we got extremely pissed and his landlady kicked him out because of all the noise, so he came to live with me.

Charlie and I must have jumped at Virginia. Anyway Charlie broke his bloody leg somewhere. It was just normal weekend's jumping. I took him to hospital, sat around all bloody night while he got his leg X-rayed and then plastered – plastered above the knee, right, right down to the ankle.

So he's got a bent knee, bent leg in plaster, toes sticking out the bottom.

I go to load the Volkswagen van with the gear on Saturday morning to go jumping.

Charlie comes stamping out, see. I said “where do you reckon you're going?”

He said “I'm coming jumping.”

I said “bullshit you can't go jumping.”

He said "why not I go jumping?" You know, he talked broken English.

I said “you can't go jumping with that on your fucking leg” and I continued to pack the gear into the van.

A few minutes later he comes out – no plaster on his leg. I said “where's the bloody plaster?”

He said “I cut bloody thing off. You say I can't jump with plaster on so I took the bloody thing off. Now I can jump because I don't have it on.”

Unbelievable.

DB: And did he?

TH: Yeah. So then we have a demonstration, a demo jump. I think it was at Victor Harbour. This was the flrst demo.

I think Bill Sparke had left his gear with me after they closed Virginia and he said I could borrow it for a while. That's the gear we used for freefall.

A B4 pack, with a sleeve. Oh shit, this was magic – with a sleeve!

It was not much different from a static chute with a bag. But I had a reserve – his B4 and his TIs. I had the full gear. Charlie had some bloody Gregory Quilter type Pommie ex Air Force thing with a bum pack – you know that they sit on, it was one of those with the risers which go all the way down the back and you sit on the bloody thing.

DB: The early barnstorming stuff  ...

TH: Yeah that's right and no slots in it – you know, full canopy – and Colin Parsons had that. Colin either provided the bum pack or he provided the reserve, which was another one, you know ... clips on the front ... you know gunners in Lancasters they reach over – just in their harness and if anything happens they reach over and grab the chute from the rack and clip it on.

Except the bum pack didn't have any rings (D-rings). We didn't have bloody supplies of rings that you've got these days – we didn't having fucking rings. And I said to Charlie “you know, you can't really jump on the demo.”

He said “why not?”

“Because”, I said, “you don't have the bloody full reserve.”

He says “me, I afix, I afix this one up Ted.”

He got some bloody nylon strapping and tied the reserve on. And so the reserve was tied on and away we went.

DB: Did you start to experiment with relative work.

TH: Yeah! Oh shit yeah.

DB: With Charlie?

TH: With Charlie – baton passing – we'd cut these broom sticks up and make  them look very pretty. Yeah baton passing – there was Charlie, Kate Henderson, Don West, Bob Palmer and Cathy Williamson.

DB: Brian Brown?

TH: Of course, yes. The main group of people, that was the main group. Col Parsons was for a long time but he was sort of in the second eschelon, you know. The second group of people who came along and came good but ...

DB: He certainly persisted ...

TH: He used to get depressed. We used to get depressed and we'd look out the door and he'd be fucking spinning ...

DB: You got to give him "G" for guts. He never gave it away eh?

TH: But see, he did heaps of other things as well. He was a racing car driver at Rowley Park. He was a dirt speedway driver.

DB: What is your theory as to why jumping is so addictive? It is sort of addictive, you know, it gets people in.

TH: I don't know but we were just doing something that hadn't been done before by most people and we were lucky because there were no constraints on us really. Very few constraints on us.

We were free to do what we wanted up to point. And we were trail blazing, you know, we were finding out how to do things. It was a very exciting time.

In fact, too exciting because we just got completely addicted to it, many of us, and it just ruined marriages, ruined families, you know.

Every bloody cent we had went on jumping – every moment we had – I use to leave work. We used to leave work and race down to Adelaide airport and jump on the 210 and one person would be in the car and race down to Aldinga and put the bloody target out.

I was doing that. In retrospect it was bloody stupid.

We still dropped drifters anyway – but we'd do a 15 grander after work, you know. Bloody magic. In extremely bad weather too, you know, sometimes. Windy westerlies.

Looking back I'd do it all again. Exactly the same way.

There was no reason why we shouldn't have done it. Maybe if parachuting wasn't as regulated as it is now there'd be more fatalities – but maybe there wouldn't be, you know. Who knows!

DB: There were bad years but .. .

TH: I certainly can't say that I was any better than anyone else because I wasn't.

I wasn't an athlete. Some people used to say to me "Shit are you a parachutist?"

And I'd say "Yep". And they'd say "Wow!"

But to be a parachutist you've actually just got to drag your centre of gravity over the door sill ... get it outside the door and fall out.

And that is really what it boiled down to  – you didn't have to be good at all.

We were bloody people who were stuffing around.
###

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there

I saw the first jumps at Mallala in South Australian 10 winds!!

I was a girlfriend of Brian Brown and a good friend of Ted Harrison back in the 60's - still friends with Brian - howeber I must point out that Ted died in Undercliffe, Sydney on 27th June 2004. His wife, Mary Falloon and children Jim and Kate still live there

I think your site is fantastic and look forward to seeing it grow in the next year

Kind regards

Chris Anders
Hahndorf

Anonymous said...

Hi there,
I am Ted's eldest daughter and remember the long day's he spent away from home pursuing his passion for skydiving. I also remember the long night's my mother spent in the hallway repairing his parachutes while I slept alongside him. I also remember being there when Charlie Horvath crashed to the ground breaking his leg. I keep in touch with Mary, Kate and Jim and all three of my own children have been skydiving in Bordertown when the current skydiving team visited November 2006(bet they didn't realise the heritage of their customers!)
Regards,
Wendy

Unknown said...

G'day:
I was one of the group that started parachuting with Ted Harrison and Charlie Horvath at Aldinga in the early 1960's. It began with an article published in the Sunday Mail entitled something like "You will see them fall!" that aroused my interest. That was before they got their static line 'chutes, so we spent a lot of time learning to fall before getting our first jump. Then we were required to make six static line jumps before our first freefall. I was more nervous about the first freefall than the first static line jump. In the latter case, you could be pushed out like a sack of potatoes and you would still survive, but for a free fall your life was in your own hands. For your first static line jump, you were the first to jump from the aircraft - a practice of which my wife was aware. I guess I had forgotten that in fact the first thing to leave the aircraft was the bag of sand that was parachuted down to check the wind drift. That 'chute was not always well packed and on the occasion of my first jump, the bag was pushed out and the 'chute did not open. My wife, who was watching with considerable interest, saw this object fall away and watched with rapidly increasing alarm as it fell to earth with an unopened parachute! She could not understand why those around her were not alarmed! Things were more casual in those days.
Once we started freefalling, we had to contend with another issue: Charlie and Ted could not agree on the best place to attach the ripcord handle. One thought that it should be in the traditional place on the lower left side of the chest - the other thought high on the right hip. Depending on which 'chute you got to pack, you had to rapidly go through the appropriate motion to grab the handle a few times for practice before jumping and remember on the way down which it was!
I was reminded of all this the other day by a pilot colleague who mentioned that he was taught to commercial level many years ago at Bankstown NSW by an instructor whom he liked and for whom he had the greatest respect - namely Ted Harrison. I recalled that I had heard that Ted took up flying after parachuting, so thought it must be one and the same. Too late now to pay my respects, I'm sorry to say. I see that we were both born 1936. One person I would like to contact if still possible is Mike Soph. He and I and our wives were good friends at the time, despite Mike's liking for a terrible cheese called "beer cheese". If any reader can help with that contact I would appreciate it.
Best regards to all past and present
Carl Nilsson

Unknown said...

Hi Carl,

My name is mark soph (msoph57@gmail.com),

I am Mike's son, I am sorry to say Mike passed away in 2009 after surgery complications. 79 years 1 week and 1 day young and to the end his life revolved around his "Stinky cheese" which to the detriment of my family I have inherited.

If anyone else from the club reads this, I have kept his photos, some of which are of the clubs early days ie the dragonfly and would be happy to share them with the club.

I still have his helmet ex WW2 US army issue

I fondly remember our early morning trips down to Aldinga, but only barely as I was but 5yo.

You also might want to touch base with Chris Sperou, as he also was knowledge of the early days.

Rgds mark






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