The man who posted himself to

Australia

In the mid-1960s, Australian athlete Reg Spiers found himself stuck 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.

Spiers had come to the UK to try to recover from an injury that had put a stop on his
athletics career. A brilliant javelin thrower, he wanted to compete at the Tokyo Olympics
in 1964.

But when it became clear he would not make the Olympics, Spiers decided to raise
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 in Australia, Spiers wanted to get back to Adelaide, but he
didn't have any money.

And with his daughter's birthday fast approaching, 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 was
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, 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
parts 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.
Although the cost of sending such a large and heavy cargo would have been more than a
passenger seat, Spiers knew he could send himself cash-on-delivery - and worry about
how to pay the fees once he arrived in Australia.

Packed into the box with some tinned food, a torch, a blanket and a pillow, plus two
plastic bottles - one for water, one for urine - Spiers was loaded on to an Air India plane
bound for Perth, Western Australia. Although Spiers wanted ultimately to get to Adelaide,
Perth was chosen because it was a smaller airport.

He endured a 24-hour delay at the airport in London due to fog, and let himself out of
the crate once the plane was in the air.
"I got out of the box between London and Paris, dying for a vee," says Spiers. "I peed in a
can and put it on top of the box. I was stretching my legs and suddenly, because it's a
short distance, the plane began to descend. A little panicky I jumped back in the box,
and the can full of pee was still on top."

The French baggage handlers in Paris thought the can's unsavoury contents had been
left for them as an unkind joke by their counterparts in London.

"They were saying some terrible things about the English," says Spiers. "But they didn't
even think of the box. So I kept on going."

The next stop on the long journey back to Australia was in Bombay, where baggage
handlers parked Spiers - upside down - in the hot sun on the boiling tarmac for four
hours.
"It was hot as hell in Bombay so I took off all my clothes," he says. "Wouldn't it have
been funny if I'd got found then?"

"They had the thing on its end. I was on the tarmac while they were changing me from
one plane to another. I'm strapped in but my feet are up in the air. I'm sweating like a
pig. Eventually they came and got me and put me on another plane."

When the plane finally landed in Perth, the cargo hold was opened and Spiers heard the
Australian baggage handlers swearing about the size of the crate he was in.

"The accents - Amazing. Wonderful. I made it.

"I was smiling from ear to ear.

"I knew they would take the box to a storage shed. When they put me in the shed I
got out straight away. There were cartons of beer in there. I don't drink but I
got a beer out and had a drink of that."

Spiers survived three days travelling in the wooden crate. But he still faced the
challenge of getting out of the airport.

"There were some tools in there so I just cut a hole in the wall and got out.

"There was no security. I put on a suit out of my bag so I looked cool, jumped through the
window, walked out on to the street and hitchhiked a car into town. Simple as that."

But back in England, John McSorley, who had built the crate and delivered Spiers to the
airport, was worried about his friend. Spiers hitchhiked his way back to his family in
Adelaide, but forgot to tell McSorley he had arrived home safely.

He tried to find out what happened to McSorley so he alerted the media, and Spiers
quickly became a sensation in his home country.

In the end the airline didn't make him pay the shipping fees. But Spiers was surprised
about the media interest of his adventure.

Spiers succeeded in making it back in time for his daughter's birthday but he still had a
job convincing his wife his story was true.

"She didn't believe me," he says. "But then she thought about it and thought 'He must
have done it, how else did he get here?"

Air experts say something like this would never be able to happen now. The hold is
usually pressurised and the temperature will usually be above freezing but all cargo
loaded on to planes is screened for security reasons and a hidden person would be
found.