Skate and Die

Names have been changed to protect the insane.

Beacon Hill, in the Northern Beaches of Sydney NSW, was named because it is a hill with a beacon on it - to stop ships running into Australia.

It rises about 500 feet above sea-level and the Governor Philip Lookout is high enough for the skateboarder-about-town to see the curvature of the earth before he sets off down one of the lethally steep inclines that pass for suburban streets in the area.

Elliot Street, Beacon Hill remains the place of legendary stacks and heroic deeds, particularly those ill-conceived efforts of the kamikaze-like Terry Aims.

To look at Elliot Street, side-on, is to look at a tar incarnation of the letter U. Letting your car roll down the hill left one with the impression of having “pulled some Gs” as you bottomed out and made it up the other side of this accidental big dipper. But letting a car roll down it was something that happened to you later in life. For the most, you were skating or riding home from the top of Beacon Hill; and there was aesthetic joy in doing it with as little movement as possible.

Ryan Pl entered perpendicularly from the bottom of the U, and that was where we all lived. We were always in the process of perfecting, either on bike or board, the terrifying right-hander you would have to take as your transport neared Mach 1. The payoff was not having to pedal or put your feet on the ground again until you got to the front of your house; a kilometre away. 

If you got it right. If you got it wrong, they were fishing you out of the cactus plants the old bat on the corner had planted in what can only be described as a fit of pique.

But all that was to assume that you had taken E Street from the top. That didn't happen instantly. That was uncharted territory for a long time. That took a pioneer.

Terry was one of those kids you're always surprised to hear made it to adulthood. The call would go out to the various kids playing in the bush and lantana throughout the neighbourhood that Terry was going to attempt one of his stunningly dangerous, highly entertaining and badly thought out stunts, and we would flock to the spectacle.

On one occasion Terry built a bonfire. It was the early 80s, so no mobile phones. Maybe it was that semi-psychic link that kids have to each other in times of disaster causing mischief. Whatever it was, by the time Terry had finished throwing all the accelerants, nuts, bolts, wood and other projectiles onto the pyramid he was going to light, there was a crowd of about 20.

The mound of flammables included every bit of building off-cuts from the private building project going on up the street; most of the things he found on a council clean-up he suspected would ‘go up’; and all the dry wood he could find in a bushy area. 

Some of us who knew Terry better than the others were standing well back, at a nice elevation, to really appreciate the full effect.

With the crowd either cheering him on or hunkering down into the traditional ready-to-scarper position, Terry threw a match onto a pyre taller than him.

My memory of the event is that my eyes failed to adjust for the sudden increase in the amount of available light and that there was complete silence for a couple of seconds followed by a rush of wind, then car alarms started to go off and the pattering of falling objects all around let us know that something truly tremendous had just occurred.

What was left of the fuel that had been in the pyramid was burning well, and Terry was standing within the blackened shockwave crater of the initial blast, with a couple of obvious injuries.

His hair had gone, neatly to the halfway line on the top of his head. His left eyebrow was gone, burnt off, but his right was hanging off his head where some chunk of debris, leaving the pyre at orbital velocity, had bounced off his eyebrow ridge before continuing on to Mars. It was a neat cut and the brow and skin were hanging by the outside two millimetres. It looked like a caterpillar biting his face.

Terry’s long-suffering Dad came screaming out of the house, yelling like a man who knows when he’s heard another damage bill wink into existence.

“What the bloody hell was that and what the bloody hell is going on here you bloody little…”

His Dad decelerates and brakes in front of Terry and peers at the caterpillar...

“And what the bloody hell is that?!” he yells.

Knowing how dangerous anything alive and attached to your face is (in Sydney pre-funnel web antivenene) he acted quickly, reaching out and ripping Terry’s lone eyebrow off and throwing it into the bonfire.

It was the best thing we had ever seen.

Months later, the word went out that Terry was going to do Elliot St from the top. We all gathered around the various parts of the hill we thought best. Some stood where they thought they would be able to appreciate the whole thing, others where they felt they were safest. 

It was inspired to even use a Californian Arrow skateboard for the attempt. They were the best there was at the time and that means they were crap. Thin, narrow, unstable and highly flexible, the danger of the mode of transport was only beaten by the chosen garb. Being the consummate showman, Terry's Elliot St attempt would be done in nothing but Speedos.

When he got out of hospital, he immediately got back on the board that had bucked him and did it from the top with no hiccups. Like one of those world record barriers, or apparently the Times Cryptic Crossword, once one person has done it, everyone’s doing it by lunch.

Yes, I have done Elliot Street from the top, on countless occasions, on various wheeled devices and always wearing quite a bit more than budgie-smugglers, but I wasn't the first. That's where the immortals are remembered.