Great-grandmother celebrated her 93rd birthday by skydiving
A great-grandmother from the Gold Coast has proved that age is just a number, by celebrating her 93rd birthday by going skydiving.
Betty Gregory first got a taste for the thrill of being in the sky when she was just 17 and working in England's Royal Air Force.
She told Today, "I was 17 and I was doing a photographic course where I had to go up in a plane to do some aerial photography training."
"I had to crawl past the pilot's legs, where they'd taken a panel out of the nose and installed this camera on a framework and I could see all the little fields with animals and cars on little tiny roads and I thought it would be very nice to do a jump."
After she landed safely on the ground, Betty tried to convince the pilot to take her back up and let her do a jump, but to no avail.
She put the idea on the back burner, vowing to herself to do the skydive at some stage in the future.
Fast forward a few decades, when Betty had settled on the Gold Coast and started a family, she began thinking of the skydive once more.
"I saw them landing on Kirra Beach and I thought, 'Now there's an idea, I'll do that for my 80th birthday,'" she said.
So she did, and she pledged to go again on her 85th birthday for her second skydive.
"I was going to do another one at 90, but COVID-19 happened and everything was cancelled," she said.
"Then, for my 91st birthday, my son came up from Victoria and I asked if he also wanted to jump, he said 'well, I suppose if you can do it at 91, mum, I can do it at 68.'"
As Betty’s love for jumping out of planes grew, she decided not to wait until her 95th birthday to do it again.
"The numbers of my age are getting quite high, so I thought maybe I won't leave it for 95, I'll do it at 93 instead," she said.
Betty admitted she's even gotten friendly with the tandem jumper who lets her manoeuvre the parachute handles so she can spend a little bit longer sailing through the skies.
"It's exhilarating, it really is - I really enjoy it," she said.
Image credits: Today