HARNESSED to a tandem skydive instructor, Brad Guy nervously dangled his legs out the plane’s open door, about 14,000 feet over Melbourne.

Pointing a wrist camera at him, the instructor asked: “Any last words?”

“Yeah,” Brad grinned for the souvenir DVD, “I hope my parachute opens”.

The free fall brought an expected rush of fear and adrenalin. They passed through 4000 feet and Brad felt the parachute deploy.

Ground crew had warned of an upward thrust when the canopy opened, but this violent?

As the white chute opened, it tore. The remainder flapped noisily, and the world started spinning so wildly Brad lost all perspective. A tightly laced shoe flung off.

“We were shaking so much, it was like we were in a blender,” he says. “We were just spiralling really fast.”

Brad heard the instructor swearing, and felt urgent tugging and pulling.

“He kept saying, ‘S---, no’. I was, like, ‘That’s not good’,” he says.

Sensing the ground coming toward them, Brad sought comfort from the instructor, a veteran of about 2000 tandem dives: “I said to him, ‘Are we going to die?’ ” And he said, ‘I don’t know’.”

Plummeting downward, the ground closer with each second, Brad reached his own conclusion.

Around 500 feet, the reserve inflated, tangling grotesquely in the remains of the first chute.

“It didn’t really feel like I was falling to the ground, more like the ground was coming to hit me, like the earth was coming to smack me,” Brad says.

“Your life does flash before your eyes but I didn’t look back on things in my life, I looked forward.”

The main thought racing through his mind was he’d never see his family or boyfriend again.

They were below, watching, and he fretted at the awful last memory he’d left them with.

“Survival wasn’t in my head at all,” he says. “I was thinking, ‘This ground’s going to hit me and when it does, I’ll be gone. I’ve brought my family here to watch me die’.”

I’m on the ground, I’m alive!

- Brad Guy Sub-type: comment CAPTION: I’m on the ground, I’m alive! — Brad Guy

DOWN at the drop zone, Brad’s mum Julie, dad Brian, boyfriend Artie, three sisters and their husbands and kids watched the pair whirl to earth.

One sister vomited. Another groaned, “Oh no, oh no”, repeatedly. Julie cried and looked to Brian for comfort no one could give.

They stood near the intended landing spot, a grassy paddock beside a shed at Lilydale airfield.

Site operator STBVIC Pty Ltd, trading as a franchise of Skydive The Beach and ­Beyond, also has drop zones over St Kilda beach or Barwon Heads.

Brad chose the Yarra Valley because green is his favourite colour and he pictured a slow descent over a lush patchwork.

A few days before his jump on Saturday, August 31 last year, the company phoned asking if he’d switch to a late timeslot. He’d waited more than a year to use the voucher he’d got for his 21st birthday, what was a few more hours?

The close family lunched at a winery, though Brad’s nerves meant he ate only a few hot chips, and skipped the booze.

Paperwork done and kitted up, the digital editor posed for pictures and sent a final snapchat selfie to some friends showing him in parachute pants and suspenders.

Tandem master Bill grabbed parachute number 29 from a rack, and they got in the Cessna.

The plane disappeared from sight as they climbed to altitude, and Brad’s family waited.

Finally a staffer pointed to a dot in the sky - Brad and Bill in normal free fall.

“Then something went wrong,” mum Julie says.

“We all realised and it was a big panic.”

She ran inside the shed, begging staff: “Please tell me what’s happened to my son”.

Next to the airfield, casual golfer Ash Tainton was playing with his father-in-law Ian and a couple of young blokes they’d just met at Yering Meadows.

Planes had buzzed overhead all day, but that flapping sound was new. They looked up to see the out-of-control pair swirling as if in a cyclone.

“The parachute was open, but it wasn’t working properly. They were horizontal, and they were whirling around, like water going down a drain,” Ash recalls.

“You could sense the sheer terror in everyone as we watched. I heard the thud. I called 000 straight away.”

Mid-lesson on the practice putting green, club pro Geoff George also watched the tangled mess fall to the edge of a dam on the 12th hole.

“I didn’t think anyone could survive that,” he says. “A human body is not meant to absorb that.”

IT took a few seconds for Brad to realise the choking, gasping noise he could hear was him trying to breathe.

“The impact was the worst imaginable pain I could ever fathom,” he says.

“And then I was like ‘I’m on the ground, I’m alive!’.”

His brain told him to get up but he couldn’t move anything from the neck down.

He wiggled his fingertips and felt reeds, mud and cold water. Sopping parachutes blanketed them.

Still strapped to the chest of Bill, he tried to rouse the instructor. “We landed … kind of crossed,” Brad says. “He was underneath me. He broke my fall and took a lot of the impact. I tried to grab Bill’s hand, ‘Are you OK?’. I thought he was dead.” Miraculously, Bill also survived the fall.

Golfer Ash Tainton, still on the line to 000, arrived with the others. He relayed first aid instructions as the two younger men waded shin-deep into the muddy-brown pond.

One held Bill’s head out of the water hazard. The other held Brad’s hand.

Back at the airfield, staff informed Brad’s hysterical family the men had been located, telling Julie: “They’re alive.”

They piled in car and raced off. An ambulance carrying Brad was leaving, and Julie ran after it, rapping the windows.

“I wanted to see him, I wanted to talk to him,” she says. His words — “Mum, I’ll be OK!” — reassured her.

But as the siren squealed toward The Alfred, worries whirled in Brad’s mind. Why couldn’t he feel his legs? Was he a paraplegic? Would he ever walk again?

THE questions continued in hospital. Doctors and medical students who examined his chart exclaimed “Parachuting accident? What happened?”

“That’s the reaction of every single person,” Brad says. “They say, ‘That’s my worst nightmare.’ Yeah, I lived it. And I’m still living it.”

Far from experiencing euphoria at cheating death, he counts the first night in hospital as the worst of his life.

“I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I could feel myself falling,” he says.

Scans. Needles. Doctors. Counselling. A horrible blur until his hobbled first steps.

“Being able to walk again after a few days of thinking that I never would was amazing,” he says.

Discharged after just three days, Brad retreated to his parents’ Wallan property where he remained housebound for about 14 weeks.

Made redundant from his job with a radio station soon after the accident, he has struggled to find full-time work. In the lowest moments, he considered suicide.

“My life has been shattered to pieces, every single aspect of my life has changed,” he says.

Sleep is no escape, bringing instead crippling nightmares. Falling, falling, falling.

“The physical injuries for me are pretty huge but compared to the mental implications it’s, like, nothing,” he says.

Helped by law firm Nowicki Carbone, he intends to seek substantial compensation for his pain and suffering.

Simple things can trigger panic. Standing near the edge of the second floor at the shopping centre. Catching a plane. Looking up at the clouds.

WHEN the fear takes hold, one image grounds him.

Rolling up his sleeve, Brad reveals a tattoo of a skydiver with an inflated chute floating down his forearm. Some ask why he’d want a prominent, permanent reminder.

“I don’t see the accident when I look at this. I see the silver lining. I was part of a miracle and not many people can say that. It means a lot to me. I got this to remind myself I am lucky, I’m here for a reason and here for a purpose,” he says.

One day he hopes to meet tandem master Bill again, to swap stories with the only other man in the world who understands what happened.

Bill declined to be interviewed when contacted by the Sunday Herald Sun, but wished Brad well with his recovery.

As the first anniversary approaches, Brad wants to use his scrape with death to spread a positive, inspirational message.

Enrich the lives of others where possible, he urges, through even simple gestures such as smiling at strangers on the train, or making a colleague a cup of tea.

“Do what you can to make someone else happy and make their life worthwhile,” he says.

“You never know when something might take you off the radar of life.”

If his life flashes before his eyes again, he wants to see the positive impact he’s left.

“I always thought I was lucky before but now I know I am,” he says. “I’m going to make the most of it.”

fiona.hudson@news.com.au

OPERATOR TOLD TO LIFT GAME

WORKSAFE has directed a leading Victorian skydive operator to improve packing and checking of parachutes amid serious safety concerns.

Investigators probing a sickening plunge that badly injured a tandem pair last August allege the operator’s register listed four incidents in a year linked to packing deficiencies.

“Two of these incidents occurred 13 days apart. All four incidents required emergency procedures to be enacted during descent from the aircraft,” an inspector noted.

WorkSafe alleges in tribunal documents the packer that readied the parachute in the August 2013 incident “had also been the packer involved in other incidents”.

The safety watchdog issued a notice directing operator STBVIC Pty Ltd to improve its systems.

STBVIC Pty Ltd operates three sites in Victoria — in the Yarra Valley, St Kilda and Barwon Heads — as a franchise of the Skydive The Beach and Beyond group.

But lawyers for the operator and peak skydiving body the Australian Parachute Federation have mounted a tribunal challenge.

The tribunal action comes as lawyers for skydive accident survivor Brad Guy prepare to sue over the disastrous tandem dive.

Nowicki Carbone partner Nunzio Tartaglia said he’d seek substantial compensation for Mr Guy’s physical and mental injuries.

“Our client wants to ensure this catastrophic event does not happen to anyone else,” he said. “The activity of skydiving is dangerous and safety is paramount.”

Tribunal documents include a report by an APF safety officer on the August 2013 incident that said the rig wasn’t packed correctly, equipment checks were lacking and emergency procedures were performed in an incorrect sequence.

The report concluded the STBVIC Pty Ltd operation “appears to be well managed but also seems to have a problem with packing issues”.

The APF’s tribunal submission states STBVIC Pty Ltd recorded about 12,000 jumps at its three sites between July 1, 2013 and March 14, 2014.

“With 11 malfunctions during this time (mostly partial) this represents a malfunction rate of .09 per cent of total jumps,” the submission says.

“This figure is perfectly consistent and acceptable within Australian and global parachuting standards.”

The APF submits parachute checks are already rigorously regulated, and more onerous pre-fall checks would not prevent malfunctions.

A compulsory tribunal mediation session is expected to be held next month.