Back for a fourth year, Bigways on the Beach took place at Far North Freefall last month, with the initial bad weather clearing up to make way for super smooth formation loads and stunning island jumps!

Day 1 & 2

Cast your mind back to last month — it's mid September and bigway jumpers from all over Australia and New Zealand are travelling to Far North Queensland for the fourth edition of the highly-anticipated "Bigways on the Beach" event.

Known for its warm winter climate, stunning scenery and good vibes, this event never fails to deliver. But with tropical rainforests comes tropical rain! And that's what the 51 jumpers were treated to on arrival. With 45 participants, 3 coaches and 3 camera flyers — and a total of 141,249 skydives between them — this event was due to be a great one, albeit slightly delayed thanks to mother nature. But as we all know, weather holds present a learning opportunity, which was taken advantage of with everyone testing out their personal floatation devices and emergency water landing procedures.

The group's patience began to pay off towards the end of Day 2, with a couple of hop and pop loads being sent in the afternoon — a good opportunity to test out the new natural swoop pond feature in the landing area!

Day 3

After 2 days of rain, Thursday was a new day as the group woke up with fingers and toes crossed for good weather — and finally Mother Nature was onside!

The skies finally cleared, giving everyone the opportunity to get their knees in the breeze with some warm-up 8-ways, before pushing it up a notch moving into some absolutely beautiful 16-ways.

The energy was high, the vibes were strong, and the group were ready and raring for more progression.

Day 4

Friday brought more good weather and the group were ready to make the most of it, moving into two-plane formation loads!

There was nothing but good energy in the sky as the group completed super smooth formation loads over the stunning backdrop of Far North Queensland, with a successful 27-way setting the bar as a new North Queensland record!

Then to take the scenery level up a notch, the group closed off the day with jumps over Mission Beach — unreal views and smiles all round!

Day 5

Saturday was the final day of "Bigways on the Beach" for 2025, and it was time for Dunk Island.

After a few 16-ways in the morning, the group had the absolute privilege of jumping over the beautiful island, landing on the golden sand spit. It doesn't get much more picturesque than that, with pure magic in freefall.

What an incredible way to end the fantastic week!

Roll on 2026. We're looking forward to it already.

Thank You's

Huge thanks to our awesome Display Organiser, Mick Hardy, for organising these displays and keeping everything running smooth; to Karen Hardy for all the hard work behind the scenes that makes this event happen; to the coaches — Riss Anderson, Andrew Barker and Mark "Higgo" Higgins; to the camera flyers — Michael Young, Spot Tonson and Jarrad Nolan; to all the event participants; to the pilots, ground crew and all other volunteers at FNFF; and of course to the incredible sponsors who make this event possible — Far North Freefall Skydive Club, Queensland Parachuting Association (NQPC and SQPC), Australian Parachute Federation, Terminal Sports, Sun Path Products, CYPRES, Downward Trend, Cookie Helmets, LB Altimeters and LVN.

Thank you to Michael Young for his contributions to this article.

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[Photo sources: Michael Young, Spot Tonson, Jarrad Nolan]