A Tale of Two Stories

My task was simple enough: find a true story and tell it. The hard part was choosing just one. I rifled through a mental rolodex of the adventurous and bizarre. There was my housemate who had a psychotic break and became convinced he was my cat; my friend who spent an evening tied to a panther in the South American jungle; the infamous Amsterdam trip; the skull I found in Aokigohara forest… an endless procession of possibilities.
  

Then I had an idea: what if instead of writing the story I filmed it? I’d gain experience with something new and be limited to a story I could capture on camera. Happily oblivious to the nightmare I was about to inflict on myself, I settled on the following tale.

Budh’s Story

In 1996, Budh and his dad were constructing a paintball field in bushland north of Gympie. Broke at the time, they were living in tents and surviving on baked beans and bananas. One foggy winter morning they awoke to gunshots and screaming from the only neighbouring house. Acting on instinct, Budh went to help, unwittingly embroiling himself in the strange saga of Bill Fox. 

Fox had been on the run since 1992 after shooting his ex-wife’s friend in the face while she was holding her baby. He evaded the cops using decoys, booby traps, an underground bunker and a series of bush hideouts. The chase continued until early 1996 when he was caught but released on bail. When his ex-wife rescinded the bail money, he went after her, armed with a shotgun and intent on revenge. Budh witnessed the shooting spree that ensued and got the survivors safely to hospital.

What Went Wrong

This story is intense and Budh is usually an incredible storyteller... but he’s terrified of the camera. I tried getting him used to it and even tried hiding it but nothing worked. He wouldn't look up, stumbled over words and played down the whole situation. It was nothing like the story he captivates people with over drinks.

While our setting fit the story, we were besieged by mosquitoes and had bushwalkers strolling thoughtlessly through our shot. There’s a limit to how many times you can ask someone to repeat a story, especially when they’re already uncomfortable; so, feeling I had failed as an interviewer, I packed it in.

After some self-pitying indulgence, I regrouped and targeted my second victim.

Dylan’s Story

Dylan kidnapped a man for the promise of $20,000. The catch was, the man paying the money was the one who wanted to be kidnapped. It was clear the guy was a bit nuts and Dylan suspected he might be planning to pull a shot gun on them (self-defence against kidnappers - the perfect excuse for murder). Deciding $20,000 and a crazy experience were well worth the risk, Dylan accepted the challenge and organised the crime with his girlfriend and three mates.

What went wrong

First my video camera ran out of battery. We ransacked the house but couldn’t find the charger. Dylan was already sketchy about having to go from the start again so I went with the only other option I had – my web cam. I knew the footage would be average but hoped the story would shine through and overcome it.

While Dylan was more comfortable on camera than Budh, he still wasn’t quite himself. In hindsight, I wish I’d had the camera to the side filming us in a conversational situation. This would’ve made Dyl more comfortable, allowing the story to flow more naturally.

Little did I know my biggest conundrum was yet to come. When I stopped filming, Dylan said: 

“Want to hear what really happened? No camera though, and you can’t tell anyone.” 

After what he told me off the record, the story I taped seemed altogether pointless. Tarantino would’ve been drooling. Dyl had never told anyone before and was so disturbed he swore he’d never speak of it again. He swore me to the same secrecy. So I got the story, I just can’t ethically share it. 

What To Do?

So there I was, a storyteller with two undertold stories, like a waiter with two chewy steaks. Do I present either? Neither? Then I had an epiphany – why not present both? Each story gets told, each failed attempt becomes a story in itself and you, friend, get to learn from my mistakes.

The Longest Infographic Ever

I really love the BBC. I have to admit though, it's mostly for their Science and Environment section. I love knowing, for example, that plants warn each other when under attack, that bees have been used to end the conflict between Elephants and African farmers and that flies behave the same way as humans do when they're drunk. I value knowing about that sort of stuff as much as I value knowing about current events, which is why I have it as my news feed over to your right there

Browsing through today, I found probably the longest infographic ever. The excessive length is because it is a to-scale representation of the space race which goes right to the outer reaches of our galaxy. It even gives you an estimation of how long you'd have to scroll to get to the edge of the known universe. What I really loved about it though was that it reminded me of an old favourite story and led me to discover something new and equally cool.

The old story had been lost and floating somewhere in my hippocampus but came fluttering back out when I saw the highest ever sky dive marked on the infographic. The guy who did it, Joe Kittinger, travelled up in a gondola attached to a high altitude balloon. The trip up took something like 7 hours and he reached 31 km above the surface of the Earth before jumping. Now Joe had been skydiving plenty of times and was used to feeling that massive rush of wind after jumping. But when he leapt from the gondola he felt nothing. It was like he was floating, suspended in the atmosphere. This was back in 1960 and it was an exploratory mission to see how far out into space a human being could go. Joe's head pounded with the realisation he had gone too far and wouldn't be able to get back down. He turned back towards the gondola but struggled to find it. Then, looking up, he saw it rapidly shooting away from him. Only then did he realise he was actually descending. His free fall lasted 4 minutes and 36 seconds and it wasn't until within the last minute that he felt the familiar upwards rushing wind. I'll let Joe fill you in on the rest himself:

Right next to Joe on the infographic I saw "lego-naut" marked out as having reached 24 km. Curiosity piqued, I flicked over to Google and found the following Youtube video: 

How cool is that? The students who uploaded it were all over the news and, since then, other people have been sending all sorts of random stuff up. 

The first person I told about it was completely unimpressed, couldn't see the point of it and then shot the whole thing down saying, "it didn't really get to space anyway". To me though, the point is that we have access to all this cool stuff. And those kids might not have been pioneers in the space race but they were pioneers for ordinary people to do extraordinary things.