Of all the bad ideas, this is perhaps one of the most memorable: Reg Spiers, a javelin thrower who dreamed of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, in the 1960s found himself in London without a penny in his pocket but absolutely wanted to return to Australia, to his home, for his daughter’s birthday. But how could he get a flight if the tickets cost so much? Simple, by crouching inside a wooden crate and being stowed away in the hold.
Who was Reg Spiers, former javelin athlete
Reg Spiers was a rising star in Australian athletics in the mid-1960s: his specialty was javelin throwing. Unfortunately, however, an injury had interrupted his career, prompting him to go to the United Kingdom to try to recover.
Unfortunately, however, the treatment was not sufficient and, once he realized that he would never be able to take part in the subsequent Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964, he decided to return to his homeland. The problem was that he didn’t have enough money to afford the return flight.
He decided to work for a while at the airport, but as soon as he had saved enough money… his wallet was stolen! At this point he was once again penniless, but he certainly had no intention of waiting any longer – especially since his daughter would soon be having her birthday.
At that point an intuition, as he himself told the press a few years later:
I worked in the export cargo department, so I knew about cash on delivery for shipments. I saw animals passing by all the time and thought, ‘If they can do it, I can do it too.’
The idea in the wooden box to go home
Spiers, working in the sector, knew that the maximum size of the box had to be 1.5 x 0.9 x 0.75 metres: to manufacture it he enlisted the help of a friend, John McSorley, who was hosting him at his home in London at that time.
Once finished, Spiers realized that these wooden walls barely allowed him to sit with his legs outstretched or lie on his back with his knees bent… in short, not exactly the greatest comfort! To avoid being roughed up during transport, the two also thought of installing straps inside, so as to allow Spiers to tie himself up in case of need.
Once you reached your destination, to go out it would have been sufficient to lift one of the two ends of the box – specially designed to be opened from the inside. Finally, so as not to arouse suspicion during the flight, the crate was labeled “paint-loaded” and addressed to a fictitious Australian shoe company. Of course, shipping a crate of this type normally costs more than a passenger seat, but at least choosing cash on delivery would have allowed him to get to Australia… he would then have figured out how to get out of the crate without being seen once he arrived there. He was ready to go.
The flight in the hold
On October 17, 1964, a courier came to collect the box. Inside Reg had brought a torch, food, a box, a pillow, a blanket and two plastic bottles, one empty for urinating and one full with water. The package was loaded onto an Air India plane bound for Perth but with various stopovers in between. Overall the journey should have lasted around 36 hours but things, as we will now see, did not go as planned.
The first inconvenience was a huge 24-hour delay at London airport due to fog: all this time he was forced to remain locked inside his hideout, only coming out to stretch after the plane took off for Paris. Once the package arrived here it was sent to Bombai, India. Here the second major inconvenience occurred: the workers left the crate (upside down) in the sun for about four hours. Inside, Spiers stripped completely, coming close to his maximum endurance limit.
Finally, after all this time, he took the last flight to Perth, Australia, touching down after a total of 63 hours of travel.
The arrival home
Once he arrived at Perth airport his journey wasn’t over yet: he had to find a way to get out of the cargo depot without being seen. Lady Luck, however, continued to assist him, and after finding some tools she managed to make a hole in the fence of the structure, finally managing to get out. After all, those were different times and the safety and load inspection systems were much softer than they are now.
Once free, Reg hitchhiked home, managing to reach the family in time for his daughter’s birthday – and above all without having spent a penny on the flight!
But if the story actually went like this, how do we know it? Well, the fault lies with Reg himself, who after reaching his home forgot to inform his friend John McSorley. He, rightly, thought the worst after days of silence and finally decided to inform the media to try to understand what happened to his friend.
This caused a media uproar and his story ended up in all the local newspapers, however transforming that reckless gesture into an almost heroic undertaking.
