Broke and missing his family, a failed javelin thrower ships himself air cargo 11,000 miles across the world to attend his brother’s wedding
The Frenchman with an Australian Accent
The only French that Patrick Claude Albert Ledoux appeared to know was “Bonjour Monsieur, and all that,” that too with an Australian accent. He was speaking to the press in February 1984 outside a Sri Lankan court awaiting trial for drug-running.
Ledoux (who was travelling on a French passport) had been arrested in Sri Lanka two months before. He seemingly had no past criminal record; at least, not by that name. What he did have on him at the time of arrest was a cassette player with, according to customs, heroin and hashish.
He was known in Australia by a different name — Reginald James Spiers. ‘Reg,’ to his friends. Spiers was known for many things, including for cricket, javelin, and several drug-related offences. His biggest claim to fame however was shipping himself in a wooden box from London to Australia, collect. All 11,000 miles.
The Athlete
Spiers’ first attempt at sport was cricket. He was a fast bowler (apparently a good one) until he tried to throw the javelin to see how far he could get it. The Senior Spiers says young Reg threw it farther than they could see. With that, cricket was out and athletics was in.
Even though extremely ambitious, Spiers’ javelin skills stagnated at mediocre during the early stages of his career. He competed at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, coming in fifth: nearly ten metres behind his fellow Australian Alfred Mitchell. Speirs got better the following year after hard work and a lot of practice — recording (what would be his personal best) at 78.13 metres in 1963.
He then imjured his elbow.
Much like with racehorses and busted legs, injured athletes are of little value to their countries. Australia didn’t deem Spiers good enough to be part of the country’s Olympics team next year. The best Reg could manage at qualifiers was a 69.7 , way behind even his personal best.
Unselected yet undeterred, he decided he can go to England on his own money and improve his throw. The selectors would be forced to enlist him (at least, he thought so in his head). The fair weather that English summers could bring is what he wagered on.
He took a ship to London. The summer he had pegged his hopes on for helping better his throw, didn’t. He didn’t make it to the team. Even if Spiers had managed wiggle his way into the games, he wouldn’t have even made it past the actual game’s qualifiers — the cut-off for that year was 77 metres. The winning Finn, Pauli Nevala, threw a 82.66.
Nor did anyone else: Australia went to the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics without a javelin-thrower.
The Aviator
His dream crushed, Spiers had to come back home. He missed his wife and his two-year old daughter Joanna. But he was broke. Since airlines were not in the habit of letting passengers fly for free (or pay on arriving at their destination) Spiers took what he thought was the next best option: he was going to ship himself, air cargo, on credit.
He made a plan. He then made a wooden crate. Indian Airways (now defunct) were told that the crate contained paint. Payment was supposed to be on delivery, and the airline obliged (it’s possible that the lax approach to financial responsibilities contributed to the eventual bankruptcy of the airline).
On 17 October 1964 he got into the box. His friends nailed it shut. They drove the box to the airport and handed it, Spiers and all, to the airline. A day or so later, staff loaded the box into one of the airline’s newly-acquired Boeing 707 aircraft, and he was off.
The first leg of his 11,000-mile journey would bring him to Mumbai. Mumbai summers are hot. Mumbai summers are also humid. Mumbai summers are basically saunas.
The gaps between the planks, according to him, were enough “to give me air and allow me to peep out.” He had two bags, a small pocket knife, a collection of Esquire Magazine’s articles titled The Bedside Esquire, and a carton of beer. The crate was labelled ‘Fragile,’ and arrows pointed which direction was up. He would later tell the press that the crate was “surprisingly comfortable”.
After some considerable time in the Mumbai heat, Spiers’ box was taken to another waiting Boeing 707. This would bring the crate to Perth. The UK-manufacturers’ (Southern Chemical Company) ‘paint’ (Synthetic Polymer Emulsion) in the box was addressed to a shoe factory there (Supreme Shoe Company). Indian Airlines obviously did not know that the factories and addresses were bogus, and Spiers did not count on them to take him home. Aviation security as a concept also clearly did not exist.
Sixty-three hours after he had gotten into the box, he was in Perth. He was still more than 1.600 miles away from his home town of Adelaide. A tired, hungry, and dehydrated Spiers somehow managed to get himself out of the box, then out of the warehouse the box was in, then out of the airport.
Then he hitchhiked home. He had to get home in time for his brother’s wedding. Spiers says he hitched a ride from the first car he saw outside the airport as long as they would take him (a pastor or preacher of some sort), and then begged and borrowed the rest of the way home. His twenty-one year old wife Catherine was, understandably, “horrified” about his travel plan when he eventually came home home.
It’s unclear who discovered the empty crate in the Customs warehouse. Careless as always though, Spiers had left enough clues for officials to figure out who was in it.
Australian Customs and Immigration officials had some questions for Spiers. Customs, because he didn’t present himself for a screening thereby violating regulations; Immigration, because they were unsure about his smallpox vaccination status. Neither of them were really concerned about how he got into the country — that was the airline’s problem. All he had to do was to get the shot and undergo quarantine.
“He knows what he has to pay,” said an airline official to the press at the time. They refused to issue a fresh invoice for the $950 (roughly $9,500 in today’s money) owed to them. Spiers asked to pay them back in instalments — he was still broke, and the only money he had made was $89.60 by selling the story to a newspaper. The airline wanted the money as a lump sum, and maintained that international freight regulations at the time forbade them from waiving the fee.
It’s not clear if he ever paid up. It seems unlikely.
The next flight Spiers took was in 1964, this time paid for by the Australian taxpayer, in the passenger compartment. His sporting record was slowly coming back. In 1967, he was part of a British Commonwealth team competing against the United States and West Germany. Things appeared to be going well.
This is when his dark side came out.
Former Australian decathlon champion John Hammon travelled with Spiers on that trip. Hammon told the Sydney Morning Herald in 1987 that Mr Spiers would “hang out at striptease joints and topless bars,” and showed an “undue fondness” for women and alcohol. The tour was a disaster for Spiers. His sporting career was over. He first dabbled in drugs, then he got to selling.
The Drug-runner
In 1980, Spiers was arrested in Australia for conspiring to import cannabis resin worth $1.2 million (nearly $4 million in today’s money). He managed to get bail pending trial. In 1981 he fled with his lover at the time, Barbara Tobin.
He was next seen in India in 1982. Tobin was nowhere to be seen. On 5 January 1982 he was arrested by Mumbai police with what was believed to be 25 kilos of hashish. The next time he popped up was in Sri Lanka, two years later. It’s again unclear how to got out of Indian law enforcement.
Sri Lanka had (and still has) harsh laws in place for drug trafficking, and Spiers could face the death penalty. He was arrested with a reported kilo of heroin and a kilo of hashish, pretending to be French (the immigration crimes would be a bonus).
The two things going for Mr Spiers at the time was that Sri Lanka had stopped hanging people, and that local officials initially bought his story about being from France. When an Australian diplomat (who found out through the Colombo rumour mill) reached out to Spiers asking if he needed any consular assistance, he replied “Not yet. They don’t know yet.”
‘They’ eventually got to know. Three years later, Spiers would be found guilty of drug trafficking. The quantity of drugs had changed. The kilo of heroin remained in place, but the two kilos of hashish had turned into ‘slabs of other drugs’. Forty-one packets in all. He was given the death sentence in 1987. But as his lawyer predicted, the sentence was not carried out.
Spiers appealed the conviction. The appeal questioned the identification of the ‘drugs’ that had been recovered from his person. After two days of hearings a three-judge bench overturned the conviction. He had spent three years in custody since his arrest in 1984. Spears was a free man in Sri Lanka, at least as far as the drugs were concerned. He still faced immigration law violation charges because of his forged French passport. He was arrested, but the charges were dropped and he was flown back to Australia. It’s possible that Sri Lankan officials just wanted to see him gone.
Upon arrival on home soil he pled guilty to charges of importing 40 kilos of cannabis into the country. He was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. The South Australian Supreme Court in 1988 found him guilty on the charges he was facing when he fled in 1981. He was given a ten-year prison sentence.
His trail dies off after the 1988 conviction. His daughter (Joanne, named after his mother) would also flirt with the law, getting arrested for drug crimes, but Spiers disappears into the void. Perhaps his father’s comment about Sri Lankan officials who packed off Reg Spiers to Australia would ring true to others in his life as well: “I think they will be pleased to get rid of him.”
Photographs used under license from The Associated Press. If you found this read interesting, you can help me out by becoming a Patron — it helps pay my bills.
