Andrew Gaskell: Rescued Tasmanian backpacker posts 'sorry' message on Facebook 
 
 Updated 
 
 Rescued Tasmanian backpacker Andrew Gaskell's travel blog reveals that he found himself in serious trouble after ignoring safety procedures in a Sarawak national park two months before his rescue this week. 
 
 On Tuesday, Mr Gaskell, 25, was winched to safety by helicopter after being found by a ground team who had been looking for the Australian in the dense forest of Sarawak's Gunung Mulu National Park in Malaysia. 
 
 Apart from being hungry and frail, Mr Gaskell told the ABC from his hospital bed he was unhurt, although he did have bites and had been attacked by leeches. 
 
 Last night, Mr Gaskell posted an apology on his Facebook page. 
 
 "Dear all, I wish to deeply apologise for all the inconvenience and trouble that I have caused," he wrote. 
 
 "I did not have permission to be on that trail and should have registered for the Mount Mulu guide trip and had a guide to show me the way. 
 
 "Had I followed correct park rules I would have avoided this incident completely. In future I will always follow park rules and I hope others learn from my experience and also follow park rules." 
 
 Mr Gaskell thanked the local police, park staff, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, the Malaysian community and his "family and friends back home". 
 
 "I am deeply sorry for all the trouble I have caused and now need to rest and recover." 
 
 His blog revealed this was not the first time Mr Gaskell has ventured into the wild unprepared and against local advice. 
 
 Two months earlier, in Bako National Park, 550 kilometres from where he was rescued on Tuesday, Mr Gaskell ignored signage to not use closed tracks, coming close to exhaustion and, in his own words, "immeasurable" psychological damage. 
 
 Defied safety procedure two months before rescue 
 
 On August 18, Mr Gaskell wrote of his ordeal in Bako after he ignored signs that walking paths were closed. 
 
 "Given that the trail appears to be forbidden, I choose not to sign the walkers registration book," Mr Gaskell wrote in his blog. 
 
 "Why would anybody close such a large proportion of a national park in the peak season for walking?" 
 
 Mr Gaskell decided to ignore the signage and continue, later coming across another notice to walkers. 
 
 "My journey must continue. A short distance later, I find myself squeezing past an annoying sign that has been inconveniently erected across the extent of the track (declaring something about a track closure)." 
 
 After his day wore on, Mr Gaskell recalled running low on water on the Bako trail. 
 
 "The further I trek, the more arduous the trail becomes. The heat is really affecting me now. I have never felt this exhausted as long as I can remember," he wrote. 
 
 "A sensible debate begins in my mind. I consider turning around. Nobody knows I'm out here and phone reception is non-existent. However, I'm only here once. Surely I must do this trek while I'm here? 
 
 "I am eventually persuaded that the short trails are for delicate tourists and feeble old ladies (to put it mildly), not hardened Tasmanian adventurers." 
 
 The following day, Mr Gaskell documented he had had enough. 
 
 "I'm hot. Tired. Thirsty. Hungry. Grumpy. I want to go home. I give up," he wrote in August. 
 
 After arriving in one piece at his destination, Mr Gaskell took stock to "assess the damage": "Scratched arms, hands and legs. Bruise on right thigh. Swollen ankle. Strained(?) ligament behind knee. Grazed toes - both feet. Psychological damage: immeasurable. On the positive(?) side, I did get to sleep in a cave." 
 
 Ahead of his Asian odyssey, Mr Gaskell had confessed in August "maybe, in the course of my travels I'll come to some sort of conclusion as to who I am and what I want to do with my life". 
 
 After his rescue, his mother Elizabeth said she hoped her son would consider going as part of a group next time he ventured out into the wild. 
 
 Topics: missing-person, malaysia, tas 
 
 First posted 

 Pic: TBP 
 
 MIRI: Australian tourist Andrew James Gaskell, who was found alive after going missing in the thick jungles of Mulu National Park (MNP) for 12 days, plans to resume his Mulu trip after he is discharged from Miri Hospital. 
 
 Gaskell said he would renew his visa, which expired on Oct 30, as soon as he is discharged from the hospital. 
 
 “I was supposed to fly back to Miri on Oct 24, but because of the incident, I could not renew it. I plan to go to Brunei, have it renewed, and come back as I have plans to visit the Penans in Mulu,” he said when met yesterday. 
 
 The engineer went missing on Oct 20 and was found by a rescue team on Nov 1. 
 
 Gaskell, 26, who is still receiving treatment at the hospital, said his persistence and a never-give-up mindset helped him to overcome his ordeal. 
 
 “I did not know that there would be people coming to rescue me, but I was hoping every day that I would be found. I had hoped I would be found. I always hoped. I was never going to give up. I was trying to walk out myself,” he said. 
 
 He only had food for one day: after that, he had nothing for a week and depended only on water from the creeks that he stumbled upon. 
 
 After the first week, he found and ate wild ferns, known locally as ‘midin’, just for the sake of staunching his hunger. 
 
 On how he spent the nights in the jungle alone, Gaskell said he found shelter under overhanging rocks. 
 
 When asked about his original trekking plans, Gaskell said he had planned to trek up Mount Mulu and managed to reach Camp 4. 
 
 As it was raining, he decided to spend the night at Camp 4 and continued his journey to the summit the next morning. 
 
 “When I came down, at Camp 1, there were a lot of crossed trails, hunting trails and streams, and I became confused. I took one of the trails and then I got so disorientated that I could not find my way back. 
 
 “On the second night, I was wandering around a lot, trying to find my way back to the main trail, and I got myself very lost.” 
 
 Nevertheless, he never stopped trying to figure out his way back and climbed up and down the hills every day. 
 
 When he was found by the rescue team, Gaskell said he felt overwhelmed. 
 
 His father, David, who was with him at the hospital, described the rescue as a “miracle”. 
 
 On another note, Gaskell apologised for all the inconveniences and troubles he had caused. 
 
 He admitted he did not have any permission to be on that trail and that he should have registered for the MNP guide trip and have had a tourist guide to show him around while trekking in MNP. 
 
 “Had I followed park rules correctly, I would have avoided this incident completely,” he said. 
 
 He added that in future, he would follow park rules and hoped that others would learn from his experience. 
 
 He thanked all those who helped in the search and rescue (SAR) operation, in particular Marudi police station personnel, Marudi and Miri Fire and Rescue (Bomba) stations, Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC), MNP and its management, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, the Honorary Australian Consul in Kuching, Missing Persons Unit Australia, the media, the Malaysian community especially the locals at MNP, his family and friends in Australia. 
 
 Also present yesterday were Gaskell’s younger brother, Ben, his friend Brian Giles and Marudi police chief DSP Gabriel Risut. 
 
 - The Borneo Post 

 Andrew Gaskell: Lost hiker ate wild ferns as strength faded in Malaysian wilderness 
 
 Updated 
 
 An Australian hiker who was lost in a remote Malaysian national park for two weeks says he resorted to eating wild ferns to survive. 
 
 Key points: Andrew Gaskell set off on a solo hike up Mt Mulu on October 18 
 
 "I was quite concerned I wouldn't make my 26th birthday," he said 
 
 He is now resting at a Miri Hospital 
 
 On October 18, Andrew Gaskell set off on a solo hike up the 2,376-metre summit of Mt Mulu and made it most of the way back out before getting lost. He was found by a Malaysian search team on Tuesday. 
 
 "Obviously I'm quite starving but apart from that I'm really happy to be alive," the 25-year-old told the ABC by phone from Miri Hospital, in Malaysia's Sarawak region. 
 
 "These last few days I picked up a few wild ferns from the jungle, aside from that I ate virtually nothing — I was getting weaker and weaker every day. 
 
 "By the end of it I was quite concerned I wouldn't make my 26th birthday." 
 
 Aside from hunger, Mr Gaskell said he had infected cuts on his feet, and was "bitten by a lot of things" but had sustained no major injuries. 
 
 "At the base [of the mountain] there's lots of parallel trails and creek crossings that make the track quite confusing," he said. 
 
 "The sun was just setting at that time [and] I managed to get myself lost. 
 
 "I ended up spending that whole night just wandering and really got myself badly disorientated." 
 
 The area is famous for its cave systems and there were growing fears for Mr Gaskell's safety, although he was slow to realise the seriousness of his predicament. 
 
 "It actually took me a while to be concerned — I must be more optimistic than I thought," he said. 
 
 "If I had a GPS or better navigational equipment I would have been fine but it was extremely stupid of me really." 
 
 Mr Gaskell apologised for the worry he caused to his family and thanked the Malaysian authorities. 
 
 "The rescue staff have been amazing, as have the hospital staff," he said. 
 
 He was resting at a Miri Hospital but said he wanted to continue his travels in Sarawak and Sabah. 
 
 Mr Gaskell's mother, Elizabeth, said she was relieved he was safe and hoped to see him before he continued on his travels. 
 
 "He's an adult so he has to make his own decisions," she said. 
 
 "Obviously I'd like to see him before he decided to do that again and I'd want him to be a little bit more on the careful side I'd say." 
 
 She always believed her son was alive. 
 
 "I just had an amazing faith in God, I'm a Christian and I just held strong on to the word of God during that time, believing that he would come out alive no matter how it appeared to be." 
 
 
 
 Topics: missing-person, community-and-society, malaysia, asia, tas, australia 
 
 First posted 

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 Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
– Andrew Gaskell set out to find himself and, well, got lost. The Australian was rescued from the Malaysian jungle on Tuesday after spending two weeks alone in a remote section of Borneo's Mulu National Park. Gaskell had been touring Asia while trying to "come to some sort of conclusion as to who I am and what I want to do with my life" when he entered the park on Oct. 18, planning to do a week-long hike, reports the Telegraph, which cites Gaskell's travel blog. He reached the summit of Mount Mulu but became lost on the way back down. Gaskell—who says he ate wild ferns and drank creek water, per the Borneo Post—was found by rescuers about 65 feet from a trail on Tuesday with leeches covering his legs and maggots rooted in one. "Obviously I'm quite starving but apart from that I'm really happy to be alive," he tells ABC Australia from a hospital. "I was quite concerned I wouldn't make my 26th birthday." In a Facebook post Wednesday, Gaskell apologized "for all the inconvenience and trouble that I have caused," noting he "did not have permission to be on that trail" and would have been fine "had I followed correct park rules." According to his travel blog, this wasn't Gaskell's first mishap in Malaysia. He became "exhausted" and suffered minor injuries while walking on a trail that he noted "appears to be forbidden" at another park in August, per ABC. He wrote he had to squeeze "past an annoying [closure] sign that has been inconveniently erected across the extent of the track." Still, he says his adventure in Asia will continue once he's recovered. (This toddler survived for days in a bear-filled forest.)