Luke Richmond talked to a hall full of students at Glen Innes High School

In 2016, he rowed across the Atlantic. In 2017, he crossed the Gobi desert on foot, dragging a cart (the first Australian man to do so). This January, for a bit of light relief, he rowed a kayak for seven hours across the ocean off Thailand, slept on an island and then rowed back.

And on Monday afternoon, he held the most demanding audience there is (about a hundred teenagers) spell-bound while he related his tales of adventure.

As he talked for nearly an hour, the hall in Glen Innes High School was silent, and afterwards they engaged with intense questions about jumping off platforms on balloons and climbing the worlds toughest mountains.

He grew up in the Northern Territory on cattle stations and finished school in northern Queensland before joining the army at the age of 17. Joining the Army at 17 gave me the discipline and world knowledge I was needing and serving my country overseas lit a fire of adventure in me that I have pursued until this day, he said.

Maybe he connected because he wasnt goody-goody. He didnt preach but told his own tale of drugs and a disjointed youth and then why it had led him to the edge of the precipice and back.

The turning point was when he woke in a police cell and had no idea why he was there. That was the bottom and from there he has clawed his way up walked and climbed and dived and rowed his way back.

Tattoos he had them but not a good idea, he said theyre permanent. They laughed when he showed them his wedding ring tattooed round his ring finger because he and his wife like adventure and a mere gold band doesnt work in his kind of work.

Hes on a book tour the hard way, hitching from town to town in Australia. His books called One Life, One Chance and he has that tattooed down his fore-arms, two worsds on each arm.

Heres the prologue. It kept the students engrossed:

The barrel of his AK-47 assault rifle was pointed straight at my head; the tip was shaking and I wondered whether it was the Russian soldiers anger that was causing him to tremble or the freezing temperatures brought on by the blizzard raging outside the helicopter. Either way, I thought, this is it. This was the moment my life would get snatched away in the blink of an eye, and it was a silly misunderstanding that would cost me everything. I could see the inside of the barrel inches from my face; I noticed the rifling honed into the steel designed to rotate the bullet and make it more accurate. It was impossible for him to miss this shot, and as I looked at his trigger finger already moving into firing position I had that moment that others have written about, the flashback to times gone past, to family, friends and crazy adventures.

Dad saved me from drowning when I was a little kid, the brown fresh water of the river took me under its murky depths but I was brought back to the land of the living and given a second chance. I always thought my military service might have taken me; to die bravely while serving the greatest country on earth would have been a better way to go. The drugs couldnt get me the addiction left me lying on the cold cobbled streets of London yet I still survived. Or the mountains I had climbed that had taken the lives of more experienced mountaineers than I, right in front of my eyes, but had allowed me to climb down their steep cliffs shaken but alive. I had escaped death many times before but now my luck seemed to have run out.

The last thing I heard was my climbing partner Valentine yell something in Russian; I could have easily shut my eyes and turned my head away but I chose to stand tall with my eyes wide open, to meet what was coming as I have with everything in life. I thought, please dont let this be it. How did a country kid from the Australian outback end up inside a crashed helicopter on top of the tallest mountain in Russia, facing the barrel of a gun? I noticed the howling wind outside, before the silence.