Jungle Adventure

Fregate Island - Seychelles

“It took three hours forty-five minutes to circumnavigate Fregate Island against strong ocean currents and open ocean conditions,” says Ian of his Seychelles swimming adventure. “As far as I know, it’s the first time this has been done.”

Ian was well known on Fregate, for in addition to his design and construction duties at the resort (www.fregate.com), he extensively explored the island and hosted visitors on a ‘Pirates and History’ walk.

Like most islands in the Seychelles, Fregate has its own legends of pirates and buried treasure. Ian’s fascination with its history led him to discover evidence of long ago shipwrecks and habitation prior to recorded history. He believes that those who took refuge on Fregate were not pirates living there by choice, but survivors marooned after being wrecked on its dangerous shores. He also found evidence of crops grown and harvested by Arab traders who he supposes used the island as a secret halfway station in their long trading voyagers down the African coast.

For Ian, adventures have long been a focus of his life. Having spent twenty years developing luxury resorts in exotic locations around the world, he and his wife, Normajean, have now embarked on their own resort venture.

 

Quamby Lodge homestead

Their property, Quamby Falls Lodge (www.quamby.com.au) in Queensland, Australia is an eco-adventure retreat that combines the best features of international resorts with personalised service and adventures tailored to suit individual interests and fitness.

“I searched six countries over thirty years before finding the ideal location for our lodge,” Ian says.

Located in a secret valley surrounded by World Heritage National Parks, Quamby Falls Lodge features colourful country gardens, sweeping views and a chain of waterfalls which run through a private rainforest.

Ian delights in showing visitors rare and endangered flora and fauna, taking them inside a giant thousands year-old hollow tree, or taking them on trekking adventures to get the adrenalin pumping.

“We do everything from guided bushwalks, to bird watching, horse-riding and a horse-drawn vehicle, kayaking serene mirrored rivers and spotlighting wildlife at night,” Ian says. “We’ll teach you to abseil a waterfall if you like, or take you up into the rainforest canopy by climbing up the internal lace-like cage of a giant strangler fig.”

 

Quamby Lodge Falls

“For those who prefer to relax, there’s the veranda overlooking verdant rainforest, or the natural rock pool surrounded by flowers. For those who have been physically extended, or just want to de-stress, our massage by the waterfall is the ultimate health treatment.”


As we sit in the evening, Ian periodically sweeps the lawn with his spotlight illuminating pademelons, miniature kangaroos, which like shoemaker elves work industriously at night, mowing the lawn with sharp little teeth.

“They’re doing a good job,” he says as we marvel at the furry forms and their joeys.

Conversation inevitably turns to nature and adventure, the two inseparable in Ian’s mind.

 

Caving is one of his passions. “There is nothing quite like crawling through a small tunnel, sometimes immersed in an ice-cold underground stream, to arrive in a crystal chamber where the ceiling arches high overhead and stalactites and stalagmites in their infinite array of colours and forms festoon every surface. Especially when you know that in all the history of the world, no person has ever been there before.”

 

Balls Pyramid - Lord Howe

Climbing is another passion, one he indulged in on a first ascent expedition of Balls Pyramid, an iconic shard of rock in the Lord Howe Island group. Ian describes the formation as “a dog’s tooth of a mountain rising sheer out of the vast loneliness of the central Pacific Ocean.”

 

While their yacht cruised off shore out of range of the swells against the cliffs, they used a dinghy and outboard to approach within swimming distance. As the swells lifted 5 metres up the cliff face, they clung on and climbed desperately, avoiding poisonous brittle spines of sea urchins, to find a stance where the next wave would not tear them off. Then, using a rope and taking advantage of the swells, their drums of supplies were hauled up after them.

For five days they climbed, painstakingly drilling and driving bolts into the sheer face. Every available ledge, ridge and handhold was occupied by a seabird, which had to be lifted off and launched into the void behind.

 

There were gannets as big as geese, their blue-faced chicks in fluffed ruffs, red-tailed tropic birds, elegant as they soared on the rising thermals, shearwaters, petrels, cormorants and several varieties of terns. The birds were a continual cloud, both in the air and on the cliff.

 

Quamby Lodge Falls

At one point they slept on a ledge only a hand-span wide a thousand feet above the waves. Securely drilled into the rock-face and roped together, it was a cold and uncomfortable night as they slid out over the edge and the ropes tightened around their chests and under armpits.

Birds returned during the night only to find their habitual ledge occupied by humans, to them beings from another world. In the ensuing tangle of arms, wings and feathers in the dark, the night’s catch of fish would be vomited and sprayed across the huddled climbers.

 

Day light was a relief, but only then was the full extent of exposure realised as looking down between their feet they could see giant sharks and turtles cruising the swells far below. But even coming down was no ordinary descent. The winds were so strong and the uplift so great that their abseiling ropes were standing vertically above their heads like an Indian rope trick! The ropes had to be pulled down and held in order for the climbers to slide down.

 

Quamby Lodge

In Papua New Guinea Ian and his daughter, Dianne flew into remote mountains to capture a herd of wild horses. Not only did the horses have to be caught, first they had to be found in the jungle. “It was a challenging experience,” says Ian, “But they finally managed to get them into a yard. Then they had to be handled and broken in before being taken out across the mountains.”

“At night we slept in tribal villages where semi-naked locals followed their primitive traditional customs,” Ian says. “We arrived at one village in the rain after dark. I was invited into the men’s high-set house of split tree-trunks and thatch with a long open central fire.”

“However, Dianne drew the line at sleeping with the women where they shared low muddy huts with the pigs and even breast-fed piglets and puppies. Tribal protocol was fortunately adjusted to allow her to sleep in the men’s hut with me.”

 

“Our expedition was finally abandoned on the slopes of 13,000 feet Mount St Mary when the local tribe told us it was unsafe to cross the summit (and there was no other route) until the change of season caused the leaves to turn red.”

 

Ian Gasking and wife Normajean

“But when do the leaves turn red? A week, two weeks, a month? They didn’t know; their only calendar was managed by Nature.”

 

But back to Quamby Falls Lodge where you get the feeling Ian could happily tell adventure stories all night. And while such dangerous adventures do not form part of the Quamby Falls regular activity list, the mesmerising surrounds and sounds of the jungles he describes permeates through the lush Queensland bush surrounding his patch of paradise.