"It depends on whom you are comparing us to," says his co-founder Geoff Manchester. "If it was someone who thought adventure was a cruise round the South Pacific, then, yes, what we did was adventurous, but to someone who was off trekking in the Himalayas, we were wimps."
That said, even Everest summiteers are likely to be impressed with Mr Wade and Mr Manchester's decision to drive a Nunawading council tip truck across Africa. And not any old tip truck, but a really old one that cost them a paltry $3200 at auction and then took them six months to rebuild to get on the road.
"We shipped it to London and drove from there, which was by far the worst bit of the trip. It was cold and wet and we kept on breaking down," says Mr Wade.
The tales of their six-month journey on the back of a tip truck with 12 friends aren't all that enticing either: pot holes that could jolt life back into the dead; waiting a week for a bridge to be repaired; getting stuck in a no man's land between countries. But that's not the way Mr Manchester and Mr Wade remember it.
"It was wild," says Mr Wade. "So many amazing things happened, like finding a swimming hole in the Sahara."
Obviously they have lost none of their enthusiasm for their odyssey.
They particularly relish the fact that at journey's end they sold their rusty, if not trusty, truck, the Emu Overland, for $14,000. (It enabled them to largely refund their friends who had each paid $2800 to come on the trip.)
Back home, buoyed by their success, they decided to give the travel industry a go. The traditional model for group travel was not their thing. What they had nutted out over long stretches of road and around campfires in Africa was a more flexible approach, built on small groups and delivering a grassroots experience. Basically, doing what backpackers did, staying in villages, jumping on local transport and eating where the locals did, but in a small group. And they wanted it to be affordable.
"Back then, you could travel through Asia for $10 a day but anything organised was upwards of $100," says Mr Manchester.
"And it seemed to us the more remote the region, the more you paid."
Adds Mr Wade: "We also thought by offering a product that no one else was doing, we might make a semi-sensible living out of it and have a few good trips ourselves."
Which is exactly what they have done in the intervening 20 years, although the bit about the semi-sensible living isn't quite right.
In the past financial year, Intrepid Travel turned over $129 million, not bad going given the economic climate. It is owned outright by the two now considerably wealthier friends.
The two met on orientation day at Melbourne University in 1979 and say there's never been a cross word between them. They sit across the hallway from each other in their sprawling Fitzroy office. Mr Wade is officially CEO, while Mr Manchester is responsible for the company's extensive social responsibility program, planning, and Africa and South America.
But although Intrepid now offers 11 different styles of trips, including independent travel and more comfort-oriented ones, the company maintains its commitment to grassroots experiences and small-group travel."We've always been on about people and experiences first and foremost, that's what motivates us and that's what motivates the company," says Mr Wade.
"What has happened over the years is that rest of the market has come round to that."
Written by Kay O'Sullivan, for the Sydney Morning Herald September 8, 2009
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