WHEN teenage Soviet defector Lillian Gasinskaya jumped from the porthole of a Russian cruise ship into Sydney Harbour on January 15 in 1979, she probably didn’t realise she’d make as big a splash as she did.

Dressed only in a red bikini, the 18-year-old from the Ukrainian port of Odessa, swam for more than 40 minutes in the shark-infested harbour before climbing up onto a wharf in Pyrmont and onto the front pages of newspapers across the globe.

“BEAUTY FLEES RED LINER” the Daily Mirror’s headline shouted two days after her escape.

The ‘Girl in the Red Bikini’ was soon a household name.

Her plan had been simple: Escape the communist regime of the Soviet Union and find freedom in a new land away from the ‘lies and propaganda’.

media_camera She swam for 40 minutes in Sydney Harbour before climbing out onto a wharf in Pyrmont.

“I was 14 when I began to realise what communism was all about and what it meant,” Gasinskaya said.

“I realised it was based on lies and propaganda and I slowly began to hate it.”

The young woman, the daughter of a musician father and actor mother, spent years trying to plan her escape from the Soviet Union and just when she thought the dream was futile, an opportunity arose.

“I thought of all sorts of ways to get out of the country but each method I looked at seemed to be impossible,” she said.

“And then I heard they were recruiting staff for cruise ships which gave me an idea.”

Gasinskaya joined the company and trained in both Ukraine and the UK before she was finally assigned to the Leonid Sobinov, the ship that would eventually take her to freedom.

The cruise ship may have been a place of relaxation and fun for passengers aboard the liner, but the crew were constantly being watched to ensure they didn’t jump ship and defect from their homeland.

media_camera The teenager made headlines across the globe after her sensational defection.

Crewmen would patrol the decks of the ship and roaming flashlights would light up the night to make absconding almost impossible.

Almost.

Gasinskaya nearly made her break before she even made it to Sydney.

“When we arrived in Fremantle I talked to a passenger about escaping and he told me it was a good idea,” she said.

“But I could not find a way to get off there and no one was able to help me.”

Instead she waited patiently until the Leonid Sobinov arrived in Sydney and when the crew were distracted by a party on the night of January 14 1979, she made her break.

“I put on my red bikini and left my ring on my finger because I knew that I could not carry anything at all with me otherwise I might caught,” she said.

“I climbed on to the bed and squeezed through the porthole and fell into the harbour.”

Her claim for asylum in Australia was met with mixed reactions from the community and the government, with some saying had she not been young, beautiful and dressed in a bikini, she’d probably have been on her way back to the Soviet Union.

media_camera Gasinskaya made headlines again when she became the first centrefold of Australian Penthouse later that same year.

After being granted a visa, Gasinskaya didn’t slip into obscurity in her new homeland. Just months after her much publicised entrance, she accepted an offer to be the very first centrefold of Australian Penthouse magazine.

“Lillian: The Red Bikini Girl - Without The Bikini” the headline read with a teasing picture of the new arrival on the cover.

Just two years later she hit the headlines again when it was suggested she had returned to the Soviet Union and requested that her citizenship be reinstated.

Gasinskaya denied the claims and she was eventually allowed to stay in the country where she went on to follow in her mother’s footsteps as an actor and star in several Australian soaps.

In 1984 she married property tycoon Ian Hayson, responsible for building the Harbourside Shopping Centre, but the couple split four years later.

Gasinskaya disappeared after that and little is known about her life in Australia since.

DO YOU KNOW LILLIAN? CONTACT US AT david.meddows@news.com.au