By Michael S. Rosenwald
While growing up in Australia, Bill Moyes would spend countless hours at the beach observing seagulls as they soared and glided, captivated by their flight mechanics. At nighttime, he dreamt of taking to the skies.
“I didn’t soar like Superman with my arms stretched out in front of me,” he reminisced many years later. “I also didn’t flap my wings to take off. I wasn’t a bird. I was just a boy with wings.”
On a winter day in 1968, Moyes transformed into a man with wings. He utilized a ski lift to ascend to the peak of Mount Crackenback in the Australian Alps, fastened himself to an apparatus resembling a massive kite, and skied off a cliff.
“Since the flight hadn’t been announced,” reported The Sunday Sun, “skiers on the slopes looked on in disbelief, and people rushed out of lodges and hotels to witness the remarkable ‘birdman.’”
Moyes glided at an altitude of 1,000 feet for nearly 2 miles, achieving what was then recognized as the world record for the longest unassisted flight, as per news articles. This landmark achievement heralded the dawn of hang gliding, a sport that Moyes helped popularize by flying into the Grand Canyon, soaring from Mount Kilimanjaro, and being towed behind an airplane at a height of 8,600 feet.
“Few individuals ever have the chance to accomplish something they’ve never witnessed before,” said Ken de Russy, a hang-gliding historian from Anacortes, Washington, in an interview. “That requires a unique mix of adventurous spirit and boldness. Bill Moyes possessed that. He was a performer.”
Moyes passed away on Sept. 24 at a hospital in Sydney, according to his daughter, Vicki Cain. He was 92 years old.
Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Moyes became one of the most popular attractions at county fairs and air shows globally. Often referred to as Australia’s Birdman, the Sensational Flying Jetman, and the Modern Day Icarus, Moyes typically launched himself into flight using a fast dune buggy, akin to a young boy running with a kite.
He faced near-death experiences on multiple occasions.
In 1972, during a performance in Jamestown, North Dakota, he plummeted 300 feet when the towing rope snapped. He suffered several fractures and was transported by ambulance to a hospital, where he recuperated for several weeks.
“We often bled almost every time we flew,” Moyes frequently remarked.
On another attempt, he tried unsuccessfully to launch from a speeding motorcycle he was simultaneously operating. He didn’t break any bones but didn’t repeat that attempt either.
Flying into the Grand Canyon resulted in his arrest.
It was 1970, right as hang gliding was beginning to gain traction as a sport. Thousands of gliders had been sold in the U.S, and Moyes had recently established Moyes Delta Gliders, a hang glider manufacturer that continues to operate today, contributing to a $1.51 billion global industry.
To prepare for the Grand Canyon stunt, he stood at the edge and released paper airplanes to trace their descent. A National Park Service ranger inquired about his actions. Moyes informed him of his intention to fly into the canyon.
“This is a park, not a damn circus,” the ranger responded, according to Moyes’ recounting in The Chicago Tribune. “Besides, I doubt you can do it anyway.”
This remark infuriated Moyes.
“Whenever someone tells me something can’t be accomplished, that’s when I must do it,” he was quoted as stating in “And the World Could Fly: The Birth and Growth of Hang Gliding and Paragliding” (2005).
Moyes departed but returned a few days later with a team to assist in setting up the glider.
“A ranger was observing the edge, but we began nearly a quarter-mile away,” he recounted to the Tribune. “I simply waved at him as I soared over.”
Moyes was subsequently apprehended after landing. He spent two nights in jail and received a fine totaling several hundred dollars.
During an appearance on the Australian television show “This Is Your Life” in 1980, he mentioned that it was “impossible to articulate the rapture” of such daring feats.
“From the moment you’re born, you’re accustomed to the force of gravity,” he noted. “Then one day you’ll step off, and you’ll be liberated from it. And how can I articulate that? I can’t express it. But once you’ve experienced it, you won’t be able to describe it either.”
William Thomas John Moyes was born on July 12, 1932, in Bronte, a coastal community in New South Wales, Australia. His father, William Moyes, served as a police detective, while his mother, Mary (Taranto) Moyes, spent much of her efforts trying to keep Bill in check during his youth.
“He was quite a rascal and a pyromaniac,” Cain, his daughter, shared in an interview. “He had a great penchant for engaging in reckless activities.”
Moyes pursued auto repair studies at Sydney Technical College, graduating in 1949 and eventually establishing his own repair business. In his early thirties, he discovered water-skiing.
At around that time, John Dickenson, a neighbor who worked as a television repairman, was trying to create a kite suitable for being towed by a boat.
Dickenson’s idea sprang from a magazine image depicting a scaled model of NASA’s experimental paraglider research device, a kite-parachute evaluated as a recovery mechanism for spacecraft,” he told Cross Country Magazine in 2023.
“To me, this appeared to be an excellent solution,” Dickenson added, “as I aimed to develop a kite that would descend in a controlled way, even if the tether broke.”
He incorporated a trapeze swing that the pilot could maneuver for navigation. His creation, which evolved through several prototypes, is widely acknowledged as the first hang glider.
Moyes was one of its test pilots. In 1968, he reached an altitude of 2,870 feet over Lake Ellesmere in New Zealand. A few months afterward, he soared from Mount Crackenback.
Moyes married Molly Lowe in 1950. Along with their daughter Vicki, his wife survives him, alongside three other children, Debra Gray, Jennifer Lea, and Stephen Moyes, a champion hang glider; as well as 14 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Susan Harris, passed away in 2009.
Whenever Moyes took to the skies, he caught the attention of some birds.
On one occasion, an eagle followed in his wake. Another time, he observed a bird staring directly at him — only to do a double take.
“You meet a bird’s gaze and know that bird can fly,” he told The Toronto Star in 1970. “Well, so can I.”
