Skydive Regional

5pm Sunday

It’s currently 15 degrees outside, as we sit at a cruising altitude of 8,000ft, approximately 100 nautical miles South West of Broken Hill. There are 4 of us on board, Natalia, our incredible manifest, Alex, behind the cockpit controls, Zack and myself, Teags – the two Tandem Instructors for this regional trip. Zack is sat in the second pilot seat, soaking in as much information and practice flying as he can as he ignites the flame under yet another sky based passion. Natalia and myself are squished in the back with an array of parachuting equipment and bags, settled in as comfy as we can for the 2 hour flight home.

This trip started on Friday evening with a crew dinner at our home base, Langhorne Creek Airfield. We finalised briefs, checked our equipment and readied ourselves for a weekend where every minute was already accounted for!

7am Saturday 

Four gentlemen enter the clubhouse, three of them, very aware of what’s going on, the fourth – caught completely by surprise on his Buck’s show. He had questioned why they got him up at 5am, but now all was forgiven! The weather was absolutely perfect and we started these guys Bucks show in style from 15,000ft. 

9am Saturday

We packed up the plane and set course – Adelaide to Renmark. A little over an hours flight, taking in the gorgeous scenery of the Murray River. With a number of last minute bookings our day was completely booked out. We had a number of jumpers return for the 2nd, 3rd or even 5th skydive with us! A thin cloud layer gave everyone a feeling of entering another world as the aircraft broke up through into blue skies and sunshine. 

We were also joined by SA Skydiving owner and Chief Instructor Miff and daughter Jazz as they did some fun jumps together. They were en route back from Hotham where Jazz just completed her Level 1 snowboard Instructor rating, just weeks after completing her AFF solo skydiving course. What an absolute weapon! Congrats Jazzy.

6pm Saturday

Lots of thrills and excitement from everyone at Renmark. We then headed  for a delicious meal at The Renmark Club before catching an early night.

515am Sunday

Lights on, breakfasts in mouths and taxi to Renmark Airport.

6am Sunday

Wheels up at Renmark en route to Broken Hill. With a delayed flight time due to a headwind, we touched down in Broken Hill to absolutely stunning skydiving conditions, blue skies 8-10 knots ground winds. 

Hosted once more by the wonderful David Shrimpton and the Broken Hill Flying Patrol in their hanger, we set up shop for a big day of jumping. Again, we shared the skies with lots of return jumpers, who we love teaching a little bit more about skydiving each time they jump.

The views were expansive over Broken Hill and the landings soft with perfect conditions both in the sky and on the ground.

We get a real pleasure out of giving people the opportunity to skydive over their home town. People were telling us all about Broken Hill and pointing out landmarks and their houses.

We are soon in bound to home base, Langhorne Creek, where a beer and team debrief await along with a whole lot of video editing. 

We absolutely LOVE skydiving regional and bringing our operation on the road.

We’d like to thank the Renmark Paringa Council and Broken Hill Council, as well as the teams at both airports, especially Chris at Broken Hill who ensured our landing area was freshly cut, we very much appreciated that mate!

We’d like to thank our supporters in each location, Vikki who did our poster run in Renmark and Patrick who did the same in Broken Hill. 

I’d like to extend my personal thanks to our team.

Greg Miff Smith – the dream fueler, the enabler

Alex – who not only flew us safely there and back, as well as all our sorties, he also packed a heap of parachutes.

Natalia – our incredible Manifest keeping us all in order 

and to my fellow tandem instructor Zack, who ran super hard with me, jumping, packing and giving everyone he jumped with an incredible experience.

And we’d like to thank the most important people, those who took the leap of faith with us this weekend. Thank you, thank you thank you. 

We can’t wait to be back!