Man who posted himself to Australia
In the mid-1960s, Australian athlete Reg Spiers found himself stranded in London with no money to buy a plane ticket home. Desperate to get back to Australia in time for his daughter's birthday, he decided to post himself in a wooden crate, reports BBC News.
"I just got in the thing and went. What was there to be frightened of? I'm not frightened of the dark so I just sat there.
"It's like when I travel now if I go overseas. There's the seat. Sit in it, and go."
Reg Spiers makes it sound very straightforward more than half a century later, but it caused a media storm in Australia at the time.
He explains his attitude like this: "I've come up with this mad scheme to get back to Australia in a box. Who can say it won't work? Let's give it a shot."
Spiers had come to the UK to try to recover from an injury that had interrupted his athletics career. A promising javelin thrower, he had been on course to compete at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.
But when it became clear he would not make the games, Spiers set his mind to raising enough money to fly back to Australia, and took an airport job to earn some cash.
But his plans changed when his wallet, containing all his savings, was stolen. With a wife and daughter back home, Spiers wanted to get back to Adelaide, but "there was one catch," he explains. "I didn't have any money."
And with his daughter's birthday looming, he was in a hurry.
"I worked in the export cargo section, so I knew about cash-on-delivery with freight. I'd seen animals come through all the time and I thought, 'If they can do it I can do it.'"
Spiers also knew the maximum size of crate that could be sent by air freight. He had been staying with a friend, John McSorley, in London, and persuaded him to build a box in which he could send himself home.
"He told me it had to be 5ft x 3ft x 2.5ft, (1.5m x 0.9m x 0.75m)," says McSorley. "I knew Reg and I thought, 'He's going to do it regardless, so if he's going to do it I'd better make him a box that at least is going to get him there.'"
Built to Spiers's specifications, the crate allowed him to sit up straight-legged, or lie on his back with his knees bent. The two ends of the crate were held in place by wooden spigots operated from the inside, so Spiers could let himself out of either end. It was fitted with straps to hold him in place as the crate was loaded and unloaded.
To avoid any suspicion that a person was inside, the crate was labelled as a load of paint and addressed to a fictitious Australian shoe company.
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