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The Datsun 2000 was an awesome car, especially back in ‘69 when there were still not many powerful cars on the road. It had a top speed of 120 miles per hour and could burn off all of its contemporary rivals, such as MGs, Triumphs and Alfas. Adam asked his dad if he could throw the optional hardtop into the deal. His dad agreed but insisted that the old ‘63 Premier had to go as a deposit.
January and February, 1969, passed slowly. Adam lost contact with his high school mates because his parents bought a big new house on the other side of Sydney. He didn’t return back north because the 2000 was just too impractical for a long surfing trip, and the Holden was gone, replaced by a totally unsuitable, metallic-green, convertible, 1966
Cadillac Coupe DeVille that his dad absolutely fell in love with.
Adam surfed the northern beaches of Sydney but they were a poor substitute for what he had experienced only two months before. He went on long drives around Sydney with the top down and the music blaring. It was a time between two stages in his life and as is common in transitional periods like that, it felt like passing through a vacuum.
On one of those drives, he discovered a true driver’s road. One day, as he drove south headed for the spectacular coast south of Sydney, he decided to take the left turn into the Royal National Park. It was early morning and there was no traffic. The road, winding through the Park for about twenty miles, was highlighted with uncountable bends, hairpins, bridges, a causeway and many short straights. The road focussed his attention and caused his heart rate to rise. At the end of it he came blasting out of the rainforest and was suddenly confronted with the expansive panorama of the whole Illawarra Coast. From there, the road skirted the edge of the tall, coastal cliffs. Adam drove for another mile, or so, until he came to a lookout on the point of an open hill. The view from the hill was absolutely breathtaking. Big ocean on the left, big escarpment stretching south over the horizon on the right, and big sky above. He parked the 2000 in the small car park at the lookout. As he stepped out of his car, completely overawed by the spectacular view, he spotted a small sign that read, Bald Hill – Elevation, 600 Feet ASL. As he sat on the grass on the point of the hill, soaking up the sweeping panorama, he noticed a large sea eagle soaring majestically in the light south-easterly breeze.
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2
Adam’s high school pass managed to scrape him into the Sydney University Dental School. One of his preferred pastimes at ‘uni’ was sitting for hours with his friends at their favourite sunny table at The Courtyard Café. The jumpers and jackets came off and many coffees were drunk over talk of lectures, current events and the hot gossip going around at the time.
Out of that whole first winter at uni, one conversation stood out in Adam’s memory.
He didn’t know why he should have remembered the things one in his group said. The student’s name was Lloyd. He was studying genetics and was as sharp as a tack. His studies got him thinking about the atom bomb.
‘You remember Hiroshima? I don’t know if they had any clues, but Hiroshima initiated the greatest genetic experiment in the history of this planet.’
Lloyd was one of those people who were miraculously endowed with seemingly superhuman intelligence. His time at uni was effortless. He passed all his exams with high distinctions, but no one ever saw him study. He was tall, wiry and somewhat scruffy. His hair was long, past his shoulders, and he had a preference for old, fraying jeans, American T-shirts and jumpers with holes in them. His only items of clothing that shone with polished newness were his Miller cowboy boots, the special ones with the snakeskin inlays. Lloyd’s family were old money, hailing all the way back, his father reckoned, ‘to the bloody crusades’. Amongst other things, they owned a sprawling cotton farm out near Warren in western New South Wales. During his holidays, Lloyd took off to the farm, ‘to help out with its management’, he reckoned. But the farm hands had their own ideas about the real reason behind Lloyd’s apparent zeal for farming. They reckoned that he was only there for the ‘grouse Warren sheilas’.
‘The theory goes like this,’ Lloyd continued. ‘Every time an atomic bomb is dropped on a species, the same phenomenon occurs. The effect of that phenomenon may result in a profound genetic watershed. This may ultimately prove to be extremely beneficial for the future survival of that species as it may trigger a quantum leap in its evolution.’
Some around the table just paused and looked at Lloyd with a kind of questioning stare, while others laughed and shook their heads.
‘Now hear me out,’ he persisted. ‘Think about it logically.’
Everyone silenced.
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‘The bomb drops. Ground zero is death. Then, as you move out from ground zero, in bands, different, lesser things happen, until you get to the magic band where no one dies, but where everyone is affected by the radiation, not so much as to suffer burns, but enough to cause a tsunami of genetic mutations many thousands of times more numerous than would ever occur naturally. Most of these mutations manifest themselves in the next generation. Some take two or even three generations to appear. Each mutation is a biological experiment. A new organism is created, accidentally, by chance, and is then put to the test of survival in the surrounding environment, which includes survival against competition from other living organisms.’
Jaws were beginning to hang limp. Lloyd, however, was on a roll.
‘And this is what happens. Out of all those mutations, only two things can happen.
The mutated organisms will either be better survivors, or they will be worse survivors.
Those are the only two possibilities for a new genetic mutation. So, what happens? Most will be severely distorted and disfigured and will be totally unsuitable for survival or reproduction. They will all die off. In fact, all unfavourable mutations will ultimately die out, even if it takes a few generations. Out of the millions and millions of mutations, there might only be one, or maybe two, with the magic genetic code to create the super survivor, the dominant being. Amongst us humans, this dominant being will hyper-thrive and will successfully breed the next generation of dominants like him. So, you see, it starts with a bomb and ends with a tribe of supermen, and women, having superkids.’
The group of friends, sitting around the table in the sunny courtyard, were open-mouthed stunned. But this kind of theory was what they were there for, and as usual, Lloyd delivered in spades. It didn’t matter if the theory made sense or not, or whether it followed provable logic, what mattered to the group was that a theory was thrown up in the air and given life. Then, like one of Lloyd’s mutations, the theory had to pass the test of survival. More coffees were ordered as the circle of students contemplated the powerful idea that Lloyd had just postulated. Then one of them, the ravishing Eva, asked the next logical question.
‘Tell me, Lloydie, what kind of mutations did you have in mind, you know, to dominate the rest of humanity?’
‘Eva, my fantasy, I see you in the day while my eyes are open and I ask myself, self, if you were given a choice to gaze upon the sun or to gaze upon the face of the beautiful Eva for the rest of your life, which would you choose? And I say to myself, self, what is the
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sun in the presence of the radiance of the beautiful Eva? Give me Eva and extinguish the sun. I have no need of its dim, flickering light. Ahhhh, Eva, I see her in the darkness of my night, and it is Eva that is the light of my dreams, the light of my hopes and the light in my heart.’
Everybody laughed while Eva blushed. There were at least a hundred boys at the uni who dreamt about Eva, but none of them could steal her heart like Lloyd could. He continued,
‘There is one, main, obvious quality of a man which may lead to his ultimate dominance over other men, and that is superior intelligence. However, I now believe that there may be another even more powerful quality a man may possess, which would make him completely untouchable. That quality is telepathy. It is the ability to read thoughts and emotions. It is the ability to see right through people and know their true feelings and intentions. It is the ability to communicate with another telepathic person through thought alone. Perhaps it may not even be thought as we understand it. It may be something else. How could anyone fight that? It would be impossible. And who knows, this dominant super human might just be the one who brings about the downfall of the nation that was responsible for creating him in the first place.’
3
One of Adam’s favourite places at uni was the Fisher Library music room. Adam liked to book an album there and listen to it through the quality headphones they provided. Scattered amongst the listening chairs were a few low-set coffee tables on top of which usually lay a selection of magazines. Adam picked up a Popular Science magazine and began to browse through it.
In the midst of the haunting, desert sounds of America’s, Horse With No Name, Adam’s eyes fixated themselves on a picture of a man suspended about twenty feet in the air, hanging from a delta-shaped, wing structure that looked like a double sail and was called a hang glider. The man in the picture appeared to be gliding down a grassy slope of a small hill. He hung in a simple harness with his legs dangling free. It appeared to Adam, and this is what immediately caught his attention, that the man flying in the picture must have foot launched that glider and that he would have had to have landed it on his feet as well. ‘That’s how the birds do it,’ he thought. There was no undercarriage, or wheels, for landing, that Adam could see. He read the article titled, Flying low and slow. The article described the principles behind the construction of this simple, lightweight, new aircraft.
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It went into some of the history of the design, mentioning a Francis Rogallo who, working for the US government, designed it as a potential re-entry vehicle for the NASA space program. NASA actually rejected the design, however a young Australian, named John Dickerson, in 1963, first fashioned an airframe that incorporated a triangular control frame and utilised wire bracing to distribute the load to the Rogallo airfoil.
Once Dickerson’s version of Rogallo’s airfoil design became understood, the human natural instinct took over and young minds re-focussed, even more intently, on that magnificent ancient dream of flight like a bird.
Adam xeroxed the article and took it home with him. Events that unfolded in his life in the next few years gradually revealed what a profound and life changing effect that short, obscure article ultimately had on him.
4
During those early years at university, Adam belonged to the Sydney University Boardriders Club. The president of the club was a cheerful, energetic, geology student, named Ken. They made Adam vice president because no one else wanted the job, but as it turned out, the position was totally superfluous and involved no work whatsoever. It suited Adam right down to the ground. The club had meetings and social get-togethers and occasionally attempted to run a contest. Everyone was pretty laid back about everything and nothing much ever got done, but the feeling was good and they liked it when they all got together.
Within a year, Ken stumbled into a brand-new sport and, as destiny would have it, brought Adam along, trailing in his wake for the ride of his life.
…….
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