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 firs