CRATE ESCAPE
A BRIT who airmailed himself home to the UK from Australia is hoping to find two Irish pals who helped him into the crate.
Brian Robson, 76, wants to contact Paul and John — he does not recall their surnames — who helped him on his mad journey from Oz.
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Back in 1965, at the age of 19, Brian from Cardiff, was desperately homesick in Melbourne after he carried out an assisted immigration programme with Victorian Railways.
But he was unable to pay the hefty airfare to travel from Melbourne back to London.
In a desperate plan to avoid paying for the plane ticket, he nailed himself into a wooden crate with the help of the two friends, John and Paul.
Now Brian is searching for the two Irish lads who helped him in his ambitious bid to get home.
The two men worked for the same company and were schoolmates back in Ireland.
But Brian cannot recall where they were from or what their last names were.
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The journey was meant to take 36 hours but the Qantas flight he was booked on to was full so the container Brian was in was instead loaded onto a Pan Am service, which took a slower and alternate route to the one which he had expected.
Brian spent nearly an entire day upside down despite numerous signs on the box with "this side up" stickers.
He revealed the airplane's hold alternated between freezing and boiling hot, his body ached and he had trouble breathing.
After four days, he was brought to a freight shed. He told how he had to get out of the box at night but couldn't see his watch and was rumbled when he dropped a torch inside the crate which prompted people to investigate what was going on.
Brian expected to hear "cockney accents" but started to have doubts that he was in London when the people he heard talking sounded American.
I would like to meet up with them again, even if it just exchanging emails
Brian Robson
Between 20 to 40 people including the FBI, the CIA, airport security and the police turned up and he was lifted out of the box and brought to hospital.
He told The Sun: "They took me to Los Angeles Central Receiving Hospital, where I spent perhaps another four days and after that I made a recovery.
"The CIA and FBI both came along to interview me. They were really nice, friendly people, the whole lot of them in the States. It didn't take them very long to discover I wasn't a Cold War spy.
"I remember them saying to me 'we thought you were a spy at one point.' They were brilliant."
Brian, who has worked most of his life in retail and now lives back home in Cardiff in Wales, was then flown back to London first class by Pan Am.
All these years later, he's hoping to reconnect with the two men who made his adventure possible.
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He said: "When I first came back for the first couple of weeks, or a month or so I was tied up with every TV station and quite honestly, I didn't really have time to contact them.
"I did then send them a letter at the last known address but never got an answer ... we were really good friends.
"Whenever I think about it, they're the first people I think of because without them it would have been impossible to do."
Brian recalled that it took them about a month to put the plan into action, even
Paul was hesitant because "he didn't want to kill me".
He said: "I was rather worried about my safety. But I didn't really understand how dangerous this thing was.
"I mean, it sounds stupid to say it now. But I really didn't understand how dangerous it was."
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Brian revealed he used to chat to John and Paul about Ireland and that they used to swap stories about where they came from but Brian can't remember their surnames or where in Ireland they were from. Brian said they would now be aged between 75 and 77 and he would love to catch up.
He said: "I would like to meet up with them again. Even if it's just exchanging emails.
If they were in the UK or in Ireland after this virus thing is finished I'm sure we could probably arrange to meet up personally.
"If they are in Australia, we couldn't because I made a promise to myself.
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"I've done a heck of a lot of legal travelling since then. I've been all over the world in many, many, many countries but I don't want to go back to Australia."
Paul and John can reach out via email at [email protected].
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