What happened to the Birdman rally?

the red bull flug tag is similar but you can not keep your aircraft after the event which adds to the costs.

Actually, we did have the option of obtaining our craft after the even, however it required picking it up Monday morning in Sydney, and they didn’t guarantee it wouldn’t get damaged removing it from the water. Since I had to be at work in Canberra Monday morning, the creation that had spent the last few months being built in my back yard ended on the scrap heap.

madmal said :

hi guys i went in 7 canberra birdman rallies and yes it was a great event. it was not a victim of insurance or even local goverment but the main supporter capital tv was sold to southern cross tv and they no longer supported the event. for the record the distance for the major prize was 50m had been won twice by george rickie from bathurst. $20,000 the first time and a car the second time. in the year it was cancelled the distance was increased to 100m. the red bull flug tag is similar but you can not keep your aircraft after the event which adds to the costs. my aircrafts were slowly developed over the years. if the birdman rally was on again in canberra i would be the first entry. the flying bug hasn’t gone i now have a pilot licence and fly real airplanes

mad mal

Thanks Mad Mal – no prizes for guessing where you got your nickname. For nostalgic purposes, can you tell us when the first and last Bird Man rallies were held?

hi guys i went in 7 canberra birdman rallies and yes it was a great event. it was not a victim of insurance or even local goverment but the main supporter capital tv was sold to southern cross tv and they no longer supported the event. for the record the distance for the major prize was 50m had been won twice by george rickie from bathurst. $20,000 the first time and a car the second time. in the year it was cancelled the distance was increased to 100m. the red bull flug tag is similar but you can not keep your aircraft after the event which adds to the costs. my aircrafts were slowly developed over the years. if the birdman rally was on again in canberra i would be the first entry. the flying bug hasn’t gone i now have a pilot licence and fly real airplanes

mad mal

Mr Shab said:

Mr_Shab said :

I raced in the ACT scouting Billycart derby back in the late 80’s. Well, when I say “raced”, I mean “pointed shoddily constructed billycart down hill and hung on for dear life”.

Now look, if it’s not shoddily constructed, it’s not a billycart!

Shocking things, mine always had the 2 wheels on the front mounted to a straight bit of something, and steered with string. Just terrible. It was pretty-much mandatory to crash the things.

Today’s kids think that because they can press some buttons on a video game, they can “do” the thing in real life. Skiing and boarding being an example… I had umpteen kiddies turn up to lessons (boys, pretty much) declaring that they’d skiied/boarded before, and it soon turned out they’d only played the video game. They didn’t understand the difference. They soon did, however.

Right, that settles it. We need a billy-cart flugtag event, where scouts build billy-carts with wings that race down the hill at Regatta Point before launching out over the lake to see who can get closest to the James Cook fountain, with the winners going on a parade through the city.

I second this! (another) Huzzah!

we need some serious street festivals like they have (or had?) in melbourne with all sorts of stuff like this. and lost of drinking. liability issues in this country have rendered the place pretty boring..

Right, that settles it. We need a billy-cart flugtag event, where scouts build billy-carts with wings that race down the hill at Regatta Point before launching out over the lake to see who can get closest to the James Cook fountain, with the winners going on a parade through the city.

Huzzah!

I raced in the ACT scouting Billycart derby back in the late 80’s. Well, when I say “raced”, I mean “pointed shoddily constructed billycart down hill and hung on for dear life”.

I witnessed plenty lost of skin, but I think there was a greater willingness to accept that kind of thing as an inevitable part of being a boy. I’d say the current generation of cotton-wool wrapped kiddies and their chronically anxious parents wouldn’t really stand for it without it ending up in court when little Tarquin took a spill and broke an arm.

Sad, really.

Scouts also ran a billycart race on one of the roads in ADFA, but that went away as well.

Mt Taylor Road! That’s not the road that goes up to the summit is it? It’s hard enough to walk down that trac. You’d have to be one seriously brave kid to try that in a billy-cart.

The scouts used to run a billy-cart race on Mt Taylor road, anyone know if they still do?

they used to run a bird man rally at glenelg when i was a lad, it just seemed to go away after a few years. then again, I was more interested in the pubs at glenelg than anything else.

I remember going to both the Moombah bird-man thing in Melbourne as a kid and then the Canberra one down near Regatta Point. They were great fun – both the really serious guys who’d spent a great effort trying to make somthing that would actually fly and the blokes who wore little more than a beer carton and one of those hats with a propeller on top.

P1,

Brilliant idea. That would have to be the Pike’s Peak/Bathurst 1000 of all Billycart races.

140K’s in a billycart would be something Ginger Meggs would die for. It’s only the sudden stop that causes damage.

I was in the Redbull Flugtag in Sydney in April, which was exactly the same as the old Canberra Birdman event that they ran as a kid. It had something like 60,000+ people attend it, and was a blast. Our “aircraft” was designed to resemble a firetruck a job that it did with moderate success, while flying like a boxkite, a job it did with very limited success. But video of the “flight” and interviews meant that our community organisation gained free promotion.

In short I think that it is an event that could very easily run in Canberra, however with Redbull recently having started to run an identical event in Sydney, it might be to much competition for such an event to get off the ground. That said, I very much support the idea of fun family event. We need our own running of the bulls, perhaps a billycart race down Black Mt?

Fnaah, that was all part of the orginal Canberra festival…. Along with all the other events that have since been lost.

While we’re reminiscing, whatever happened to the Canberra Day parade? I remember walking in a few (as a scout and as crew for a local theatre production company).

Don’t people like parades anymore?

We need more festivals, like they have over seas. So we can appreciate and show respect to our culture, and I don’t mean bought in culture like the multicultural festive. I mean events where can get pissed and sh*t like that. Ya with me?

It didn’t last too long after some guy won it one year. Bit sad this and all the other events that made up the Canberra festival have long since gone. What do we have now? SFA.

miz said :

If you like the idea, there was still a cool rope swing at Pine Island last time I was there.

We had one of those at the last resort I worked at. It was a knotted rope at the top of a cliffy bit, and you used it to swing out and avoid a field of rocks that was wrecking the entrance to a nice powder field. Patrol didn’t interfere with it. The average punter wasn’t about to use it…

If you like the idea, there was still a cool rope swing at Pine Island last time I was there. Shhhhh! or the fun police will remove it (like they remove bike jumps, cubbies in the bush, etc etc.

I reckon they could bring it back, start it early-ish in the morning, all done by mid afternoon. I bet a radio station would love to run it. They still pull the crowds in teh US and are a heap of fun.

The birdman rally as part of Melbourne’s Moomba festival was a yearly event for me growing up as a kid…. I never even knew there was one here!

Manly in Sydney recently held a Birdman Rally.

I miss it too, these days my kids would think it was a hoot!

When I first moved to Canberra in the late 80’s it was in full swing. I think 1990 or 91 may have been the last year I remember going. That was in my young and crazy days when my friends and I were attracted to the beer swilling, boof headed blokes who used to hang out in crowds at the food and wine frolic, get paraletic and then fight each other. Getting older and wiser really is a beautiful thing.

Lets face it, it was out of control after a few hours and the Govt is as likely to bring it back in as Kevin Rudd is to forget about taxing ‘alcopops’.

Cancelling it may have been an early ACT Govt initiative to reduce binge drinking (oh wait, then they started Summernats….)

The ones they still hold in the US are great, very similar in attitude to our old one. There’s some geniuses who build things that actually will glide, and others who make elaborate things designed to glide exactly like a brick, and others who take delight in making utterly pissweak things that in no way resemble anything air-worthy, the whole idea of which is to disintigrate before they even hit the water.

They have similar things at ski resorts in spring, called pond skimming. There’s a giant pond prepared in teh snow, and people try to glide on their skis over it before sinking, usually in fancy dress. There’s also crazy sled races earlier in the season, Colorado used to have a beauty called the Cardboard Derby. Until they changed the location of it, the run was too steep and everyone just about killed themselves at the bottom. Here’s some pictures of the first year at Copper:
http://www.knick-knack.com/pics/kbco_cardboard_derby_2002.html

I think they invented the aeroplane! Seriously, sounds like fun, no wonder its not happening anymore. In the UK there are annual processions of “fun’ called carnivals, insurance costs stopped them dead for a few years after some drunken fool had a mis-hap. They are happening again, but not like they used to, again the fun element is gone from the community, probasbly not “cool” or something.

I think besides the public liability issue, the organisers thought it was a bit passe – as it went when there were a lot of changes being made to the festival (I think in the late 80’s/early 90’s?). it definitely was good for a laugh!

I think the Rally went before the alcoholic frolic went. The latter was a hoot, we’d turn up early while the grass was still dewey and snag a spot in the rhododendron beds, down from Regatta Point. Armed with deck chairs, the weekend papers, and gourmet picnic (and eskys). Then we’d conduct sorties out into the fray to get that chocolate thing from the braidwood restaurant, and whatever else looked good, and bring it back to Camp. The roving female police band was always good for a laugh, as was the extrovert antics of the crowd. Then, when we’d had enough, we’d head home before the silliness got nasty.

I’d love to see it. What’s the deal with Red Bull Flugtag vs the Birdman stuff?

I think it disappeared, along with the ‘Alcoholic Frolic’, when it became the Multicultural Festival – obviously not cultured enough.

I don’t think the Birdman Rally was unique to Canberra, was it?

They’re always good for a bit of a laugh though.

I think it was insurance, liability, etc etc. Oddly enough, they still hold these events in the US, almost exactly the same as our one.