72 Australian GeographicTo my father, these mishaps
meant little. His optimism
was, it seemed, irrepressible.
“It was really fi rst principles,” Terry Golding says. “There
were no do-it-yourself manuals or texts to follow at all. There
was a piece of paper and a Biro.”
By all accounts, Dad drove the research. “It was absolutely
[his] show,” Terry says. “Without him, this thing wouldn’t have
got of fi rst base. It was his idea, his initiative, his enthusiasm,
his research. It was his baby. And the remaining members of the
Aerostat Society, including myself, were just there for the ride.”T
HE SIGNIFICANCE OF this fi rst fl ight of Archimedes in
July 1964 still surprises me. Newspapers ran it on front
pages and it was covered on television. Buoyed by this,
within 12 months the society had embarked on a bigger project:
building the largest balloon in the world. Reaching 75ft (23m) in
height and 60ft in diameter, it would hold six times the volume
of Archimedes. The goal was to fl y it across Australia.
But the equipment they needed was expensive and much
of their energy was spent chasing sponsorship. “It was always a
hard sell, trying to get support,” Stan says. “There was little to
of er in terms of publicity.”
Yet receive they did. Ropes. Propane gas. Toyota sponsored
them with a truck. Sydney’s now-defunct Daily Mirror newspaper
contributed $1000. Australian sewing machine supplier Capron
Carter donated an industrial sewing machine and arranged
a seamstress to sew together the balloon. An electric blanketcompany made two blanket suits to protect the balloonists from
the cold at altitude. And then there was the sponsorship from
Teijin. “That was big,” Stan says. “Big. Big. Big.” Dad had become
convinced that, for a larger balloon, a fabric that resisted rips was
needed. His research led him to Teijin, a Japanese company that
produced Terylene, known today as Dacron. Dad sent a request
to Teijin, asking for a donation of tens of thousands of dollars’
worth of Terylene. In gratitude for the gift of the fabric, the
Aerostats named the world’s biggest balloon after the company.
By October 1965, Teijin was ready. They decided to test
it with a tethered fl ight at St John’s Oval in the grounds of
The University of Sydney. The infl ation progressed smoothly,
but Teijin was so big that Terry Golding was genuinely wor-
ried it might lift the truck to which it was secured. Dad and
Peter McGee ascended fi rst, followed by Terry. On the descent,
with Teijin still fl oating 5m in the air, a bystander pulled on one
of the ropes. (The rope led to an innovation they were trialling:Windows to the past.
Photographer Michael
Small, who fl ew with
Terry McCormack on the
day of his accident, goes
through old slides from his
ballooning days at his Blue
Mountains studio.JAMES MCCORMACK