MEET Griffith’s most radical great grandmother.
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Last Saturday, Doreen Taylor proved she had more guts than most people half her age when she jumped out of a plane flying 10,000 feet above Griffith.
The 87-year-old said she’d wanted to go skydiving for a long time and was thrilled to finally fulfil her dream last weekend.
“I’ve wanted to do it for a long time,” she said.
“My son organised it and when he first asked me about it I said no. I haven’t been terribly well but in the end I just thought ‘blast it, I’ll do it’.”
And she never looked back – not even when she was plummeting to Earth at 250 kilometres an hour.
“I didn’t want to back out, I wasn’t going all that way for nothing,” she said.
“When he (the instructor) told me to undo my to undo my seatbelt and swing my legs over the side, that was a bit scary jumping out into space, but I had every confidence in him.
“I enjoyed all of it and I’d do it again.”
Mrs Taylor said it was an incredible experience and one she’d never forget.
“The ground looked like a fantastic quilt spread out underneath you,” she said.
“A rainbow came out and the clouds looked like cotton wool.
“The worst part was the wind hitting you in the face at 250 kilometres an hour and it was absolutely freezing but I was pretty rugged up in all the gear they had – you walked around like a space person when you got it all on.”
It wasn’t the first time the great grandmother had turned daredevil.
“I went up in a Tiger Moth a few years back and they did the loop-the-loop and all that,” she said.
“It took me a month to do my hair again.
“Everyone I asked who said they wouldn’t do it (skydiving) for a fortune I couldn’t believe how sooky they were.”
Mrs Taylor’s airborne antics are not over with the Griffith Aero Club planning to take her up this weekend and teach her to fly while the Griffith gran also has hopes of one day going hang gliding.