Based in Asia. Filming the World.

In January 1988 Australia launched the bicentennial celebration and for a whole year the population indulged in a never ending succesion of spectactular social events, festivities and parties.

One of the more ambitious sporting events organised was the world's first trans-continental balloon race.

Seventy six ballooning teams, involving some seven hundred people from twenty six different countries, accepted the challenge and collected in the Birdsville Casino in Perth ready to cast off their anchor lines and begin one of the greatest ballooon events ever attempted.

Featured amongst the challengers were a team from Orlando Florida called Rosie O'Grady's Flying Circus, starring the legendary barnstorming pilots Bob Snow and Col. Joe Kittinger.

The documentary "Up Over Down Under" was a co-production between a television network in Orlando and a Sydney production company.

The three man camera team previously designed special camera mounts and safety harness rigs which then enabled them to mount and fly cameras outside the balloon baskets and capture some of the most astonishing in-flight air to air images ever seen globally of this photogenic sport.

Some three weeks and 3 thousand kilometers after their first, dramatic lift off, balloonists, support crews, journalists and camera crews finally arrived in a foggy Sydney, where race winner David Levin was finally able to collect his trophy. They had all successfully completed one of the most extreme events of the bicentennial celebrations.

DOP Laurie K. Gilbert and editor Ross Flaughty subsequently travelled to Orlando as guests of Bob Snow to complete the post production of the final television documentary.