Fly by wire ... Curt Warren and Ben Stubbs glide over Stanwell Tops.Credit:Curt Warren
Ben Stubbs runs off the edge of a cliff and doesn't look back.
My favourite film when I was growing up wasCondorman,in which goofball Englishman Michael Crawford would dress in a yellow and red chicken suit with wings and leap from bridges and buildings,floating through the air to rescue his Russian damsel in distress. You could always see the cables attached to his wings but I loved it anyway.
Twenty years later,I've summoned the nerve to attempt my own Condorman stunt. There's no damsel in strife on the Eiffel Tower but that doesn't diminish the gravity of what I'm about to do. Standing on the edge of a cliff at Stanwell Tops,south of Sydney,I hold the nose of my hang-glider as a strong gust of wind blows in off the ocean,threatening to snatch the giant kite from my grasp.
With me on my maiden condor voyage is Curt Warren,a hang-gliding instructor with 16 years'experience and more than 7000 tandem flights under his belt. The morning is dark;grey storm clouds linger on the horizon,carrying rain. Warren says it's a perfect day for gliding. We fasten the frame together and he trusts me to clip the wings to the glider,an action that will determine whether we sink or soar.
Mercifully,there's no time to dwell on the ominous ledge in front of us. Warren attaches us to the safety line and gives me a piece of advice before we set off:"Run towards the cliff as fast as you can and don't stop until we're in the air."
Together we charge towards the lip of Bald Hill. I'm struggling to process the fact that I'm running off the edge of a cliff but before I can protest,we're flying above the Pacific Ocean.
We shoot up on a thermal and sail out above the open water. I breathe and look down at the ground far below. I kick my legs back so I'm hanging horizontally and rest my feet on the stirrup behind. Next to me,Warren is holding the glider's bar. He is snug in his custom-built gliding bag as he guides us out over the waves. Everything is silent,except for his cackle over the gentle whistle of the wind.
"Awesome,isn't it?"I nod,surprised by how stable the glider feels. As we soar along on the invisible pockets of air,Warren tells me hang-gliding is part science,part art. He obsesses over the weather,reading the conditions and the"energy"in the air to maximise his ride.
We climb to about 400 metres. Warren pulls to the right and we turn back towards the cliff. I notice the mangled remains of a car on the rocks as he pulls the bar in towards his chest. The glider dips slightly and we rocket through the air above Stanwell Park at 80km/h. I notice an erratic electronic beeping coming from the glider - is it meant to monitor my heart rate in case of emergency? Warren says it's a variometer,which measures our rate of ascent when we latch on to a thermal.