When did the “Birdman” visit PNG?
The “Birdman”, Bill Flewellyn, visited the Goroka Show in 1974 and put on a great exhibition of hang gliding for everybody, with smoke flares and the like.
Flewellyn at that time was only 27 years old, and he was almost single-handedly promoting hang gliding as a recreational sport, not just in Australia but in the rest of the world as well.
Flewellyn set an Australian altitude record in 1976. In 1977, he launched himself from a hot-air balloon and hang-glided over Japan’s highest peak, Mt. Fuji. Then in 1978 the people of PNG were saddened to read that he had been killed in a hang-gliding accident in Toowoomba, Qld, at the age of 31.
https://vkpeek.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/the-birdman-in-png/
Tags: birdman, hang gliding