One of my earliest memories is standing on top of a coal shed and jumping off.
Just launching myself over the rose bushes and into the ether, eyes turned upwards to the heavens.
The delicious split-second of freedom, of feeling like a bird in flight, stays with me to this day.
Landing was not much fun, but all the sudden jolts and bruises were well worth it.
I did not have a Superman, Batman or Spiderman suit; we couldn't have afforded one.
I doubt if I had even heard of the comic book heroes, because I was too young to read and we didn't have telly in post-war Scotland.
The addition of several years did not seem to add to my intelligence level, for I can distinctly remember as a primary schooler in Australia climbing to the top of a fir tree and hurling myself off.
The idea was to free fall through the boughs and branches, which look deceptively soft from the ground.
I am astonished at this distance in time to report I suffered no serious injury from this highly dubious pastime.
I know these escapades make me sound like I had a kangaroo loose in the top paddock, but the point is I have always wanted to fly.
Not to fly in aircraft so much as to fly like a bird.
Which is why I gasped when I saw a recent photo of Swiss airline pilot Yves Rossy, 48, slicing through the heavens strapped to 2.5m wide carbon wings powered by four tiny jets and reaching speeds of up to 300 km/h.
I was giddy with excitement and envy.
You might think I grew up to become a hang-gliding fanatic or something, but the truth is I'm kind of scared of it.
Fascinated but scared.
I often stop at Stanwell Tops and watch those free spirits soar in the cliffside thermals taking them out to sea and back again just like a gull.
I sit there mesmerised, but that's as far as it has gone.
I have seen film of those machines that pump up jets of air into a wind tunnel and allow people to float in mid-air.
I would probably have a go at that if I ever came across one, though I'd want to be sure they ease back the wind power gradually and allow you to land softly rather than just turn a switch off and make you flop to the ground like I did from my childhood coal shed.
Would I bungy jump?
No way. I am too keen for my eyes to remain in their sockets.
But I still remember some long-ago TV ads, for a soft drink I think, in which guys surfed on boards through the air, like a real-life version of the man in the Val Morgan cinema ads.
Though I have never been the world's most comfortable aeroplane passenger, I did once experience positive and negative G forces of considerable magnitude when I flew with a RAAF crew off Mallacoota.
They were practising dive-bombing from 10,000 feet, levelling off near sea level, then dropping depth charges to hit an imaginary submarine before screaming back up to 10,000 feet.
To my surprise, I was one of the few civilians on board reaching for superlatives rather than airsickness bags.
But am I a modern-day Icarus? Sadly, no.
That exhilarating Icarus feeling resides in me, no question, but the only thing that melts is my brain - my only flights are flights of fancy.
Doug Conway is a well known Australian journalist who one day hopes to overcome his fear of dentists.
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