By Damien Murphy
As the sun set on the Empire, Warwick Deacock was one of the sons who not only personified the best of British but insured its flame flickered long into the night.
Crack soldier, mountaineer, adventurer, conservationist and entrepreneur, Deacock also left an indelible print on his adopted country, being instrumental in establishing the Duke of Edinburgh's Award in Australia. Later still, he was an early proponent of camel trekking to the Outback.
Warwick Deacock was appointed OIC at Hong Kong's Stanley Prison, with the task of guarding suspected Japanese war criminals.
Deacock has died in Sydney, aged 90, after a moving back to the city from his experimental environmental leisure centre at Kangaroo Valley following the death of his wife Antonia in 2012.
Born in London, Deacock was educated at Stamford School, Lincolnshire, and was working as a bicycle messenger during the Blitz when his school was evacuated to Wales. He joined the Royal Marines where he gained his Commando Green Beret and was dispatched to the Far East.
Warwick Deacock introduced camel trekking to Australia.
When atomic bombs ended the Pacific war, the new Second Lieutenant was appointed OIC at Hong Kong's Stanley Prison, with the task of guarding suspected Japanese war criminals. He also commanded a boat engaged in anti-opium patrols before opting for demobilisation in 1947.
Deacock drifted post war, driving trucks among other odd jobs to fund his sailing and mountain climbing exploits. In 1950 he re-enlisted as an officer in the Middlesex Regiment.
Known as the "Die Hards", his regiment provided an interesting and varied career: he taught mountain climbing and skiing to British troops at the army school in Austria, was seconded to the French Foreign Legion during France's final and futile attempts to retain empire in Indochine and carried the Queen's Colours at the 1953 coronation.
In 1956, Deacock joined the SAS and took part in three dangerous patrols in unmapped parts of northern Malaya during the communist insurgency. Posted to Oman, the surrealism of Middle East affairs was made manifest when he learned he was fighting CIA-trained nationalists. Perhaps in disgust, the newly minted Major resigned his commission.
Warwick Deacock has died in Sydney, aged 90.
By this time Deacock had married South African-born architect Antonia Francisca Van den Bos and made a name for himself among the adventurers trade. He was a member of the Joint Service Expedition that made the first ascent of Rakaposhi, in the Nagar Valley, Pakistan, in 1958. That same year he walked across the border to meet Antonia and together they walked the mountains of Lahul, a sojourn he later considered the "birth of trekking". John Hunt, the leader of the Mount Everest team that saw Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing conquer the world's highest peak in May 1953, asked Deacock to assist in setting up the Duke of Edinburgh's Award.
In 1959, he migrated to Australia with Antonia and their baby daughter Kate and established the Australian Outward Bound School on the Hawkesbury River in NSW. When his Outward Bound contract expired he went to Heard Island as an assistant scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division. The trip culminated in an attempt to ascend Mawson's peak, Big Ben, but after five days pinned down by a blizzard near the summit, the expedition retreated and with the leader suffering from frostbite they traversed nine glaciers with little equipment and less food.
Returning to Australia, and with £100 in the bank, the family, now including an infant son Nick, drove around the country. It was while digging graves in the Northern Territory town of Katherine that Deacock hit on the idea of another crack at Big Ben. He raised nearly £86,000, hired a 20-metre gaff-rigged schooner, convinced Hillary to become patron and mountaineer and high latitude sailor Major Bill Tilman to come on board and eventually became the first to scale the peak. A subsequent book and BBC film made him money and a global hero.
Marching off the schooner, he registered Warwick Deacock Enterprise, bought unspoilt bushland in the Kangaroo Valley south of Sydney and built an experimental leisure centre that he named Chakola (an Aboriginal word for lyre bird) and organised holiday camps for school children.
He also established Ausventure – Australia's (and one of the world's) first specific "adventure travel" company. From 1966 he organised and led commercial walking and snow craft groups in Tasmania, the Australian Alps, Fiji, New Guinea and the Himalayas. He also became foundation secretary for the Australian Conservation Foundation in Canberra, and in an intriguing sideline worked in human relations for Rupert Murdoch. The media mogul was one of the original sponsors of the Heard Island expedition.
The pull of the Himalayas remained strong, however. He not only organised the first commercial treks to Nepal in 1967, but ran the first climbing expedition in 1975 only to drop out of the commercial ascent industry later in the belief that it was too dangerous for clients.
He made many trips to Nepal, India and South America and was honorary Royal Nepalese Consul General in Australia for 10 years. A private expedition to ascend Annapurna 3 in 1980 turned to disaster when an avalanche killed three climbers.
Deacock worked with Rex Ellis and his Outback Camel Co. promoting an developing camel treks in the desert. He crossed the Gibson and the Simpson deserts and in 1997 made the first camel crossing of the Great Victoria Desert.
He was awarded was awarded the Royal Geographic Society J.P. Thompson Medal for Exploration in 1992 and the following year the Australian Geographic Society Adventurer of the Year Gold Medal. In 1997 he was also made a member of the Order of Australia for services to conservation and the environment.
Deacock is survived by his daughter Kate and son Nick, and their children Damien and Maya Deacock and Lotte Newton.