For the past two years the Wollongong girl has wanted one thing and one thing only – to tandem skydive with her dad, Tom.

And today, as she turns eight, Mia’s birthday wish is set to come true at Moruya Airport.

Tom, a professional skydiver with 20 years’ experience and a record-holder in canopy formation, will take his daughter 14,000 feet into the sky for one of the most thrilling birthday presents an eight-year-old could ask for.

And, in the process, Mia will become the youngest ever female to skydive in Australia.

“We spend quite a bit of time in the outdoors together and she loves it,” Tom said. “We were on roller coasters at Disneyland last year and Mia was just laughing her head off while adults next to her were screaming and crying.

“It will be interesting to see how she responds when we get up there, but if she’s too scared then we won’t follow through with it.”

Mia’s fascination began in 2008 when the Begic family was in Queenstown, New Zealand.

They stopped off at one of the main bungee jumping centres there and Mia had her heart set on doing a jump.

However, the staff told her she was too young to take the plunge.

Mia was shattered. To cheer her up, Tom made an off-the-cuff suggestion he thought would have no long-lasting consequences.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

“The poor little thing was a little bit cranky when she wasn’t allowed to bungee and she created a bit of a funny scene for about 30 seconds,” he said.

“So after a minute or so, we had to calm her down and just as an off-handed comment I said ‘don’t worry darling, I’ll take you on something better – you can go for a skydive with daddy’.”

Mia never let her father forget that suggestion and, in 2009 when Tom renewed his instructor’s licence, he started the ball rolling to have his daughter approved for a tandem skydive.

“Mia noticed me heading out the drop zone to do some jumps and she reminded me and she has been reminding me ever since that she wanted to go out for that skydive,” he said.

“Because she’s under 14, there’s a special application process and that has taken about 18 months to get approved.”

The thrill-seeking youngster finally got the green light last month and Tom said the biggest box that needed to be ticked was that Mia was jumping for the right reasons.

“The people who make the decision wanted to make sure that she was the one who wanted to make the jump and that her mother and I weren’t making her do it,” he said.

“At that age, their understanding of risk is obviously not as advanced as an adult’s, so they need to have the right motivation and be able to understand what’s involved.”

An adventurous attitude runs in the Begic family – Mia’s 10-year-old brother Zhan will also skydive for the first time today.

Conditions for the jump are forecast to be just about perfect and Tom has no doubts that the sibling rivalry will ensure both kids go through with the experience.

“I suspect they’ll go through with it,” he said. “Mia is a very brave little girl and she’s also very competitive, so there was a bit of competition there with them being brother and sister.

“But I always double check everything and I’ll probably add in one more check this time.”