Nineteen year-old Trevor, one of those who made skydiving history with a step into space over Aldinga on November 19, 1961, was the thirteenth student to jump that weekend. He went on to be a leading advocate of the young sport.
Trevor set up his own parachute club and commercial centre, edited and published the sport's national magazine, served on the board of the Australian Parachute Federation and was the APF National Safety Officer and later the Department of Transport's inspector of parachuting and a number of other air sports.
Extracts from a transcript of a recorded interview with Trevor Burns by Donna Berthelsen in 1998.
The interview was one of 45 recorded with early skydivers from all over Australia as part of an oral history project for the Australian Parachute Federation.
Trev made his first jump at Aldinga, on November 19, 1961 at the age of 19.
DB: How did you start jumping, how old were you, and do you know the date of your first jump?
TB: I was 19. I started jumping because I wanted to learn to fly and I couldn't afford to fly in those days. It was five pounds an hour to learn to fly and I only earned eight pounds a week and was paying four pounds a week board and rent, so there wasn't enough left to fly.
They advertised in the paper in South Australia in 1961 for the formation of a parachute club so I decided to have a go at that. They had big numbers – I think from memory we had something like 150 students when the club was formed.
That was the South Australian Sport Parachute Club. We did our initial ground training at Parafield. All of the training was based very much on the military style of things because, in fact, our instructors were ex-military guys. World War II veterans and things like this.
Ted Harrison was the chief parachute instructor because I think he'd done some military parachuting in the reserves or the CMF or something. There were a couple of other guys who I really can't remember now. I know that we did have a Polish guy who was actually in the Air Force – Stan Kruszewski.
When I first met Ted he was a reporter for the Truth newspaper in South Australia.
The ground training lasted for about 17 weeks – mainly weekends. We kept going out on Sundays and doing this ground training mainly because they were trying to keep us interested. They ordered the equipment but it took a long while to get there.
The initial gear for static lines when it arrived was mainly the British Army surplus X type parachutes. There were also a couple of B4s and things which were really pretty swish bits of gear, but they were only for the elite – Ted Harrison and the rest of them!
DB: So, for anyone who had some jumps, like Ted?
TB: Well, none of us had any jumps really. We all started off doing static line jumps except perhaps for Ted, and I can't recall at all whether Ted did any static line jumps to begin with.
If he did it would have been only one or two. I can still remember seeing him do his first freefall which was, from memory, a seven second delay which was a pretty good deal in those days.
And that was down at Aldinga. The aircraft we used was an old Dragon, De Havilland Dragon, so you had to hand start the thing. The Rapide we used later had an electric start.
During our training and before we started jumping, and I suspect probably as a way of trying to keep us interested, Claude Gillard, Bill Molloy, Hans Magnusson and I can't remember there was definitely another.
DB: Charl Stewart?
TB: Yes, Charl Stewart came over to South Australia to break the Australian freefall record and they jumped out of a Beaver north of Adelaide. I can remember that and it was before we started jumping. We had our first jump day in November of 1961.
DB: Yes, see there is quite an interesting little core – survival of the fittest or whatever but Harrison, yourself, Brian Brown and Col Parsons I think were in the original group.
TB: Yes that's right.
DB: So that was the four core that really have stayed right through. There were some females too though.
TB: Yes, that's right. I remember when we first started jumping and we all got our log books. They were specially printed and they only had provision in them for 25 jumps because it in those days I don't think they envisaged that anyone would ever do more than 25 jumps.
The log books were all numbered and they were issued in the order in which you jumped as a student and we were taking six up at a time in the Dragon. I was the first out of the third load, so I was actually number 13.
But my log book is numbered 12A. There is no number 13 log book – that was the superstition of the day. That wasn't anything to do with me, it was the old Polish Chief Instructor. I can't have 13 – it had to be 12A.
So my log book was 12A and that's how we started doing the jumping down at Aldinga, as I say mainly with static lines, flat round canopies, really flash if you got one with a blank gore cut out of it.
DB: But obviously you hung around, so you did enjoy those jumps.
TB: Yes, and it was fun. Looking back, I was probably shit scared for the first few jumps. I think that had I kind of rocked up there to do the jumps and not made a lot of friends or if my friends had decided to give it away I suspect I would have given it away.
But fortunately for me, the bunch of people that I got friendly with during this long period of training beforehand were people like Brian Brown – and the bastard kept jumping so I had to keep jumping too.
Then after a while I started to enjoy it – it was all pretty primitive in those days. On my first jump they had us all lined up like a military deal and they were going along checking the equipment and part of the deal with the X-type parachutes is that with the quick release snap in the chest you had to give it a half turn and thump it to open.
So part of the deal was they'd come along and they'd belt this thing to make sure the thing was locked and in the meantime sort of try to cave in your chest while they were doing it – just for hell of it.
And they came along and this is just before I am about to get in the aeroplane for the first jump and they hit this thing and the bloody new parachute fell out all around my ankles – I wasn't all that impressed about that.
Of the initial 150 odd that we had in the club – I'm not too sure how many actually did their first jump – quite a few – I think it was somewhere in the order of seventy or eighty.
But then after that it tailed off fairly quickly until we got down to a core of about thirty odd who sort of hung around and then new students started to come through.
DB: When did you move up to Port Pirie?
TB: Our first jump day was in November 1961, and I moved to Port Pirie in 1963.
In my first year I remember I did 17 jumps. Now, in those days 17 jumps was a fairly respectable number, although there were other guys who did more. I seem to remember Brian Brown did over 30 which we thought was a lot.
And I can remember driving down to the drop zone at daybreak on the Saturday morning because basically it was first in, best dressed in terms of who was going to jump.
They would have flown the Dragon down the afternoon before and I remember getting down there at bloody daybreak one morning and arriving thinking well I'm on the first load, and there were six buggers sleeping in the aeroplane.
They'd gone down there the night before! But it was nowhere near like it is now – the ability to amass big numbers of jumps.
DB: And you formed your own group at Port Pirie?
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| Trevor Burns (right) at Port Pirie with Leo Brogan (left) and Col Parsons in about 1969. |
DB: Right, and you got that dispensation?
TB: Yes, and then we ran the club up there – Spencer Gulf Skydivers, which operated right through until I left Port Pirie which was in 1971.
DB: Well, I mean, that was relatively successful?
TB: Yes. It was one of those clubs that was never going to get really big because of the relatively small population base.
We used to get a lot of guys coming through working in BHP and the steelworks and the shipyards and they'd be only there for twelve months so what we often found was that towards the end of a year we'd really have quite a number of jumpers – you know we'd have 15 or 20 active jumpers in the club – and then come the new year, and there would be four of us looking at each other because the rest of them had all packed up and gone off back to where they came from.
DB: Who were other significant people in Spencer Gulf.
TB: Noel Weckert.
DB: Right, so did he actually start with you.
TB: Yes, Noel was one of my first students and then he progressed fairly rapidly and was the assistant chief instructor sort of thing - 2IC- until he went to Townsville.
DB: That's interesting. I sort of vaguely knew that I suppose. But also was there anyone else particularly or mainly yourself and him?
TB: We were probably the mainstays in terms of the instructors and so forth.
DB: It was hard work – training, despatching, packing all the gear and whatever. Did you find it arduous?
TB: It was yes. Because we were young and silly you see. But yes, you're right, we started off with pretty basic equipment, we didn't have any X-types.
We had progressed to the stage where our gear was all B4 equipment and that sort of stuff and the club probably had eight or nine sets of gear, and then quite a few of us had our own equipment.
But it wasn't all that plentiful and I know that on busy days there I'd often lend my parachute to one of the students and then I would go and despatch them without wearing a rig or anything like that. I mean that was sort of quite normal and you wouldn't bother about that.
DB: That would have been against the rules wouldn't it?
TB: Well sort of ... you'd hang on, yeah! But you know that was the sort of thing we did. We used to operate with a 172 that was based in Port Pirie. I’d often fly across the Gulf from Port Pirie on the Saturday morning and jump into the drop zone and then we'd jump all day, stay overnight, jump on the Sunday and then fly back and jump into the aerodrome at Port Pirie.
DB: So how far away from Port Pirie is Whyalla?
TB: By road it is about 100 miles, by air it is about 20.
DB: So there was another club at Port Pirie?
TB: No.
DB: But Adelaide jumpers used to come up there?
TB: Yes, we'd often have a jump weekend in Port Pirie and the guys from Adelaide would come up and we'd all jump at Pirie on the aerodrome there because I was living in Port Pirie at the time.
And that sort of progressed to the point where we ran the nationals at Port Pirie I think in 1966.
DB: Just on your personal jumping then. Were you ever interested in competition? You were a reasonable accuracy jumper weren't you?
TB: Oh yes. Accuracy, yes. But I was never a very good style jumper and never terribly interested.
I was more interested in relative work and I guess I wasn't really serious – I was never a serious contender for the national team or anything like that. I think part of it was that when I moved to Pirie I was married and shortly thereafter had a son and then a few years later another son.
So being a married man and having those sorts of responsibilities, you really don't have much money to throw around on things like trips and jumping. The fact that I was able to keep jumping was by virtue of the fact that I was instructing and running the club and doing all those things.
DB: So what made you propose to run the nationals? I guess that's been your talent – your organisational skills – but I mean it was a reasonable thing to take on and to persuade people to go to Port Pirie.
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| Trevor at Lower Light for the 1970 Gulf Meet. |
DB: I remember that was just when I started jumping but the selling point was the swimming pool wasn't it?
TB: The place was an ex-World War II base and it had an old swimming pool on it that we resurrected and got going – looking back, I don't think I'd swim in it now, but ...
DB: I've seen photos – it didn't look real hot actually ........... .
TB: But it was wet, and when it was 110ยบ in the waterbag it was fine .... But I think partly because as you say I guess – I've always had a bent to organising things, you know.
DB: Well ideas really, in a way.
TB: And probably had ideas beyond my capabilities I guess, in terms of doing those things. But I found it a very interesting exercise, I learnt a lot out of it. found it a very interesting exercise, I learnt a lot out of it.
DB: But they were quite successful?
TB: Yes, yes it was good. But we burnt the aerodrome I remember that. Niels Asche dropped a flare and we burnt out about 300 acres of the aerodrome.
DB: Was that at night?
TB: No, during the day. We had a DC3 up there for a day or two during the nationals and we did this mass jump. Niels had this flare and it started to burn his foot and he kicked it off and, of course, being summer and dry grass, it burnt out the whole of the aerodrome in between the runways – made the local paper.
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