"... His popularity culminated with his starring role in the 1991 Coca-Cola Skysurfer television commercial that screened in over 160 countries across the globe ..."

Ray Palmer - A Life In the Sky

Ray began skydiving at 20 years of age. His girlfriend was given a skydive as a gift and Ray accompanied her to the Meredith Skydiving Centre. When they arrived the instructors thought it was Ray that was going to skydive, so Ray and his girlfriend both did the training for their first static line jump.

Ray’s “I’ll give anything a go once” attitude saw him trained, geared up and going for his first skydive. As he exited the aircraft and entered freefall he felt an inexplicable completeness within himself that he had never before experienced. His first skydiving experience had him addicted to this relatively new sport.

After completing his initial static line training, Ray just could not get enough of skydiving. At every possible opportunity he was at one drop zone or another. After combining his work as a fitter and turner with his skydiving passion for eight years, and becoming an Australian National Skydiving Champion, he decided it was time to resign from the workforce and pursue full time skydiving.

Tandem skydiving was introduced to Australia in late 1985. Ray was one of the pioneers of this new movement within the industry. Before introducing the wider population to tandem skydiving, Ray was a member of many Australian National Champion 4-Way Relative teams. To this day he has represented Australia in skydiving at 6 World Championships and 1 World Cup.

Over the next 8 years Ray was one of the most internationally recognised skydivers the world had ever seen. His popularity culminated with his starring role in the 1991 “Coca-Cola Skysurfer” television commercial that screened in over 160 countries across the globe, making it the widest screening advertisement of that time. Skysurfing was a new discipline that only 4 people in the World had managed to master, with the other three naming Ray as a “complete natural”.

1991 was a huge year for Ray. This was also the year he opened the first Tandem Skydiving Centre on the Gold Coast, called “Tandem Skydive”. Ray showed people the sights of the Gold Coast as they jumped out of a Cessna 182 from 10,000 feet.

Just three short years later Ray realised one of his long lived dreams and started the Byron Bay Skydiving Centre (now known as "Skydive Byron Bay"). The centre is a training based facility that teaches people to skydive using the Accelerated Free Fall method, whilst working in conjunction to develop one of Australia’s largest tandem skydiving operations.

Ray’s passion in skydiving continues to be the training of skydivers. He loves to share the knowledge he has gained over the last 26 years. Any number of his students could show you their videos and you could see how Ray’s fun and alternative teaching methods have helped them to become the successful sports or professional skydivers they are today. You will find many of Ray’s former students dotted all over the World, working at commercial drop zones or skydiving their way around the World.

When asked how skydiving made him feel, Ray responded:

“The moment I jump out of a plane is when I feel the best. You leave everything behind, it’s free, nothing in the head. It’s like you’re dreaming, you’re flying. You are the pilot, you’re the machine, it’s the extensions of your body that are steering you, that are flying. It gives you great insight, and when you land you slap hands, you hug, you KNOW. To skydive is to rebirth yourself, to really come alive. The deepest massage you can get. If every kid at school did a jump, the world would be a better place.”

Ray has had many highlights throughout his career, multiple Australian National Champion, representing Australia at World Championships, the Coca-Cola Skysurfer ad, which took 400 jumps for 30 seconds of footage and skysurfing a cricket bat into the MCG for the Cricket World Cup. In Ray’s most recent achievement has been awarded the Australian Sports Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Skydiving by the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard.

The beautiful skies over Byron Bay are frequented by Ray Palmer as he continues in his skydiving legacy. If you are ever in Byron Bay stop in to Skydive Byron Bay and meet Australia’s lovable larrikin of skydiving, and why not take the plunge yourself and see why Ray started a lifetime of aerial adventure that still continues to this day.

Article: Tanya Hughes