Tags
aircraft, Australia, Australian athlete Reg Spiers, BBC News, custom made crate, danger, drug smuggling, drugs, money, nude man in aircraft, Olympic athlete
I’ve decided to kick off with this wierd story found today on the BBC News website – entitled:
“The man who posted himself to Australia…”
This is a weird story you are unlikley to hear of happening today due to the necessary security checks done these days by most airlines – well we blooming well hope so – to prevent terrorism and of course to a lesser extent (but maybe not by much ;oD) smuggling… Much cargo will be x-rayed no doubt but back when this happened this unusual passenger didn’t have to worry…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31700049
If you read the article, this unusual man, Australian athlete Reg Spiers, claimed his wallet was stolen with all his savings in it, and so he had to find a way to fly anyway where he needed to go, which was home to his wife and daughter in Australia …. His daughters’ birthday was coming up very soon.
Spiers had some healp building a kind of clever crate to fly in, and some work at an airport seems to have helped him know some of what he needed to know to do this weird and wacky thing, which was rather risky – as the story reveals…
Have a read and see what you think…? Was it really as wacky, funny and kind of risky but clever and cheeky in the circumstances…?
The little set of facts at the bottom of the article suggests maybe not – Spiers got arrested and put in prison for 5 years – having been charged with conspiracy to import cocaine in Australia – also having narrowly avoided being put to death in Sri Lanka in relation to drug smuggling there…
The story is well worth a read, but you have to ask what was his original motive…? Bit of a trial run maybe? He seemed all to ready to nick stuff along the way – his can of somebody else’s cargo hold drink – and to cut his way out of the cargo part of the airport to get home avoiding passport control… ;oD Not exactly a repsectable Olympic Athlete really by the sound of it!
Thinking of the risks he took, while clearly dangerous – it’s not quite like the unwise people who very saddly smuggle themselves into the undercarriage areas of jet airliners and freeze to death and then fall out into some unsuspecting street like and ice bomb and give the locals a bit of a shock hopefully no more than that – and maybe the local police a sad mystery to solve… presuming the said soul didn’t survive – who knows maybe the odd one does in some shallow warm muddy big puddle somehwere ….maybe like the Florida Everglades…? http://www.nps.gov/ever/index.htm …. Still there might be a few other toothed hazzards to avoid there too …. :oO Any such survivor stories do let me know – and I will post them here, no problemo (obvious fibbers will be excluded or possibly exposed ;o) )…