This week, or should I say, these last four days, have definitely been one for the bucket list. After finally making our way up to the top of the East Coast in Cairns, it was at last time to put our Raging Thunder vouchers to use. These included a 14,000 feet skydive at Mission Beach, a day of ‘extreme’ white water rafting down Tully River, and a 50 metre bungee jump at AJ Hackett. Rather than spreading these out, we decided it would be much more fun to cram them all in as close together as we could, leaving no real time to recover from the last activity and prepare for the next!
Skydiving - Mission Beach
This was definitely the one I had been looking forward to the most. For as long as I can remember I’ve always said that I had wanted to do a skydive, so when the morning finally came around it’s safe to say I was just a tad excited… After choosing our photo and video package for the jump, we watched what was quite possibly the shortest ‘training’ film, before heading out to meet who we would be jumping with. We were strapped up, briefly interviewed and made to state how nervous we were about the thought of plunging into complete nothingness, before jumping on a bus and heading to the plane. As we got higher, and the Go-Pro continued to appear right in front of my face, the nerves were definitely starting to kick in. After watching how fast the first person fell out of the plane, there was a moment of ‘Holy crap. Why am I doing this?’ which was shortly replaced by ‘Oh god! He’s moving me closer to that gaping hole in the wall!’
The next 60 seconds or so are just a complete blur. I remember screaming ‘oh my god!’ A LOT, and I definitely recall making several enthusiastic hand gestures, but in all honesty, it’s hard to remember the exact feeling of the free-fall (a good reason to go again?) Before I knew it the parachute was up and I was helping to steer us towards the beach. The views were absolutely incredible, and apart from the extreme wedgie I was getting, I could have stayed up there for hours.
11 out of 10 - I wanna do it again!
Extreme White Water Rafting - Tully River, Cairns
Let me start off this one with eight little words…blocked ear, split lip, scraped back, bruised knee. But don’t let that put you off, because extreme white water rafting is definitely up there with one of the coolest experiences I’ve had in Australia so far! Split into four teams of six, we were equipped with ‘sexy’ helmets and lifejackets and sent off to our respective boats, before heading down our first set of rapids within seconds. Each boat came with it’s own guide, which was both a blessing and a curse as he often gave us wrong directions in order to see just how far we would go flying out of the boat - hence the ‘extreme’ rafting. Covering a total of 12 kilometres in total, we definitely ran into our fair share of risky water, as well as ridiculously annoying (and painful) boulders that seem to situate themselves in the most inconvenient of places. Throughout the day we hit whirlpools, got drenched under waterfalls - where the split lip incident occurred, thank you Jack and your oar for that… We also went cliff jumping, swam through the ‘drowning simulator’, yes - it’s actually named that for a very good reason, and split up the day with a pretty great BBQ, courtesy of a man called Fish.
9 out of 10 - Could have done with fewer injuries…
Bungee Jumping - AJ Hackett, Cairns
Without a doubt, this was the thing I was most nervous about. Even on the way to AJ Hackett that morning, I felt like I was on the way to the dentist to get several teeth pulled - to say I was not looking forward to it is a huge understatement… The previous day I had even hesitated before rock jumping - and that was only about 5 metres off the ground! Once signed in we ‘hung about’ on the deck and watched as everyone else went first. To be honest I’m not sure whether that was the best idea, as when it was my turn to start heading up I genuinely thought I was going to be sick. Refusing to look down the whole way up, I eventually got to the top and was relieved to see everyone else looking how I felt. After what felt like at least half an hour, it was finally my turn to get strapped up and hobble over to the edge of the platform. Surprisingly my photos make me look super calm at that moment, something I was definitely NOT. On the count of three I didn’t want to drag it out anymore, so with quite a feeble lean forward I went…it was freaking UHmazing! Yes, I screamed the whole way down, and yes, my shoe did end up flying off into the pond below, but it was the most incredible feeling and I’m so so glad I did it.
9 out of 10 - next time I’ll go barefoot!
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