I want to show off some elegant coolness to the boys behind me, I feel I have to prove something to them, earn their respect, yet when I see the pool of water 50 metres below I try – ridiculously – to find a way back to the ledge behind me. 

It’s a physical impossibility, I am in the air now, I put myself out there, everyone is watching, and there is nothing I can do about it.  The point of no return is there. I have to ride that moment. I have to commit. 

This is my defining moment in the Manhunt Australia national finals held in Cairns last week. It changed me in that I have had Bungee Jumping on my bucket list for more than 12 years, possibly even the same time since I wanted to give modelling a chance.

Of course I didn’t know where to begin with modelling. It was that sort of clueless bumbling I have when I catch that pretty girl at the bar making eyes at me. I know I should do something, but what, exactly! I used to have severe body image issues with a condition called Gynaecomastia and when I finally had surgery in my early 20s the scars of self-conscious physical awkwardness remained. 

As a journalist I trained myself to own a room, and to mingle, and to walk to anybody at a race meeting, taking photographs and names without hesitation. Some might have perceived me as awkward but I knew what I was doing. Yet take away my social crutch, take away my mindset as a professional, take away my notepad and my camera, and I was a different person. 

That person could not have taken off his shirt among a group of 20 men with chiseled abs to proudly show off his body in a Cairns nightclub. Yet I’m not sure what changed, why I even entered this competition – it’s the weak plot point to this story – but I do know that from the start I felt I didn’t deserve my ticket among the others. Three winners from the Mount Isa heat would compete in Cairns, and hey, guess what? Three had entered. 

The other heats elsewhere were more competitive and when I saw the photographs of these men – their elegance and poise and straight teeth two weeks before the national finals – I panicked. It scared me into going to the gym and eating well even while knowing a fortnight would help little. I thought Mount Isa competitors Dale Maher, Josh King and I would be surrounded by pretentious and arrogant pretty boys we would be obligated to hate, and who would undoubtedly oust me. 

Yet as we were tested with activities such as media interviews, photographs, mingling at the Cairns Amateur races, bungee jumping and braving seasickness on a boat to Green Island, I realised at some point that not only did each other man have a fear, an anxiety, some sort of wound or past rejection in their life, but that they were really nice people because of it. They had character and yet by their image were misunderstood by the observers around them. Even better, I saw they wanted each of their competitors to perform their best on the final night. 

The organisers from Procon Leisure and representatives from sponsor BBX Australia may have noticed some change to my personality and confidence during the week. I believe it is from the support I had from the men who I competed with, and who I became friends with, including from the winner. 

I have developed the values of perseverance and graciousness and it comes from Zaine Pringle, 26,  a fire safety technician from the Gold Coast. He will compete in the International Manhunt competition in November and it will be his first trip overseas. He is a golden child, a beautiful gentleman with a chiseled and confident look and one who knows how to wear a suit. He has been on TV, been published in magazines and competed in competitions before. Two hours before the final he showed me a great kebab place and we talked while eating snack packs. Zaine was interested in what I did and where I came from, and was impressed to learn I had started going to the gym. 

“That’s great,” he said. “You have started the changes.” I have been a journalist long enough to tell when someone is being sincere. Zaine spoke without being patronising. He was not using the occasion as a chance to intimidate a competitor. Zaine wanted to develop and encourage improvement. After he won the competition, when we had a few beers, he offered to send me some tips so I could tone up.

Another competitor I learned from was Daniel McDonald, a 34-year-old personal trainer from Adelaide who diversified in the local entertainment scene. At night Daniel is a male entertainer, but makes more money on weekends entertaining children’s parties. Daniel entered the competition not believing he would win an award despite his experience and muscles but it did not concern him. 

On Thursday night before our shirtless ladies’ night pageant in the Gilligan’s nightclub  I was terrified because I was expected to mingle with women in bars to advertise our events. This is not something I was confident in. The guys reached out to me, including Daniel who told me that he used to be anxious when he was younger. 

“What happened?” I asked. 

“I refuse to be scared. I just refuse to feel it,” he said. This zealous mastery of emotions seemed easier said than done yet as I considered Daniel’s words I realised I had accepted fear and anxiety as part of my life for a long time. I had come to terms with it, considered it as such a big part of myself that without it I felt empty. I had come to terms with fear, and that’s courage, I suppose, leaping off that edge in different ways, and yet if you jump and second-guess and try to fight the gravity, what good does it do?  So I walked up to women, I stammered, they smiled patiently, and eventually I made friends of the moment, and I heard their cheers when I posed on the catwalk later. It’s then I knew I had just as much chance to win the competition as everyone else. It was unfair on every other guy that I projected my physical differences at them. 

I observed humbleness and the value of silence from my roommate Dino Hira, 34, a man from Perth who works in the mining industry. This is all we knew of him the first day of the competition. We all had to find out from the Cairns Post the next morning that Dino was also Mr Australasia 2016. Surely someone else would have slipped in the brag somewhere in the first hour in a moment of insecurity. 

During the week he went to bed as early as he could and saved the drinking until the end. Dino kept his strategies close, including pulling a rose from his sleeve on stage to give to a judge, but he never withdrew from the competitors. I never heard him swear. I never heard him being crude. He was respectful and wise, and took all at face value. 

I did not learn as much from the other Mount Isa competitors Dale and Josh, but they gave me what I needed. Dale gave Mount Isa glory by getting the encouragement award and a free pass into next year’s national final.

The judges see a future for Dale and any local that knows him would support that faith. In the times of insecurity or a friendly face I searched for his company. Yet it’s actually Josh I want to focus on and the reason is that when you first put us together at a bar you would consider him my antithesis. He has the metaphorical silver tongue, and I have witnessed several people yell at him one minute and then share their life stories with him the next. 

One night I needed assurance and Josh was there for me. On the Bungee Jumping tower, event photographer Richard Mamando captured a photograph of me with my arms and head in the air – the messiah pose. I saw the photo the same evening the other photographs of competitors emerged online. I saw abdominal muscles and toned chests, and then I saw myself.

As an amateur photographer I loved the style, but as the subject I hated it. It was later I would see Richard’s photographs in my natural environment – race day in a suit, and of those taken by Denis Dwan. But at that stage I was surrounded by epitome of physical manliness for days and here I was seeing my thin arms and a defined rib cage in contrast. It’s then I thought everyone at home in Mount Isa, who knew me and worked with me, were laughing at my audacity to compete.

I was sulking and falling asleep three hours before our suggested curfew when Josh came banging into the room to prepare for a night out. He knew something was wrong and reminded me this trip was about having an adventure as well. He understood how I felt, didn’t dismiss it, and encouraged me to go out. We danced on tables in nightclubs next to the most beautiful women I have ever seen, and shared “the cheapest, nastiest spirits” that Josh could fit onto one tray. 

When I think back to the toughest challenges, Josh and Dale were there with subtle compliments that bolstered my spirits. “I heard your photographic judging turned out great!” Josh said to me that next night, and I found something in myself, this ability to stride on a catwalk in nothing but shorts. Mateship moves you and motivates in those little ways that makes fear so irrelevant in your life. 

When we left the catwalk after ladies’ night had finished, completing our routines without stuffing up, someone started a call out. “Boys!” someone roared, and then stuffed together in the green room we screamed together, arms around each other in celebration as if we were a winning AFL team returning to the locker room instead of as individual competitors. 

“Boys!” we screamed again. “Boys, boys, boys, boys, boys, boys!” It was the happiest moment I had in a long time, there was no cheesy insincerity cheapening this moment. I belonged as part of some brotherhood and this collective acceptance came in the strangest of places. 

All we had to do was leap. All we had to do was fly. 

*North West Star journalist Chris Burns was a competitor in the Manhunt Australia national finals in Cairns and therefore as a national competitor benefited with a plane trip from Mount Isa to Cairns, accommodation at Gilligan’s Backpackers during the finals, and sponsors’ products and services.