and laboriously cut all the covering off it

to expose the natural rubber.

And here's the bungee.

We had this old potato sack,

and I filled it up with rocks

and dropped it over the side

and it just hit the water, split,

dropping all the stones, and that was our test.

So I thought, well, we're not doing one more test

it's gonna be me.

(laughing)

And I hit the water, (bleep), so hard.

Bang!

Right in over my head.

And I thought, well that's it.

And then all of a sudden, I'm out of the water again.

And I'm thinking: “It works!”

And that was the first modern bungee jump.

That was the start of things to come.

(long beep)

- [Man] Heads up!

(edgy rock music)

- Our weekends were pretty much taken up with bungee.

Different places, different crew.

(laughing)

I teamed up with AJ, and he was of a like-mind like me.

Newtonian physics had been thrown out the window.

- Just carry on.

- And we had thoughts very, very quickly.

And of course, every bridge was getting

bigger and bigger and bigger and that was exciting.

My dream was going out to sea so we said,

we better jump the Auckland Harbor Bridge.

So we drive up onto the bridge,

everyone jump out with their little bits and pieces

down underneath the bridge, and we're ready to go.

- [Man] Looks like the Deodar's coming for a visit, folks.

- What the police said was, "Whatever you're gonna do,

don't do it!"

AJ turns to me, he goes, "Did you hear that?"

And I went, "No."

(laughing)

Yeah, we just jumped.

(playful, inspiring music)

(cheering)

I just went and there was this lone policeman

on the back of the Deodar with his mouth just gaping open.

- [Man] AJ, you can forget your trip to Europe, son.

Then the story broke, and then it was

guns blazing after that.

AJ went overseas and ended up doing some

bungee jumping over there, we kind of drifted apart.

I didn't really get a good handle on

how commercial it was going to be.

I was just really testing the idea.

(playful, inspiring music)