A CROWD gathered at the Warrnambool breakwater last weekend to watch a jetpack spectacle resembling a cross between Aquaman and Iron Man.
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Nirranda dairy farmer Luke Parsons and his family have one of about 120 Flyboards sold in Australia.
The water jetpacks have been available for purchase since 2012 for a cool $10,000, but Mr Parsons was able to find a better deal on eBay for well under half the price.
“Mine was used in a Coca-Cola ad in Fiji and had only done about 10 hours of flying,” he told The Standard.
“It’s fun. It’s something different.
“To get up to three or four metres is pretty easy, but you’ve got to have some balance.
“We get up to about eight or nine metres in the air and now we’re trying to attempt backflips, corkscrews.
“People are pretty fascinated by it and how it works. It’s not something you see every day.
“There were about 50 people along the breakwater watching us the last weekend we took it out.”
- Press 'play' or sign into Facebook to watch a video of Luke Parsons on his Flyboard.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to be mates with the Parsons to have a try, as there are no current plans to set up a commercial Flyboard business in Warrnambool.
“I’ve only got a private licence and have no plans of going commercial,” Mr Parsons said.
“The insurance costs would be astronomical.
“They’re very strict.
“It’s still banned in NSW to use on public waterways.
“You have to do a course and get a licence before they let you buy it.
“There’s a certain amount of flying hours you have to do, then you have to instruct people how to use it, and that’s before they’d even sell it to me.”