Phoenix Rising (eBook)

In 1984, at the age of twenty-three, I was standing at the kitchen window of the flat I shared with my long-time friend Carolyn French (pseudonym), when I saw a hang-glider as it soared backwards and forwards along the nearby coastal cliffs of Newcastle’s Strzelecki Lookout. I was captivated. I felt such a strong desire to experience such a flight, to look upon the world as a bird would, that I encouraged Carolyn to come with me immediately to find out how. We jumped into my car and drove to the nearby hang-glider launch site overlooking the ocean in the suburb of Merewether. Neither of us had been to a launch site before.

Walking down to what we assumed was the take-off area, I spotted a guy holding a walkie-talkie. It was obvious he was giving instructions to an inexperienced pilot who we could see flying not far from where we were. Tentatively approaching the guy with the walkie-talkie, I asked, ‘Hey, are you an instructor?’

That was how I met my first husband.

~ ~ ~

Paul (pseudonym) was only slightly older than I was. He was good looking and he exuded confidence. I was immediately attracted to him. And whether it was because of him, or because I’d just chased a whim and felt alive with the thrill of it, I felt like something magical was about to happen, that my life would never be the same again. And I was right.

In response to my question about learning to fly, Paul said he taught small groups of students and I was invited to join a new group scheduled to start training in a few weeks. My initial lessons were conducted at various coastal sites. First, Paul took us to low sand dunes where we learned to assemble a glider, connect a harness to it (that supported the pilot’s body), lift the glider off the ground with its weight across our shoulders, and run a short distance with a person running on each side holding one of the wires that held the glider together. The idea was to start low and slow and gradually increase the height of the sand dune that you glided from as you gained control and confidence. I experienced my first very short, very low flight this way. I was terrified, and enthralled.

Physically, it was quite demanding. I needed to lift the 35kg hang-glider, balance it across my shoulders, begin to walk, and then progressively increase the pace to a run down the sand hill. If that wasn’t hard enough, I also had to make constant corrective movements to keep the glider’s wings horizontal while running into the wind. You always launch into the wind.

The glider is controlled by moving your weight in relation to the glider. You are suspended from a point in the middle of the glider and hold on to an equilateral triangle of aluminium tube, with the bottom tube horizontally in front of you. This is called the ‘base-bar’. When first lifting the glider off the ground, the top apex of the triangle rests just behind the pilot’s neck and across the shoulders, with the pilot holding the two downward tubes connecting at the apex. When a certain speed is reached, relative to the wind, the glider can begin to support its own weight and lift off the pilot’s shoulders. Then it lifts the pilot’s weight off the ground because the harness (that the pilot is in) is connected to the glider. The student pilot, all going well, glides to the base of the sand dune, bringing the wing to a controlled halt by suddenly flaring the nose of the glider up (inducing a stall), by pushing the aluminium tubes forward and upwards. Ideally, you land gently on your feet.

I displayed many undignified and demoralising ‘crash’ landings as I slowly learned to get some control of this heavy and awkward contraption. It took many mouthfuls of sand during my outrageous landings to establish some cause and effect relationships in my brain based on when and how I moved my weight in relation to the glider. But my routine humiliation and bruises did not deter me from my ambition of learning to fly, and Paul and my fellow students were always patient and supportive. Even still, Paul wasn’t there when I had my first decent flight. That privilege fell to a nervous assistant instructor.

With the combination of a steady sea breeze blowing straight into the sand dune and then up and over, it created just the updraught I needed to stay airborne. I soon had enough control to get the glider to do more-or-less what I wanted; I was able to glide backwards and forwards above the sand. It was terrifying and addictive. It was wonderful.

From there my class progressed to the most popular Newcastle hang-gliding site: an overlook onto Burwood Beach in the suburb of Merewether. Most Newcastle hang-gliding pilots flew there regularly. It was a large hill facing south towards the ocean, with enough cleared space to assemble gliders. Importantly, if you ‘bombed out’ (could not stay airborne for some reason) there was a sandy beach below, which was mostly deserted because of the sewerage works nearby. Experienced pilots could get high enough at Merewether to fly north along the coast for a few kilometres, picking up lifts from sand dunes, buildings and cliffs. It was at Merewether that I witnessed one of my fellow students break his leg when he hit some rocks near the launch site. He was a big, strong looking lad, which certainly gave me cause to reconsider what I was doing.

But I only hesitated for a moment. Flying a hang-glider felt as natural to me as writing with my left hand had, and I knew not to fight it. After all, my kindergarten teacher had tried again and again to persuade me to move my pencil from my left hand to my right when writing and drawing. It never stuck. And just like with that pencil, I knew that persevering with learning to hang-glide was what felt ‘natural’ to me and I wanted to do. I went on to spend hours soaring back and forth along the Merewether cliffs. Then, with more experience, I was able to fly northwards along the coast to the next beach, and then on to Strzelecki Lookout, which had a sheer cliff-face. Late one summer afternoon, as I flew at the lookout, I looked out over the ocean as the sun was beginning to set in the west. Then a full moon rose out of the eastern horizon. I calmly watched a scramble at the launch site below me as pilots quickly prepared to launch their gliders into such a spectacular evening. As the darkening sky filled with the shapes of poorly illuminated hang-gliders, I slipped southwards for the landing area at an oval opposite Bar Beach and peacefully took it all in. Little did I know that it would be at this same lookout that Paul would later propose to me.

~ ~ ~

Paul made his first move on me at a party held at his house. We had flirted on occasions before the party, but only enough for me to establish that he might be interested in me – and I’d tried to make it clear the feeling was mutual. That evening, Paul invited me out for dinner and it developed from there.

We’d been dating for just a few months before he took me to Strzelecki Lookout and proposed. I said yes without any hesitation; I loved him more than any other guy I’d dated. I was so sure of it.

And I wanted it to be right. Paul made me feel the safest and most secure I’d felt with any other man. He was the most special, reliable, caring, loving, protective and dependable man I had ever met. When he proposed to me, I thought there would surely be no other man in this world who I could rely on to care for my heart better and share in my love of flying as well.

We could talk for hours about hang-gliding, and went out flying as frequently as possible – whether it was in the afternoon, after work, early mornings or weekends, it didn’t matter. We were prepared to travel, making trips to inland sites either alone or with small numbers of hang-gliding friends. We travelled wherever we needed to go in order to gain as diverse a flying experience as possible, in order to develop our skills. It fed my need for adventure and excitement. And I respected how gracious and focused he was. Plus, we had great sexual chemistry. What can I say? I was twenty-four and Paul was twenty-eight. I was a newly qualified Registered General Nurse who was ready to go anywhere, and he was adventure hungry and seemed to have just as much energy and drive as me.

We set about making the arrangements for our wedding pretty much immediately. The hospital where I’d been working had a chaplain whom I’d established a good working relationship with and he agreed to do the ceremony. There was an adorable church in historic Morpeth just up the Hunter River from Newcastle, and my father was happy to walk me down the aisle to my waiting beau. My two sisters were present as bridesmaids and Paul’s daughter from a previous relationship was our beautiful flower girl. Looking into Paul’s soft brown eyes, I was certain that we would be together forever, as we vowed to be on that day. My heart felt as fresh and unblemished as the flowers that adorned my hair, but perhaps I should have known that hearts don’t just reset themselves because you’re feeling happy.

Helen and Paul on their wedding day with Cathy, one of Helen’s nursing friends

I’d never been very good at being in a relationship. When I started high school, I experienced one of the most baffling episodes of my life so far. At age sixteen I became aware of a boy three years my junior who was paying me an unusual amount of attention, which eventually turned into a form of stalking. In time, the boy was joined by a friend...