Brad Guy

I did feel some anxiety and I felt some fear and some jitters, but I put that down to just anticipating what I was about to do.

I nearly get ripped out of the harness because we're moving so much.

I lose a shoe.

My tandem instructor is just yelling at me to keep my feet down so we can stay strapped together.

And that is the moment that the panic started to set in.

My name is Brad Guy, and this is what I survived.

Yay, okay.

I always had an affinity for it.

I love country Victoria.

I love rural Australia.

Especially as an adult now, I can really reflect on the whole Australiana of my upbringing and especially my background.

But I think at the time I always felt like

a big fish in a small pond, country kid with big city dreams, all very cheesy, but I was always ambitious.

So I saw my town Pylong as kind of my launch pad to see the world.

And whenever I saw people in movies or in TV shows,

and going to all these exotic locations, I always knew that's what I wanted to do.

So Pailong felt very small at the time and it's only been through living a really chaotic 30 years of life that I think that'd actually be quite nice now to go and just not have anything to do.

I was an overweight gay emo, so I thrived in high school.

We're talking 2004, I was peak My Chemical Romance, leather cuffs, not really knowing who I was, what my feelings were deep down inside, could not really relate to any other boys in my school.

And it was a football school.