It’s the kind of story, which was made for a book or the big screen, and even his wife didn’t believe it.

When Australian athlete Reg Spiers found himself stranded in London in the mid-sixties with no money to buy a plane ticket home he came up with an inventive idea.

The 22-year-old was desperate to get back to Adelaide in time for his daughter's birthday.

Unable to come up with the cash for the ticket Mr Spiers decided to get his friend John McSorley on board to build a crate and post it back to Australia, with him hiding inside it.

View photos Reg Spiers in Africa. Photo: Marcus McSorley More

At a pub in London the pair planned the epic 63-hour adventure from London to Perth.

On the journey Mr Spiers was left upside down on a tarmac in the scorching sun in Bombay and ended up getting naked because he was so hot.

The adventurer lived to tell the tale and it has been turned into a book by Mr McSorley’s wife and son, Julie and Marcus McSorley called Out of the Box: The Highs and Lows of a Champion Smuggler.

Mr Spiers told the BBC: "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."

Spiers, a promising javelin thrower, had gone to the UK to try to recover from an injury that had interrupted his athletics career.

The BBC reports he had been on course to compete at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 but when it was clear he wouldn’t make the game he took at an airport to earn some extra money.

He got the idea about travelling in a box back to Australia while working in the cargo section where he had seen animals come through.

He said: “I thought, 'If they can do it I can do it.'”

Mr McSorley told the BBC: "He told me it had to be 5ft x 3ft x 2.5ft, (1.5m x 0.9m x 0.75m).

View photos This replica of the box shows how straps were fixed inside the box to secure Mr Spiers when the box was being loaded and unloaded. Photo: Marcus McSorley More

"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.”

They made the crate to the size where his friend could sit up straight-legged, or lie on his back with his knees bent.

Mr Spiers packed some supplies for his big trip including- two bottles- one for water and one for urine, tinned food, a torch, a blanket and a pillow.

The crafty pair labeled the box as being filled with paint addressed to a fictitious ‘Mr Graham’, specifying cash-on-delivery.

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