Peter Treseder’s Book

Peter Treseder's book on his adventures - click for more details

A short precis of the book is here: Peter Treseder is without doubt Australia’s champion adventurer. He’s the 42-year-old boy scout who never grew up. Treseder has been pushing his wiry frame to the limit and beyond all his life. His hunger for adventure and danger is both all-consuming an insatiable. At the age of 18 he became the first Australian to New Zealand’s Arthur’s Pass Circuit, and he did it in just two days.

His list of firsts and records in climbing and mountaineering include the astonishing feat of climbing the west wall of the Three Sisters in NSW’s Blue Mountains 22 times in just 12 hours.

Treseder is probably best known, however, for his desert runs - he’s crossed most of Australia’s deserts on foot and unsupported - and his polar expedition, when with Ian Brown, Keith Williams and John Leece , he became one of the first four Australians to walk unsupported from the Western edge of Berkner Island to the geographic South Pole.

As well Treseder has set firsts and Australian records in Ocean Kayaking, Driving, Canyoning, Caving and Abseiling, River Canoeing and Rafting, Cross Country Skiing and of course, on his relentless Tiger Walks.

In all, Treseder holds a first or a record for around 130 different feats. Some of them are mighty performances of strength, endurance and willpower like his 21 day longitudinal traverse of the Simpson Desert. Others seem a little..well obscure like the first circumnavigation of the cliff tops of Norfolk Island, including ascents of Mt Pitt and Mt Bates, which took him 3:18hours and which he claims as both a first (how would you know) and a record.

One of the great attractions for Treseder is that even in the 1990s there are parts of Australia relatively unexplored. That was one of the reasons Treseder found himself alone in a canoe on Cape York’s Archer River in 1991. The other was that no-one would go with him.