The numerous monkeys living around Gua Damai have never been a problem in the 14 years that I have been BASE jumping off the cliff there. But while I was jumping at Gua Damai in 2022 there was an appearance of a new species of monkey that liked to boast about peeing over people’s gear. This turned out to be a human form of monkey named Avery Badenhop.

Why My Trip Was Altered To Mostly Jump At Gua Dama

It was exciting to be back in Malaysia in 2022 after 3 years of absence due to the covid epidemic. The plan was to jump at the new Kuantan 188 Tower BASE jumping event, which one of the organisers encouraged me to participate in. However, days before I was due to travel to Malaysia, I was informed that the head of Kuantan 188 had decided that I was not welcome there. No reason was given, but presumably, it was because he did not like my warnings about BASE jumping safety and the past negligence I had seen in Malaysia. I had experienced the same politics over the past 2 decades where some Malaysians despised my efforts to stop them from getting people seriously injured or killed. Each time I had been removed from a position of organising events in Malaysia, the locals took over organising events in a naïve and reckless manner which always soon led to a fatality. After a couple of deaths and countless serious accidents, they still had not learnt.

I was not really phased about not being welcome at Kuantan 188. It was a location with higher risks due to its limited landing area that was surrounded by many trees and lamp posts. One novice Malaysian BASE jumper had already been knocked out crashing into a tree during trial jumps, so it was not surprising that another Malaysian BASE jumper broke his femur and ankle on the first day of the event. The event also had an excessive entry fee that was only revealed at the last minute. So as an alternative, I was happy just to jump at Gua Damai, which always had very welcoming and friendly people for the 14 years I had been jumping there.

The Strange Message Avery Badenhop Posted

I had been jumping at Gua Damai for a week when Avery posted a message on a BASE jumping Facebook page querying if I had figured out what kind of monkey had urinated all over my gear. Since I was not aware of any such thing happening, it seemed a strange message for him to send. The time period that Avery sent the message coincided with the end of the Kuantan 188 BASE jumping event which he attended.So my first assumption was that Avery was drunk and just behaving like the stereotypical American. After replying to his message indicating my slight confusion, Avery replied back boasting that he had pissed over my gear. A couple of weeks later he also posted about his desire to poo all over it too.

Why Would Avery Promote Himself As Someone Who Urinates On Gear?

Maybe Avery is yet to adapt to being released from his years of incarceration. Prisoners are well known to throw cocktails of urine and faeces at people they disapprove of.

Most likely Avery was showing disapproval for an article and graphic I had released a few months before which highlighted the level of deviousness when new KL Tower managers hired Avery to take over organising the KL Tower BASE jumping event, and seemingly, to destroy the Sibu BASE jumping event in 2018. After I exposed Avery’s claim that KL Tower was banning Sibu BASE jump participants, KL Tower managers launched a campaign of denial, threatened legal action against me, and practically had me run out of Malaysia. This strangely included being terminated from the Sibu BASE jump event after I had stood up for Sibu. KL Tower manager’s actions against me, instead of reprimanding their new representative and rectifying the problem, is a strong suggestion of their guilt.

With Avery’s colourful criminal past, being previously imprisoned for crimes that would have resulted in his execution had he committed them in Malaysia, he was the perfect person to do the dirty work of new KL Tower management. He probably had little understanding that he was a just pawn of the bigger players in Malaysia.

The attempt to destroy Sibu BASE jump was an act of vindictiveness against me, as I was the BASE organiser of Sibu BASE Jump. But the real victims were international BASE jumpers who were travelling to Malaysia expecting to participate in the 3 event series of Sibu, Gua Damai and KL Tower BASE jump, which for the previous decade had been organised harmoniously in strong cooperation with each other. Other victims included the town of Sibu, and Gua Damai, with lasting results of 3 annual events in a row having very poor attendance.

During the many years that I was the organiser of KL Tower BASE jump, the previous KL Tower managers and staff had stood out as wonderful people willing to go the extra step to maximise the experiences international BASE jumpers had in Malaysia. But the new KL Tower management seemed to be a totally different breed of people. Conflicts started a couple of years earlier as the negligence of event contractors had grown to a ridiculous level, and KL Tower started to employ new managers who seemed to be carefree and dismissive of the negligence.

Neutralising the negligence of event contractors was the final step required to stop BASE jumpers from crashing into KL Tower. Tower strikes happened every year and often resulted in serious injuries. I finally achieved this in 2017, which successfully prevented any tower strikes from happening for the first time in the event’s 17 year history. It also eliminated or greatly reduced the occurrence of a number of other common types of incidents and created a much smoother-flowing event. It should have been the first of many improvements necessary to step up event safety to at least the minimum expected level.

However, new KL Tower managers did not take favourably to me neutralising the ridiculous amount of negligence by event contractors and preventing many serious accidents, so I was expelled from the event after my 17 year involvement. It is not certain if the new KL Tower managers were brainwashed into believing the issues that had resulted in many serious injuries and one death were not real, or if they were just bloodthirsty people who had no sense of their duty of care. It seemed it was more important for them to support the negligence of local event contractors rather than look after the safety of BASE jumping visitors to KL Tower.

Sadly, the efforts of KL Tower managers immediately brought back a record number of tower strikes and other incidents, with their new novice organisers leading the carnage. Eliminating the knowledge I gained at Malaysian BASE jumping events over 17 years, which I learnt partly through seeing a lot of bloodshed and broken bones, soon led to a return of people receiving multiple broken bones and set Malaysian BASE jumping up for another BASE jumping fatality. It was an identical sequence of changes in event management that led to the previous death several years earlier. There were no doubts the results would be the same within a similar timeframe.

I arrived in Malaysia on the afternoon of Saturday 27th August 2022. Avery had posted on his Facebook page that he was at Gua Damai with Malaysian BASE jumper Aziz Ahmad at Gua Damai on that day. One of the Gua Dami staff told me that they did not jump while there. I wonder if Avery was waiting there to commit the deed. I did not go to Gua Damai until the following morning on Sunday. Staff at Gua Damai informed me that they were expecting Avery to show up there on Sunday, but he did not. I guess that was a missed opportunity for him. The following day, Monday is the day Avery claimed in his post that he pissed on my gear. But he would have been travelling to Kuantan on that day. So as far as I am aware, it did not actually happen. I am sure I would have noticed it if he did. I have followed Avery long enough to see inconsistencies in his statements over time, so I can never take any of his statements at face value. Since he likes to promote himself as the pissing monkey at Gua Damai, I will always remember him in that way.