Sky’s the limit for he who dares

Terry Murphy’s love for all things that flew came at a young age. “I grew up in Werribee, near where the air force bases were,” Terry said.
“I remember sitting in Grade five or six, looking up at these little training planes power off and practice their forced landings. It intrigued the hell out of me.”
Terry caught the skydiving bug when he was 20, and went straight into solo jumping with Commando Skydivers.
“Back then, they had two days of lectures before you jump. In those days, there was no tandem jumping.”
Over the 30 years that Terry has been jumping, he estimated that he had done over 3000 jumps.
Terry’s wife, Janet, whom he met while studying Pharmacy at Monash University in Parkville, also did skydiving, though they were only friends back then.
“She did enough jumps and then got into it,” Terry said.
“I got into it first, but I didn’t really need to persuade her. She was there to meet boys I think.
“We’d known each other beforehand, so it was no big deal.”
Skydiving brought new adventures to Terry and Janet’s doorsteps, and took them around the world in 1985, with only two backpacks and not a lot of stuff.
“One was for a parachute and the other for clothes and whatever was left to spare,” Terry said.
“That went all right.”
Not only did skydiving take Terry to new places, but it took him to new heights too. Terry has been on two world records, a 300-way jump in Arizona in 2003 and a 357-way jump in Thailand in 2004 and one Australian record with a 112-way jump in America in 2009.
When asked how long he’d like to continue skydiving for, Terry said he planned to follow in the footsteps of Commando Skydivers’ oldest jumper, Jim Brierley.
“There’s nothing old about Jim. He’s 84 and going on 85 and only now is he starting to just show his age a little bit. He looks mid 60s and he’s got a mid 40s brain.
“I could do for jumping for that long.
“Janet thought I would grow up to be Jim and I agree. He’s a delightful man who’s just a dear friend.”
Terry has also tried and enjoyed base jumping. Most people cringe when hearing the term, as it doesn’t have the best reputation, but Terry doesn’t mind it.
“Janet cries when I base jump. It is scary, but I call it character building,” Terry said with a smile.
“When we were young and silly we used to jump off the West Gate, I’ve been off the West Gate Bridge twice, before the barriers went up.
“The first time, it was my one trip to court, the second time I was caught with a boatload of parachutes and a very grumpy policeman. There were no real laws against base jumping; they hadn’t been structured yet. When we first jumped there we were perhaps the first handful to do it.
“We all ended up with the water police and they were just charming. One Sunday morning they chased us away and said, ‘Alright boys, next time do it in Sydney!’
“So it was really quite lovely. It was an adventure and there’s always new ways to get hurt.”
When Terry is not busy having fun, he and Janet run their Pulse Pharmacy business in Rowville, which they’ve owned for over 21 years.
“The business drives a good life,” Terry said.
“I found something to do with my money from the business though: private school education. There’s some obscene amount of money involved per head there.”
Terry still finds time to spend with his kids, and introducing them to new things. One such example is an adventure trip he does with each of his four children when they each reached Year 9 at school.
He trekked the Himalayas for a couple of weeks with his first son, Liam, and went to base camp Everest with daughter Cara.
“Everyday was blue skies and mountains come up and we went as high as 20,000 feet. It’s just lovely,” Terry said.
“If you go up in an aeroplane to 20,000 feet you’d pass out in 10 minutes. If you take two weeks to get there, you climatise, you endure the headaches and you endure the huffing and puffing.”
He and daughter Aislinn did a six-day walk at Machu Picchu, and climbed Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with youngest child Declan.
“The Machu Picchu trip was just exquisite,” Terry said
“We were in Argentina on the other side for a week on the start of the journey, so we really saw all of South America and all of the life there.”
It’s easy to see Terry has played an active part in his children’s lives.
“My kids have been very fortunate. They’ve seen the big world and you just feel like you can let ’em rip and they’ll make their own way in the world. I can’t do anything more for them, but they’ve got a nice base to start.
“I think they were born into the right family.
“We’ve had fun.”
Terry has a casual and open view of life, which is probably how he manages to do everything he wants to do.
“Earlier on (in the business) we would’ve worked at least six days, but you figure out you need to play enough sport, you need to be active enough and you need to maintain things that make you happy in life like your relationships with people and staying fit,” Terry said
“The only real important relationships are with your kids and your wife and if you get that right, then everything else follows. Work drives it all and it was that whole thing where you had to balance social, your own development, some commitment to community and your physical wellbeing.
“I don’t balance. It’s not too bad. I certainly know that you’ve got to mix it up a little bit or it’s not right.”
“I look at my old mates that are around and you can keep doing stuff until you’re in your late 80s and as long as you’re contributing, whatever that may be, you will have a happy existence.”