Move over, Lara, this is my scene

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This was published 14 years ago

Move over, Lara, this is my scene

Pulling a stunt ... the free-fall drop.

Pulling a stunt ... the free-fall drop.Credit: Jane E. Fraser

I'm driving along sipping a coffee and trying to decide how I feel about being set on fire. Not your typical train of thought for a Saturday morning but a rather pressing

one today. I'm about to arrive at a Gold Coast address where I will undergo a day of professional stunt training which theoretically, includes being set on fire. My past exploits have included jumping out of planes, bungy jumping off bridges and white-water rafting through grade-five rapids. However, being engulfed in flames would be a serious test of my fear threshold.

I'm met by Colin Handley, the Aussie-born Hollywood-trained stuntman who runs the Australian Stunt Academy, which has been operating as a professional stunt-training facility for about 15 years and has just opened to the public as the Movie Stunt Experience. Handley is almost a caricature of a stuntman – all muscled handsomeness and tanned charm – and he's worked with some of Hollywood's biggest names.

Our small group starts the day with a warm-up and a commando-style obstacle course that has some of us wondering just what we've signed up for.

Then we get into stage fighting, learning the techniques that actors and stunt people use to stage the spectacular fights you see in blockbuster movies. I've never hit anyone in my life and am not really interested in fighting, but as we work through the choreography, I find myself really getting into it; for a minute there, I'm Lara Croft.

We move on to wire work, which is used in movies to give the appearance of flying through the air. Harnessed up and attached to two thin – but presumably strong – wires, we practise somersaults, tornado spins and running up a wall undertake a backflip (I've always wanted to do that, so very cool).

Then it's time for abseiling, which we do upside down as well as in the traditional manner. And we have a go at doing a window penetration, where you fly in through a window (cue shattering glass) and fly back out again (cue more shattering glass).

After lunch comes the best part of the day: high falls. This is free falling, without a harness or any safety gear, on to a crash pad; the old leaping-from-a-burning-building scenario, or perhaps a thrown-out-a-window scenario, depending on what sort of movies you watch.

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We start at just a couple of metres above the mat, learning the correct technique for falling both forwards and backwards. We work higher and higher up the platform, doing fall after fall, until Colin asks if anyone wants to take the seven-metre plunge.

Three of our group go up the ladder – and one goes back down after taking a look. It does, indeed, seem an awfully long way down.

“Three, two, one, action!" and I take a deep breath and launch myself off the platform, savouring the weightless feeling of falling before being swallowed by the inflatable crash pad. It's seriously good fun.

I'm buzzing and want to go up to the top platform, which is a couple of metres higher again. Colin laughs: “Come and do a three-week stunt course and then I'll let you go off there.”

And so we come to the fire part, where supposedly sane human beings volunteer to be set on fire. I watch the first two people go through it and feel a rising swell of panic as the second person re-ignites not once, but twice, after the flames have supposedly been put out.

Yet I know with a resigned certainty that I am going to do this. It truly scares me but I don't want to be travelling home wishing I'd had the courage to face it.

I change into a fireproof under layer and then two more layers of clothing, plus gloves and a balaclava. I lie face down on the grass and Colin douses me in petrol, which soaks through to my skin – surely that can't be right?

I'm starting to feel a bit nauseous and almost pull out but I've come this far, I have to do it.

Colin waves a cigarette lighter near me and I burst into flames, with a shriek of indignation. The flame burns fairly small and I feel surprisingly OK about it, moving around reasonably calmly for 15 seconds or so ... until I kneel down as instructed and explode into a human fireball. For a few terrifying moments, all I can see and hear is a wall of flame, roaring and crackling all around me.

Then silence – total silence – and a vague awareness of being covered in wet blankets, which are suffocating, adding to the conscious need to keep breathing.

The blankets are then peeled back and I am pulled to my feet, definitely still alive, apparently unharmed ... and feeling rather pleased with myself.

The writer was a guest of the Movie Stunt Experience.

TRIP NOTES

WHERE

The Movie Stunt Experience takes place at Nerang on the Gold Coast.

HOW MUCH

$149 for half a day or $299 for a full day, which includes the high falls and fire burn. Photo and video packages cost extra.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Phone 0415 999 626, see moviestuntexperience.com.

A reasonable level of fitness is required.

Kids can join a stunt program during the January school holidays.

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