A cited history
Australian freefly: three decades of scene, records and rules
Modern freefly did not arrive fully formed. Australia has a documented arc from a mid-1990s tutor sign-off to an angle discipline at the National Championships in 2026. This is that arc, drawn from the published record and cited to it.
The clearest continuous witness to the Australian freefly scene is the Australian Skydiver Magazine, the national member magazine. It is reportage rather than policy, so it stands as a secondary witness to the primary documents. Everything below is cited to it, or to the relevant published rule book or article, by issue and year. People are named only where the published record names them.
The regulatory spine
A roughly thirty-year arc runs from a 1996 tutor sign-off, through a single scarce crest that gated freefly groups larger than three, to the 2014 codification of the crest as a coach prerequisite, the 2015 agreement to split the crest and write angle guidelines, and the 2016 head-up and head-down split going live. Angles then took a further decade to reach the competition floor.
c. 1996
The first tutor era
Community recollection dates the first formal Australian freefly prerequisite, a tutor sign-off before a jumper could freefly, to around 1996, when head-down flying arrived in Western Australia from the United States. It began life as a gatekeeping-before-competence problem.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 75 (2015)
2009
Vertical formation flying enters formal competition
The inaugural national 4-way Vertical Formation Skydiving and Artistic Freefly Championships ran at Sydney Skydivers. Freefly was now inside the competition structure.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 45 (2009)
2010 to 2013
The single Freefly Crest
Ratings lists across this period consistently show two live credentials: a Freefly Crest for participants and a Tutor Freefly for coaches. Crest awards were scarce. The crest’s purpose was stated plainly in 2011: it "allows the holder to jump on Freefly sorties for more than three people", the gate for freefly groups larger than three.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 55 and 64 (2011 to 2013)
May 2014
Codification: crest becomes a coach prerequisite
The pivotal regulatory milestone. Uncrested freefly jumpers were restricted to groups of three, making the crest a hard group-size gate. A Freefly Crest became a stated prerequisite for the coach appointment, "Tutor" was renamed "Coach", and the freefly training table gained explicit head-up and head-down stage differentiation, the direct precursor to today’s national guide.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 70 (2014)
2015
The crest split, agreed in principle
At the 2015 national conference, the freefly workshop reached general agreement to separate the head-up and head-down portions of the crest, and that national guidelines (preferred over a formal rule) were needed for angles, atmonauti and tracking, with the prerequisite task of first defining what each of those jumps is.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 76 (2015)
October 2015
Coach minimum requirements codified
The first published statement of codified minimum requirements for both the Freefly Crest and the Freefly Coach rating entered the regulations and their schedules, the direct ancestor of today’s coach pathway.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 77 (2015)
2016
The head-up and head-down crest split goes live
By mid-2016 the ratings lists showed three tiers in use: a general Freefly Crest, a Freefly Crest Head-Down and a Freefly Crest Head-Up. A national train-the-trainer tour ran the first modern community-wide review of the freefly training table and established the 5,500 ft head-up angle break-off recommendation still used today.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 78 to 83 (2015 to 2016)
2018 to 2019
Angles enter the framework
A technical directive issued in December 2018 detailed new regulations for tracking and angle jumps. The national beginner freefly guide was redeveloped to add a whole section on tracking and angles. At the 2019 conference, a workshop reached consensus that the situation was not fully effective and proposed a two-level angle crest, an idea that, like a 2015 "leader crest" proposal, was not adopted.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 94 and 96 (2019)
March 2026
Angle flying enters the National Championships
The angle discipline made its debut at the 2026 Australian Skydiving Championships at Moruya, flown to a published competition dive pool and rules designed around the way modern movement flying actually looks, with a held line of flight and navigation as defining judged elements.
APF Angle Flying Competition Rule Book (2026); Skydivemag, "Angle flying enters Australian Nationals" (2026)
Records and milestones
Australian flyers appear throughout the world-record lists, and the national scene set its own firsts. A selection, each documented in the magazine of record.
2011
A 33-way Australian head-down record was set at Picton on 29 December 2011, the first fully documented national head-down record, with detailed oxygen-system and debrief-culture notes.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 59 (2012)
2014
The team Focus equalled the Australian 4-way Vertical Formation Skydiving record at the New South Wales State Championships held at Moruya.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 73 (2014)
2015
Nine Australians took part in the 164-way head-down world record at Skydive Chicago.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 77 (2015)
2019
The first Australian head-up formation record, a 16-way, was set at Moruya over the Australia Day long weekend, organised by Focus with national funding.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 96 (2019)
2022
Focus won Vertical Formation Skydiving silver at the World Parachuting Championships in Eloy, Arizona, the strongest Australian VFS result on record at the time.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 110 (2022)
2022
Ten Australian women flew on the 72-way and then 80-way women’s vertical world records set at Skydive Arizona in November 2022.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 111 (2023)
People who shaped the scene
Named here only for published, factual reasons: a documented record, a rating awarded, or an article they wrote. This is not a ranking, and it is far from complete.
- Kim "Scatty" Hopwood organised Australian freefly big-ways through the 2010s, including the 33-way head-down record, and wrote the account of the first Australian head-up formation record in 2019 (Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 59 and 96).
- Team Focus (including Kim Hopwood, Tim Golsby-Smith, Kyle Chick and Jimmy Cooper) carried Australian Vertical Formation Skydiving to a world silver medal in 2022 and organised the 2019 head-up record (Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 96 and 110).
- Mason Corby ran the national freefly train-the-trainer tour in 2015 and 2016, published a discipline-first progression philosophy, and later designed the angle competition dive pool for the discipline’s 2026 National Championships debut (Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 80 and 82; APF Angle Flying Competition Rule Book, 2026).
- Cath Comyns and Erica Tadokoro feature repeatedly in the women’s vertical record lists across more than a decade, from a 41-way world record in 2010 to the 80-way in 2022 (Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 54 and 111).
- Jake Carlton published the modern analysis of head-up angle flying and the break-off problem, whose GPS-derived separation figures underpin much of the current break-off guidance (Skydivemag).
This history is compiled from published sources and is offered as a factual, respectful record of a shared sport. If you can correct or extend it with a published citation, the "Suggest a change" link below goes straight to the project.
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