Man flies 34,000 kilometres just to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

BridgeClimb Sydney welcome their first-ever one day international tourist!

It’s unbelievable, but true! A self-employed tradesman, Karl Cocker, from Manchester in the UK, jumped on a long-haul flight to travel 17,000 kilometres Down Under for one day only, just to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Karl booked a flight out of his home-town, Manchester, to Sydney, via Dubai. He only had an hour and a half lay-over in Dubai to get on his connecting flight. However, a rare occurrence of fog hit Manchester and his flight was delayed. His flight landed in Dubai and the flight attendant raced him to the connecting-flight terminal. Fortunately, and with only six minutes to spare, Karl made his flight just in the nick of time.

From a young age, Karl has had a fascination with two bridges: the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He grew up seeing these two bridges on news and travel programs, and looked forward to watching the fireworks on the Sydney Harbour Bridge every New Year’s Eve on television.

Over 30 years ago, Karl toured California and managed to tick one of his favourite bridges off his bucket list. He then watched Billy Connolly’s World Tour of Australia and discovered BridgeClimb Sydney, and his dream of Climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge began.

One of Karl’s hobbies is to visit iconic landmarks from around the world - landmarks such as the Vatican City in Italy, Niagara Falls in Canada, the Sagrada Familia in Spain and the Statue of Liberty in America. Most of these have been in Europe and the USA, but recently he decided to take advantage of a deal between the UK and Oz.

Karl travelled to Australia to Climb the Bridge, taking the phrase to “travel half way around the world” quite literally. “Until now I hadn’t had the opportunity to visit your city and its stunning Bridge. I know you have other icons in Sydney, but the Bridge is one of the oldest and I think the most remarkable”, said Karl. After making it to the summit of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, his expectations were more than met. He said, “The Climb was even better than I’d hoped for”.

After achieving his dream, Karl had the afternoon and evening to explore Sydney and then jumped back on a plane to the UK, the following morning.