Philippe Petit Sydney Harbour
Bridge 1973
“These two towers give me an
idea. Not to you?” read the note from Philippe Petit, in Jan 1974. On
the flip side of the post card was a photo of the New York World Trade Centre -
a blue line drawn between the twin towers. 8 months later Philippe made
his historic walk.
The year beforehand, in 1973, on
a crisp winter’s morning, Philippe had walked on a wire strung between the
northern pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge - a serendipitous adventure I was
intimately involved with and one that had its conception in Nimbin during the
Aquarius Festival.
It began with a rumour. I had
just arrived in Nimbin with my good friend Phillip Broughton in the 1949 Mark V
Jaguar I had bought recently for $300. A gas guzzler, yes, but , wow, what a
beautiful car - with running boards, a sliding sun roof, leather upholstery and
polished teak dashboard.
Philippe, juggling and walking
his slack rope at the festival (whose genius idea was it to invite him?),
wanted, so the rumour went, to perform a high wire walk in Sydney similar to
the one he had done a year or so previously at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. I
sought Philippe out, chatted with him, asked if the rumour was true. He laughed,
told me that it was something he dreamt of but that it would not be possible in
the short time he had left in Australia. To organize such a walk, he said,
would take many weeks, a lot of people and a lot of money. “I think it is
not possible,” said Philippe with a wistful smile and a shrug of his
shoulders. The upward inflection in his voice at the end of ‘possible’ and the
glint in his eye suggested that this was a question, not a statement. A
challenge, perhaps? We agreed to meet up when we both got back to Sydney and
talk about it.
Experience has taught me, over
the years, of the malleability of memory. I take with a grain of salt the
veracity of even my most vivid and treasured memories, some of which, decades
after the event, have proved to be wrong in certain (and sometimes
important) details. Others remember shared experiences differently and, upon
hearing their version I realize that my recollections may be flawed; that I may
have unwittingly, unconsciously, selectively edited my memories. Perhaps we all
do this, editing out unpleasant memories if we are optimists at heart, editing
out the pleasant ones if we are pessimists. Philippe definitely fell into the
optimist camp. So did I. A marriage made in heaven, perhaps!
Bearing the malleability of
memory in mind, here is my recollection of the extraordinary adrenalin-fueled
and sleep deprived week I shared with Philippe and others as we sought to pull
off what seemed to be an impossible feat - breaking into the Harbour Bridge
pylons, acquiring and then smuggling more than a ton of equipment into them,
hiding it from the Bridge painters and workers who used the pylons as their
base, finding a way to stretch a heavy wire between them - all in less than a
week and with no budget. The impossibility of pulling it off was one of the
adventure’s attractions, though perhaps denial of the reality of the
multiple challenges confronting us had a lot to do with it. Denial is a much
maligned character trait - of great value when up against seemingly insurmountable
obstacles.
Amidst a throng of naked and
semi-naked festival goers in Nimbin and with music and the smell of patchouli
oil and marijuana in the air, Philippe showed me his scrap book. It was filled
with photos of himself performing all over the world - as a mime, a street
juggler and magician, walking a slack rope and performing stunts on his beloved
high wire. Philippe’s face lit up with boyish enthusiasm as he told me that
whenever he saw two towers, two pylons, two spires, his thoughts turned to
walking between them. This was his obsession, and what a beautiful obsession it
was.
It was the photos of Philippe
walking between two spires of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris that captivated me
most. In one he stands, balancing pole resting on his thigh after a crossing,
looking out over the rooftops of Paris. There is an expression on his beautiful
pale young face that speaks of Philippe’s focus, his sense of purpose, his
tranquil experience of being in the moment. As Philippe would later tell me, when
he is on the wire there is no room in his mind for any other thought at all
than the wire. There is only the wire. A popular book at the time, probably in
the backpack of many a Nimbin festival goer, was BE HERE NOW. Philippe was the
living embodiment of the philosophy espoused in Ram Dass’ seminal book.
As I looked at the photos I could
visualize Philippe replicating such a walk in Sydney and without even thinking
about the practicalities involved, asked what the shortest time was in which
such a walk could be organized if he had all the support and money he needed.
Five or six days, Philippe replied. During the day we would have to find all
the equipment we needed (with no budget), test it all, do a dummy run and then
spend the nights inside the pylons finding and then implementing ways to secure
the wire. There were so many things that could go wrong. All we needed was one
of them to go wrong and Philippe’s dream, which became my dream and that of the
rest of our small team, would turn to dust. Philippe and I were the same age
and in many ways kindred spirits. Neither of us believed that there was much in
life that was impossible if you are determined and put your mind to it or, to
put it another way, we were both attracted to giving the impossible a run for
its money. In the battle between Denial and Common Sense, it seemed already
that Denial was going to win!
By the time Philippe and I met up
again in Sydney, after the festival, I had run the idea of by a few friends and
all were keen to help - especially my good friend Phillip Broughton, with
whom I shared a house at Whale Beach on Sydney’s northern beaches. And there
was Paul Frame - Phillip’s friend and fellow architecture student, Rob Tunstall
(from whom I had bought the Mark V Jag), his girlfriend Linda. On the last
night Terry Stanton joined the team (and maybe saved Philippe’s life) and Mark
Lewis joined us also. As a result, Mark went on to help Philippe the following
year with his World Trade Centre walk. I don’t believe in ‘Fate’ but if Serendipity
were a god, I would probably be a devotee! There were others involved also but
I cannot, at this far remove (40 years! Merde!) remember their names.
With little thought for what we
were letting ourselves in for and with no concern about the number of laws we
would have to break (lots!), our little gang, with Philippe as our intrepid
leader, set about the many tasks we needed to perform to make Philippe’s Sydney
highwire dream a reality. We were all students in the fine art of Denial: we
would not even contemplate the possibility that maybe we had bitten off more
than we could chew. We would make Philippe’s dream a reality. All obstacles
would be overcome. No worries!
To be continued...
