Out of the Box: the Highs and Lows of a Champion Smuggler

329 Pages·2015·6.845 MB·English

by  McSorley, Julie

Reg Spiers arrived in England in 1964 as a world-class athlete. He returned
to Australia in a box, but that was only the start of his adventures.
Crazily impulsive, romantic, and free-spirited, Reg became a national hero
for smuggling himself 13,000 miles home as air freight. But as his fame
and sporting career faded, Reg decided to smuggle something very
different. Soon he was on the run with his girlfriend, playing a cat-and-
mouse game with police on three continents. A wild road trip across India
and Africa—idyllic beaches and prison hellholes, shady friends and shadier
cops, gun-toting militias and drug-running gangsters—led to a courtroom
in Sri Lanka and the fight of his life. Could Reg beat the death sentence
he’d just been given, or was this box too big to climb out of?
The Incredible True Story of a Champion’s Life on the Run
$15.95
ISBN 978-1-938901-32-4
51595>
9 781938 901324
OUT OF THE BOX

OUT OF THE BOX
  
THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF A
CHAMPION SMUGGLER
J M S M M S
ulie c orley and arcuS c orley
Roaring Forties Press
1053 Santa Fe Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94706
www.roaringfortiespress.com
This is a work of creative nonfiction. The events described in this book
took place. Conversations, of course, were not recorded at the time, and
have been re-created based on memory and research, or reimagined by
the authors. Some names and identifying details have been changed to
protect the privacy of the people involved.

Copyright © 2015 Julie McSorley and Marcus McSorley
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
Cover design by Anna Morrison; interior design by Nigel Quinney.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
I978-1-938901-32-4 (print)
978-1-938901-33-1 (PDF)
978-1-938901-34-8 (ePub)
978-1-938901-35-5 (Kindle)
For the late, great Bille Brown, who insisted that
“there was room for mad bastards,”
and set us on our path
“I’ve seen so much and lived it all. I wanted to bite
the earth and taste it. It is both bitter and sweet, and
if I had my time to live over again, I wouldn’t change
a damn thing.”
— Reg Spiers
C
ontents
Foreword, Lynn Davies CBE ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Prologue 3
Part One: Early 1980s 9
Part Two: 1960s 99
Part Three: 1980s 171
Part Four: Late 1980s 263
Afterword 307
An Australian/British and American Glossary 310
About the Authors 312

F
oreword
B l d CBE
y ynn avieS
Chatting with friends about the “box story” recently, I joked that
perhaps male throwers are the “wild men of athletics.” The jury is
still out on that one. There have been few comparative studies on
the personality traits of track and field athletes, but the eventful
life of one javelin thrower, the aptly named Reg Spiers, may fuel
further speculation!
Elite track and field athletes of Reg’s era operated in a very
different environment than those of today. Most of us were
forced to fit our training programs and international competi-
tions around employment commitments. Sponsorship for ath-
letes was scant and access to coaches and mentors often de-
pended on geographical location, the knowledge base of local
athletics clubs, and a fair amount of luck. Imagine these condi-
tions against the backdrop of the swinging sixties, and Reg’s saga
is all the more intriguing.
Most athletes, including myself, are opposed to drugs in any
circumstances. Reg is thus somewhat of an enigma, because
his misadventures began when he was a talented, high-profile
sportsman: Reg won the National Australian Javelin Champi-
onships on two occasions and came fifth in the 1962 Common-
wealth Games.