Nancy Davis' son George Staite died in a BASE jumping accident in Italy two years ago.



Matt McKenna TOWER BASE-JUMP: A time-sequence photograph from one of George Staite's earliest jumps shows the orange from his parachute against a blue sky after he leapt from a 70-metre tower about 300 km west of Kalgoorlie along the Great Eastern Highway.

Kiwi base-jumper George Staite fell to his death in Italy two years ago. Anna Pearson recalls the day she heard the news, and remembers a friend who found peace on the edge.
On September 10, 2012, George Staite and some friends walked a familiar route up Monte Brento, in Italy. It would have taken about an hour. At the top, George geared up. He put on a black and orange wing-suit that would help him cut through the air.
He did his final gear check, lowered himself over a ledge, turned a GoPro camera attached to his helmet on and jumped.

HE PROMISED HE WOULD BE SAFE
I knew George was in Europe somewhere, jumping off cliffs. He explained the physics of his chosen sport with authority and seemed to take safety seriously.
I was working at The Nelson Mail. After deadline on September 12, the newspaper was dumped on my desk. The headline: Base-jumper lived on the edge.
A photograph of George and his mother leapt out of the front page. It did not seem real.
The cops came up through the steep garden below Nancy Davis' house on a hill above Tahunanui Beach at 4am, disoriented in the dark, and banged on her bedroom window.



In her heart, she knew. It could only be George. Her son toyed with death every time he threw himself off a cliff. George, more than most, understood the fragility of life. His father committed suicide when George was 14. George had suffered depression, but had never felt that way inclined - at least, not to his family's knowledge.
"He promised me he would be safe," Nancy said. "I don't think he ever thought he was going to die."
I was living in a sleep out, at the back of a flat in Motueka, when George and I started hanging out. Planes from Skydive Abel Tasman's drop-zone were a common sight above on a clear day. George used to stay on my bedroom floor and we'd talk love, life and plans. He worked a little, picking apples, and skydived a lot.
George was fun, extremely caring and loyal. He also had a dirty sense of humour. He had little time for the mundane. Like all of us, he was far from perfect. Like many of us, he had his demons. Flying gave him an adrenaline rush and made him feel good. And that's what he would head to Europe to do.

LIVING THE BASE-JUMPING LIFESTYLE
George, 28, was sleeping in a van at the base of a mountain in the Trentino Alto Adige region in Italy.
He had grown a novelty moustache and, like many other base-jumpers, was living a gypsy lifestyle. Communication with his mother Nancy was sparse, apart from an SOS for money when his van got broken into.



Mother and son struck a deal. George promised to repay Nancy when he returned to Perth, where he had been working in the mines. He would never be able to make good on the deal.

FILM-MAKING PLANS
London-based Kiwi film-maker Blake Byles was filming a group of base-jumpers coming into land in a field of long grass below Monte Brento in 2012 when a cheeky-looking guy with a moustache walked past.
One of the first things Blake noticed about George, besides his perennial good nature and generosity, was that he was a lone wolf. Blake, 29, was there filming a follow-up to his 2011 film Venture to the Eiger. He and George sat on the dry earth below Monte Brento every day, sipping coffee and spitting out loquat seeds.
"He told me how his father had died when he was younger and how it affected him. I think it pushed him into a 'Who am I? What makes me a man?' kind of existential turmoil as a young adult. He often felt restless, unable to settle, constantly trying to push himself, trying to find his limits and find where he fit within them," Blake said.
When it was time for Blake to head back to Britain, George drove him to the bus station. The pair talked about collaborating on future base-jumping films. George was excited. He told Blake how he wanted to push himself and get closer to the earth during flight. He said he didn't care if he died.
"To hear how far he was willing to push himself, to a finite conclusion, was unsettling to say the least," Blake said.
George refused Blake's attempt to push gas money into his hand and gave him a big hug.
They said farewell like old friends.
"Laters bro."
That was the last time Blake saw him.


VIDEO: IN MEMORY OF GEORGE STAITE




A DANGEROUS LEVEL OF CONFIDENCE

George witnessed his first base-jump in 2009. Base is an acronym that stands for buildings, antennae, spans and earth. He watched someone leap off the Sugarloaf communications tower in Christchurch. He had never seen anything like it.
He left Nelson in mid-2010 to work in a mine in Kalgoorlie, in Western Australia. He didn't like the isolation but enjoyed going to Perth to visit friends and skydive during his weeks off. He also started leaping from fixed objects.
Ryan Scarlett, a fellow New Zealander, was also living in Western Australia. He and George met while studying engineering geology at the University of Canterbury in 2009 and forged a close friendship. Ryan was an experienced base-jumper, whose first jump was off the Perrine Bridge in Idaho in the United States, a fabled spot in the base-jumping community.
By the time George arrived in Australia, he had about 100 skydives under his belt.
"He wanted to base-jump and he was going to get into it no matter what," Ryan said.
"I wanted him to learn right."





Not long after introducing George to the sport, Ryan watched his friend Lucas Oliver fall to his death. Lucas got tangled in his parachute below the same tower from which George did his first jump. The 27-year-old was trying a flip and pulled his pilot chute too early. Ryan was right behind him. George, who had by then bought his own base-jumping gear, knew Lucas too. It shocked them, but didn't stop them.
A 2008 study by Umea University in Sweden found the annual fatality rate in 2002 to be one in 60 participants worldwide. The Base Fatality Statistics (BFS) list maintained by Blincmagazine.com has recorded 244 fatalities from 1981 to September 16 this year.
Ryan, 30, was with George on his first base-jumping mission to Italy in 2011. On that trip, George stood on the ledge at Monte Brento, suited up, ready to jump and froze. "He just freaked out. He was like, 'I'm not doing it. I just can't'. He didn't feel ready," Ryan said.
George eventually jumped, days later, shaping his body into an arrow and entering his first terminal velocity free-fall.
"Once you do it once or twice, you know that your gear is going to work and you are probably going to be OK," Ryan said. Probably. Ryan has a hefty scar above his right eye. He gave up base-jumping for two years after an accident in 2012.
He fractured his back in six places, fractured his skull, nose and eye socket, broke both elbows, tore ligaments in his knees and broke bones in his right foot.
"We had been jumping heaps and everything was going well. You become a little bit blasé," he said.
"I got caught out by the wind. It was a complete lack of judgment. You have got to treat every jump as a potential killer."
A week or two before George died, he emailed Ryan telling him he wanted to make a name for himself and get sponsored.
George was on his second trip to Italy and had a lot more confidence.
Ryan knew, from his own near-death experience, that too much confidence was dangerous. George had started doing backwards somersaults off cliffs, also known as "gainers", and his rapid progression was worrying some of his friends and other more experienced base-jumpers.
On September 10, George flipped off a ledge at Monte Brento and stretched his body out with his arms pinned back. He flew like a bird.
Wearing goggles to stop his eyes watering, he planned to do a "flyby", which is base lingo for a low pass above a tree or terrain.
"When you line up a point on the mountain it almost seems like slow motion as you approach it," Ryan said.
"You feel focused and sharp. When you finally buzz pass that point, you get a massive rush of adrenalin and it feels amazing. It is pure joy," he said.
But George attempted a sharp turn when he wasn't going fast enough. He lost lift and started falling more than flying. He tried to open his parachute, but before the lines stretched, he hit the ground. George's camera survived. He didn't. He was travelling at 200 kmh.


GEORGE 'FLEW CLOSE TO THE SUN'
Within days of George's accident, Nancy, his brother Julian, sister Catherine and other family members arrived in Italy. It was easy for them to see why George loved it so much there. Marco Regina, a base-jumping friend of George's from Switzerland, took them under his wing. They walked in George's footsteps, up Monte Brento, and saw the views that he had seen.
They saw the ledge he jumped from. Marco was back in Switzerland at the time of George's accident but he later spoke to local police and other jumpers to try to understand what happened.
When George saw he was in danger, he did what he could to solve the situation. "Unfortunately it went super wrong," Marco said.
Base-jumpers rarely get the chance to make the same mistake twice. Nancy has the footage from George's GoPro camera on a memory card in Nelson.
"I have never watched it,'' she said.
One day she will. "It will just get closer and closer to the rock."
And then? "It will stop."





For a long time, despite the hard evidence of a trip to Italy to see her son's body and the urn of ashes she came home with, Nancy pretended her son was on an extended European holiday.
"People loved him there," Nancy said.
"We stayed with his friend's family, whose dad was the first base-jumper in Italy. He said he was always saying to George, 'Slow down, George. Slow down. Take care. You have got a long time.' But George was always rip, shit and bust. He wanted to be the best in the world and he wanted to make money out of movies," she said.
"A lot of us don't live very exciting lives, we probably don't have to, but you know... for someone to die in that way... it was kind of rightful for George. I think he gave [base-jumping] his best shot.''
Only weeks before he died, George climbed Monte Brento alone. He stood on the ledge, taking it all in.
He was at peace. He later told Blake how he had felt completely "Zen".
He was where he belonged.
After George's accident, Blake asked himself the same question I've asked myself: Could George's death have been prevented? Should we have dissuaded him from living that life on the edge - chasing thrills? The answer is, No.
"Just because he sung a different song from us and liked to fly close to the sun, who were we to clip his wings and keep him caged up?" Blake said.
"He lit those up around him with his beautiful song," he said.
"And boy, could he fly."