Doug Anderson calls it his "Sliding Doors moment".
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That time he was a 16-year-old Charnwood High School student who sailed a paper aeroplane through the open sunroof of a 1986 Nissan Pintara, securing the means to send himself off to medical school.
The Canberra Times National Newspaper Aeroplane Championship literally changed his life.
"Absolutely. Without a doubt," he said, from Melbourne, where he lives with his wife and four children.
"I didn't have the money to leave Canberra to study before that happened. The Sliding Doors moment."
Memories of that exciting time came flooding back when The Canberra Times revisited the story, which made the front page on July 14, 1986, as part of its Times Past series.
A jubilant Doug was in a front-page photograph celebrating the win with his mother Carolyn, a secretary for a medical practice. The family then lived in Macgregor and Doug attended Charnwood High.
After being alerted to the Times Past item, Doug contacted us to confirm how amazing the win was for him. It bankrolled his medical studies in Melbourne, "something I would have otherwise been denied".
He remembered the car was from Lennock Motors and the dealer was more than happy for the car to be sold, with Doug pocketing $13,800.
"Unlike most 16-year-olds, I managed not to blow it on parties and keep my focus," he said.
Doug, now 49, eventually graduated from Monash with honours and became a specialist radiologist.
He says he was equally steely-nerved about winning the competition, with the plane fashioned from a page of The Canberra Times and him collecting "as many entry forms as I could".
Doug had even shadowed a visiting expert from the United States, who had won a paper plane throwing competition back home, to get tips.
"I was very highly motivated to win," he said, saying his aeroplane had a very symmetrical design and two paperclips on the nose to help it dive.