When there was nothing much to do at the Gold Coast Youth Fitness church camp, we often found ourselves gathered at the trampolines. There were four of them bound together on the grassless area just beside the tennis courts. Ex ‘Queensland Gymnastic Champion’ David, was the self proclaimed ringmaster of this particular circus arena – with no argument from us! It was here that he taught me to do a double front somersault, not in the conventional way from feet to feet on the big red centre cross, no, in the dangerous but spectacular way of back to back from one end of the tramp to the other there was always a twist on convention with David. Now trampolining can be exhilarating fun, but only after the painful lessons had been experienced once and then carefully avoided in repeated activities. Like the unthinking ending high jump off the trampoline, stupidly expecting the hard ground to give soft comfort like the feeling of the sprung mat, experienced for the last 30 minutes of activity. Wrong! The violent shudder in the legs caused by the colliding contact with the unforgiving ground was soon followed by the taste of blood as you tried to use your plummeting chin to hammer your knees deeper into the earth. Still, the lesson learnt most painfully for us boys was, never to land a jump with legs apart into the supporting springs. Why? cause the springs would open up under the pressure of the falling weight and then close on their rebounding action and trap and pinch between those sprung steel coiled vices, any loose soft part of one’s anatomy. Now why something so painful should cause such hilarity for all the other boys, can be partly be explained by the centuries old boy’s reaction to the inappropriate delivery and chiming receipt of the cricket ball into one’s delicate appendages. Well, the only public humiliating way to extradite oneself from this predicament, was to have everyone stand on the tramp around the spring and by the introduction of enough weight, persuade the pitiless metal coil to let go of its prized catch. There was also the important lesson of exercising appropriate care if ever David offered to share your tramp. A lesson supa-keen Bancroft just had to learn from hard experience. One time, David asked Bancroft to team up with him on the tramp for a demonstration, to the gathered crowd, of tandem trampolineing. One could not help but notice Bancroft’s rather chuffed demeanour at being personally singled out to perform a high air stunt with the ringmaster. So, with purposeful application he began to counter-match perfectly David’s high-air recoiling bounce. They presented initially like a well oiled crank shaft with twin firing pistons responding in harmony. Now, whilst Bancroft concentrated intensely on his seemingly required back up roll for the display, the crowd waited in anticipation of the master’s applause-warranted act. Of little concern to the focused Bancroft, was the evolving fact that David had gradually shortened his jumping style until those thrusting pistons had changed their impetus by design from converse to parallel action. At this high upward thrusting moment of twin airborne bodies, David raised his knees level with his grinning face and with a full leg extension launched Bancroft into a beautiful traveling layout. Gravity played it’s part in the act, as it does, and pulled both bodied back in an earthward direction. Firstly, one body felt the cushioning of the tramp’s mat and heard the stretching sounds of the extending springs. The other? Well Bancroft’s bruised bum from its connection with the grassless ground, made even walking a difficult proposition for most of that day and even the next. As I understand it, he made a solemn vow to never again be the pult in David’s often repeated display on the unsuspecting – The Flying Catapult.
