The Ride Of Your Life?

A spate of deaths and serious injuries from joy flights in recent months has made many people wonder if the thrill of a lifetime is worth risking your life.

- Beverley Hadgraft

Kerri Pike was 15 when she met her husband, Alister. Teenage sweethearts, they married three years later and went on to produce five sons and three daughters. She was the eldest of nine and loved being a mum.

Not surprisingly, she’d draw other youngsters from the Mission Beach, Qld, community where she was known and adored into her brood. Peter Dawson, for instance, was like another son to her. He was a tandem master at the local skydiving centre and always trying to persuade her to join him in a jump.

Kerri said no. Then maybe. And finally she said yes. A date was set last year for Friday October 13, the day after her 54th birthday. Despite only recently recovering from an injury from another jump, Peter would descend with her. Kerri left for her birthday treat in high spirits. She saw her two youngest children, Kyanna, then 12, and Rhett, 14, off to school and drove away. She never came home. Neither did Peter Dawson, 35, or a third jumper, Toby Turner, 34. Three deaths and dozens of friends and family members left grieving.

Only a couple of months earlier, in July, a “highly experienced” skydiver Adrian Lloyd, 60, and his student Low Ke Wei, 29, fell to their deaths a few hundred metres from the Picton drop zone base of Sydney Skydivers, a company that’s had a total of six fatalities in the past 16 years.

All over Australia, mums like Kerri go skydiving for a life-changing experience – a thrill, a look at the world from a different perspective, the adventure of a lifetime. Many of us long for that experience, and to do so we give ourselves over into the care of others – be it a skydiving instructor, a balloonist or even a pilot taking us for a joy ride. But a spate of deadly accidents across the country in recent months has many asking if such an experience is worth the risk.