ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A 34-year-old man who should know better has knocked the wind out of himself again doing a backflip off Pont Bjelke into the Diamantina River below.
Jumping off Pont Bjelke in the French Quarter is seen as a rite of passage for many local youths.
Most jump off it a few times when they’re 16 to impress the opposite sex and never do it again.
However, someone hasn’t told Fiat Stoneprose that.
Fiat, who was named after his father’s favourite car maker, was spotted this afternoon on the Pont Bjelke shortly before 3pm this afternoon.
He was topless in the baking Simpson Desert heat when he made the quick hop over fence and stood with his back to the abyss below.
“Don’t do it, Fiat! You fucking idiot!” yelled one passing motorist.
That only egged him on more.
He told our reporter at the Gelded Seahorse Hotel just a few moments ago that some thoughts of what happened last time began to rush through his mind in the seconds before he jumped.
“Last time,” he said before taking a pensive sip of his Real McCoy can.
“I overrated and landed flat on my front. It was low tide, too. So that means it was about 30m down to the water,”
“Mate, it was about 9 weeks until I could go from being prone to standing without moaning like a fat yuppie fighting a noisy pub that’s been there for a hundred years. It was like being run over by a tank,”
“So, I made sure this time I didn’t mess it up.”
Our reporter noticed blood slowly trickling from Fiat’s ears.
“It happened again but this time it wasn’t as bad. I reckon I broke some ribs. Nobody saw me land, either. Which was good but it kind of defeats the purpose of jumping off a bridge if nobody’s there to see you do it,”
“I’m OK, but. The front of me is a bit funny. Look.”
Fiat lifted his shirt and revealed several haematomas hanging off him like golf balls in purple socks.
“Pretty mad.”
Management at the pub then cut Fiat off and asked him to wait on the floor for an ambulance.
More to come.
