[Holwick: this story is widely attested, but I wonder how he got enough oxygen in an unpressurized cargo hold at high altitude for 63 hours. Note that the first and last stories below originally had his name as Spears but it should be Spiers as the BBC article has it.]
Things were so much simpler in the 1960s. There were three channels on television, a doctor could deliver a baby without removing the cigarette from his mouth and a down-on-his-luck dad could successfully mail himself halfway around the world. Plane ticket? What plane ticket?
In 1964, Reg Spiers was a world champion javelin thrower, but the Australian learned that didn’t come with a lot of perks like, say, steady work or a paycheck. He was stuck in the United Kingdom, desperate to get back to Australia to see his young daughter on her birthday, but couldn’t figure out how he could ever afford the trip. During a night drinking with fellow javelin thrower John McSorley, they got the idea that Spiers could just ship himself back, inside an oversized wooden box that he could build himself.
Like most ideas that happen over too many drinks, this one was terrible. But it worked. Spiers had been working in the cargo area of an airport, so he knew a lot of insider information. The pair built a 5′ x 3′ x 2’6″ crate (the maximum size that could be shipped), fitted with straps for him to hang on to and designed to open at either end so he could get out and walk when he’d been safely loaded inside the plane. He packed some provisions including his passport, a change of clothes, canned spaghetti, bottled water and some candy, climbed into the box and McSorely drove him to Heathrow airport (Spiers used the empty bottles and cans to pee in. We know you were curious).
The trip was almost a disaster from the start, after heavy fog delayed flights out of London for a full 24 hours. He was flown from London to Paris to Bombay, where he was left on a tarmac in the hot sun (and upside down) for hours before being loaded back onto yet another plane. After an unscheduled fuel stop in Singapore, he made it to Perth, 63 hours and 13,000 miles from Heathrow. The box was placed in a cargo shed, but Spiers found some tools, cut a hole in the wall and climbed out. He changed into his clean clothes, pulled out his passport and walked out of the airport.
After hitchhiking from Perth to his home in Adelaide, he surprised his family. The only mistake he made was forgetting to let McSorley know that he’d arrived; McSorely called a reporter friend and there was a massive-for-the-time media circus that picked up on Spiers’ story. The hardest part, he said, was convincing his wife that he was telling the truth.
She didn’t believe me. But then she thought about it and thought ‘He must have done it, how else did he get here?’ So eventually she rode with it.
Spiers is now 73 and still lives in Australia after spending several decades (and a couple of prison stints) as a drug smuggler. Say what you want about him, but the man knows how to pack.
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"The man who posted himself to Australia"
Jason Caffrey BBC World Service, BBC News Magazine, March 6, 2015
In the mid-1960s, Australian athlete Reg Spiers found himself stranded in London with no money to buy a plane ticket home. Desperate to get back to Australia in time for his daughter’s birthday, he decided to post himself in a wooden crate.
“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.”
Reg Spiers makes it sound very straightforward more than half a century later, but it caused a media storm in Australia at the time.
He explains his attitude like this: “I’ve come up with this mad scheme to get back to Australia in a box. Who can say it won’t work? Let’s give it a shot.”
Spiers had come to the UK to try to recover from an injury that had interrupted his athletics career. A promising javelin thrower, he had been on course to compete at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.
But when it became clear he would not make the games, Spiers set his mind to raising enough money to fly back to Australia, and took an airport job to earn some cash.
But his plans changed when his wallet, containing all his savings, was stolen. With a wife and daughter back home, Spiers wanted to get back to Adelaide, but “there was one catch,” he explains. “I didn’t have any money.”
And with his daughter’s birthday looming, he was in a hurry.
“I worked in the export cargo section, so I knew about cash-on-delivery with freight. I’d seen animals come through all the time and I thought, ‘If they can do it I can do it.’”
Spiers also knew the maximum size of crate that could be sent by air freight. He had been staying with a friend, John McSorley, in London, and persuaded him to build a box in which he could send himself home.
“He told me it had to be 5ft x 3ft x 2.5ft, (1.5m x 0.9m x 0.75m),” says McSorley. “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.’”
Built to Spiers’s specifications, the crate allowed him to sit up straight-legged, or lie on his back with his knees bent. The two ends of the crate were held in place by wooden spigots operated from the inside, so Spiers could let himself out of either end. It was fitted with straps to hold him in place as the crate was loaded and unloaded.
To avoid any suspicion that a person was inside, the crate was labelled as a load of paint and addressed to a fictitious Australian shoe company.
Although the cost of sending such a large and heavy cargo would have been more than a passenger seat, Spiers knew he could send himself cash-on-delivery - and worry about how to pay the fees once he arrived in Australia.
Packed into the box with some tinned food, a torch, a blanket and a pillow, plus two plastic bottles - one for water, one for urine - Spiers was loaded on to an Air India plane bound for Perth, Western Australia. Although Spiers wanted ultimately to get to Adelaide, Perth was chosen because it was a smaller airport.
He endured a 24-hour delay at the airport in London due to fog, and let himself out of the crate once the plane was in the air.
“I got out of the box between London and Paris, dying for a leak,” says Spiers. “I peed in a can and put it on top of the box. I was stretching my legs and all of a sudden, because it’s a short distance, the plane began to descend. A little panicky I jumped back in the box, and the can full of pee was still sitting on top.”
The French baggage handlers in Paris thought the can’s unsavoury contents had been left for them as an unkind joke by their counterparts in London.
“They were saying some terrible things about the English,” says Spiers. “But they didn’t even think of the box. So I kept on going.”
The next stop on the long journey back to Australia was in Bombay, where baggage handlers parked Spiers - upside down - in the sun’s glare for four hours.
“It was hot as hell in Bombay so I took off all my clothes,” he says. “Wouldn’t it have been funny if I’d got pinched then?”
“They had the thing on its end. I was on the tarmac while they were changing me from one plane to another. I’m strapped in but my feet are up in the air. I’m sweating like a pig but not to give up - wait, be patient - and eventually they came and got me and put me on another plane.”
When the plane finally touched down in Perth, the cargo hold was opened and Spiers heard the Australian baggage handlers swearing about the size of the crate he was in. He knew immediately he was home.
“The accents - how could you miss?” says Spiers. “I’m on the soil. Amazing. Wonderful. I made it.
“I was grinning from ear to ear, but I wasn’t going to let them know I’m there now - I’ve almost pulled the whole thing off.
“I knew they would take the box to a bond shed. When they put me in the shed I got out straight away. There were cartons of beer in there. I don’t drink but I whipped a beer out and had a drink of that.”
Spiers had survived three days travelling in the wooden crate. But he still faced the challenge of getting out of the airport. Fortunately, his luck continued.
“There were some tools in there so I just cut a hole in the wall and got out.
“There was no security. I put on a suit out of my bag so I looked cool, jumped through the window, walked out on to the street and thumbed a ride into town. Simple as that.”
But back in England, John McSorley, who had built the crate and delivered Spiers to the airport, was desperately worried about his friend. Spiers hitchhiked his way back to his family in Adelaide, but neglected to tell McSorley he had come through his journey intact.
In an effort to find out what had happened, McSorley alerted the media, and Spiers quickly became a sensation in his home country.
“I got a telegram from a renowned Australian politician,” he says, which read, “‘A gallant effort by a real Aussie - and here’s five quid.’ I’m winning big time. It was great.”
In the end the airline didn’t make him pay the shipping fees. But Spiers admits he was taken aback by the media coverage of his adventure.
“I’d never seen anything like it. It scared the hell out of my mother with the whole street blocked with media. And it would go on for weeks. It was pretty wild.”
Spiers succeeded in making it back in time for his daughter’s birthday but he still had a job convincing his wife his story was true.
“She didn’t believe me,” he says. “But then she thought about it and thought ‘He must have done it, how else did he get here?’ So eventually she rode with it.”
Air industry insiders say something like this would never be able to happen now. The hold is usually pressurised and the temperature will usually be above freezing but all cargo loaded on to planes is screened for security reasons and a hidden person would be found.
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What happened next:
Reg Spiers disappeared from Adelaide in 1981 after he was charged with conspiracy to import cocaine
He was arrested in Sri Lanka in 1984 and sentenced to death for drugs offences
He successfully appealed against the sentence and spent five years in jail in Australia
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Another version from a blogger:
Crate Expectations
I remember, from my childhood, many TV real life dramas and animated features where the villain of the peace ended up being put into a packing crate and was mailed off, more often as not, to a place called Timbuctoo.
It seemed to me then to be a fitting form of retribution for those who had suffered at the hands of the perpetrator through the 90 minutes or so of the on screen adventure although it was a bit of a shock to find out that the destination with the funny name was in fact a real place in North Africa.
Perhaps the same thought process was a contributory factor behind the actions of Reg Spiers who in 1964, aged 23 years, packed himself into a wooden crate and traveled by airfreight from London to Australia.
By way of background Spiers was from Adelaide and an accomplished athlete in the Javelin who competed for Australia in the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia.
He was a large character, physically and in his outlook on life.
Prevented by injury from going to the Summer Games, the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 he turned up at the home of a former fellow athlete in London, England and crashed out there for much of the remainder of the year.
Spiers, jobless and an amateur athlete was typically short of money and acquaintances remember that in order to get around the area he had a practice of standing out in the middle of the road, thumb outstretched forcing motorists to either give him a ride or run him down.
It appeared to be a bit of a season of partying and an easy going life for the affable Aussie but this was to be short lived as there was the more pressing matter of trying to get back to Adelaide to his family as it was close to the birthday of his daughter.
A job at London Airport working for Air France in the freight transport warehouse gave him an opportunity to save up towards a one-way flight and things were going well until his wallet was stolen and his funds were wiped out.
It was a time for desperate measures.
The freight received at the airport where he was employed included crates used for animal transit and these were amongst the largest permitted at Imperial dimensions of 5 feet by 3 feet by 2 and a half feet.
Spiers worked out that this volume would accommodate his large physique either sitting up with legs straight or lying back with legs bent. Friends helped him fabricate a box of that maximum size in their flat. To avoid being trapped if the crate were stacked tightly to a wall or other boxes it had two false ends with wooden release catches. The slatted wood had to be internally lined to avoid the contents being seen but there was still a good view out for the occupant.
In order to authenticate the posting of the crate and its cargo it was necessary to establish Companies in London and Perth. A label would indicate a fictitious inventory of Plastic Emulsion and to be signed and paid for on delivery, a major cost saving factor.
Spiers had some intentions of selling his story, if successful to the Media to cover freight costs.
His London based friends took the box to the Airport to be checked in.
There were no concerns about potential for discovery, injury or fatality. Being an Aussie there could be no accusation of illegal entry if his plan were rumbled in his home nation.
The crate was equipped with supplies for an anticipated 30-hour incarceration. Foodstuffs included baked beans and liquids and with a torch [flashlight], pillow, bag of clothing, a bottle to urinate in and all tied down with strapping in case the box were rotated in the process of loading and unloading on the flight.
To prepare himself for the possible starvation experience Spiers fasted for the week before the journey with the same level of enthusiasm previously applied to his top flight athletic status.
There was an initial setback in that London Airport was fog bound delaying the flight until the following morning. Other worrying events were to follow. The first stopover was Paris then onto Bombay and Singapore. At each stop there was a risk of discovery and forced expulsion as the cargo in the hold was removed, supplemented and re-arranged. A fork lift truck in the hands of a novice driver did not engage the prongs correctly and Spiers had to throw his body weight around to correct a potential nasty over balance and toppling. He was able to get out when safe and stretch his cramped limbs and have a pee. On one occasion he forgot to remove an empty beer can of urine from atop the crate but the airport staff attributed this to a British worker rather than it arousing suspicions of a stowaway.
In the long dark hours Spiers was left to his own imagination and thoughts. There was no real exposure to cold or discomfort and the thought of hundreds of passengers directly above the cargo hold having paid full fare was a matter of much amusement.
Arriving at Perth some 60 hours later saw the crate deposited in a Bonded Warehouse at the airport perimeter. Dressed in a crumpled suit Spiers disengaged himself from the box, climbed out of a window and casually on reaching the street got a bus to the City Centre.
His final destination and daughters party was still 1,600 miles away in Adelaide but in true Reg style he blagged rides and fares from the likes of a Catholic Priest and the Salvation Army.
He made the celebration in time but omitted to let his friends know of his safe arrival. This prompted concerned enquiries between London and a Sydney based journalist as to the whereabouts of the intrepid traveler.
When traced a media storm erupted and recriminations began. Spiers was summoned to the Airline Offices to explain his actions and pay his outstanding airfreight bills but faced with embarrassment and bad publicity they agreed not to pursue compensation.
Spiers did not at the time have any real intentions to make big money out of his fabulous story, he just wanted to get home, but retrospectively, now aged 73 he has expressed some regret that he did not exploit the tremendous amount of interest that his dramatic exploit generated on a worldwide basis and make a crate load of cash.
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http://onelastsoul.blogspot.com/2015/03/crate-expectations.html
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An inspired stowaway
Reg Spiers' adventure inspired another stowaway. While Reg went from England to Australia, Brian Robson went in the opposite direction. He hated Australia and wanted to return home as quickly as possible. He couldn't leave the normal way because he had entered the country through a program that required a two-year commitment. He tried to stow away on a ship but was discovered. When he read how Spiers had done it, he decided to do the same thing. He built a crate but had less room than Spiers because he included a large suitcase. At a stopover in Sydney his crate was left on the tarmac for 22 hours upside down, causing him to blackout.
Robson was put back on the plane and expected the next stop to be England. What he didn't know was his flight was full so he was transferred to a plane that was taking a much longer route. He became very cold. His joints began to ache and swell. The cargo handler who discovered him thought he was dead. Robson had been in the crate for four days; he was so stiff that when they forced his legs down, his body came up. What shocked Robson was that the cargo handler spoke with an American accent. Instead of being in London, he was in Los Angeles. He was in the United States illegally but his story created huge interest. The airline policy was to ship stowaways back to their original starting point but for publicity's sake they decided to send him to London first-class.
“I am 70 years old now,” he says. “On reflection, kids don’t think straight. I think most teenagers, youth of those days and certainly of these, make their mind up to do something and don’t think of the consequences." Had he continued on the original flight it would have gone over the northern ice cap and he would have almost certainly frozen to death.
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Adapted by David Holwick from "The copycat who nearly died air-mailing himself home," Jason Caffrey, BBC World Service, April 7, 2015.
