The living rock: the origins of climbing in Australia

2011-10-25T09:30:00.000+10:00

About The living rock

This is a blog on the origins of climbing in Australia. It's presented in reverse chronological order, with the latest information first. So the story actually starts at the bottom of this longish page. I've published it to share some of my own experiences, along with information I've gathered with the help of many people over the past decade or so. It tells a story of the emergence of the idea of climbing in Australia before World War II and continues the story of the development of what is now known as 'adventure' or 'traditional' climbing in postwar Queensland, through my own and other former and current climbers' voices. The time period covered by this contribution stretches from the very beginnings of human interaction with the Australian landscape, switching to mostly Queensland activity after the second world war. Primarily, these observations do not focus on the period beyond the late 1970s when climbing began to fragment into several, distinctly different elements: sports climbing, bouldering etc gradually pushed what became known as 'trad' or 'adventure' climbing to the periphery. The detailed story of climbing in Australia from the 1980s onwards is for others to write.

Like all histories, this is a version of events. It does not pretend to be the definitive account (if there is such a thing) and comes from an obvious Queensland perspective. It offers an alternative to the predominant view of Australian climbing history that has tended to assume that climbing as a mass sport started in New South Wales and Victoria. The somewhat episodic examples here provide some insight into the extraordinary range of mostly young men and women who have felt compelled to move beyond the usual pathways to explore the more elusive aspects of the Australian landscape. Although 'modern' Australian climbing began less than 100 years ago, a small number of individuals has been exploring high places here since the European invasion. Indigenous people had already inscribed every aspect of the landscape into their cosmology for millennia. But this is a story about climbing as a European 'invention'. Each climbing community around Australia and beyond has its own stories, its own histories and I hope this encourages others to tell them. Please pass on this web address to anyone you think may be interested or who has information to add (or correct) what I've presented here.

Reproducing images or text

This blog represents a small fraction of the material that I and others have accumulated during this ongoing project. It has relied on the goodwill and trust of many climbers, current and past, who agreed to be interviewed and who have offered access to their private photograph collections. Please respect the copyright on the photographs published here, asking permission from the original owners (through me, if you like) before reproducing any of the material. But share this with friends, by all means.

Picture: On Mount Barney. Michael Meadows collection.

2010-09-09T16:12:00.002+10:00

More to come

I have completed a draft of a book manuscript and am now working with a Melbourne publisher. My aim has been to ensure that as many as possible of the images gathered and personal stories related to me by the climbers who have created this history are passed on to future generations drawn to the heights. The research for this continuing project has so far unearthed around 3000 images (most from private, previously unpublished collections) and close to 4000 archival documents (letters, diaries, newspaper and journal articles etc) relating to Australian climbing history. I discovered stories of adventure that have rarely, if ever, been told. I think it offers an insight into a fascinating history that few Australians--climbers especially--are aware. Please enjoy this small sample of Australia's rich, climbing heritage.

Picture: The author contemplating life on the east face of Tibrogargan. Michael Meadows collection.

Mist and memory

2008-02-18T04:00:00.001+10:00

A storm during an ascent of east Beerwah.

2006-04-13T17:38:00.000+10:00

A tiptoe through time

Louis Thomas, 10, of Melbourne in action (below) on the classic Arapiles multi-pitch climb, Tiptoe Ridge, in April, 2006. It was his second outdoor climb, having made an ascent of the Cave Climb on Bushranger's Bluff the previous day. Louis seems set on following in the footsteps of his father, Ian ('Humzoo'), who climbed with him on a memorable day. On the summit after the climb are (above from left) Ian Thomas, Louis, and Michael Meadows.

2005-10-11T12:28:00.000+10:00

Why climb? The next generation muses...

Brian Moes (from the late 1990s) : The great thing is that whether you’re climbing 22 or 31 or 14, it’s such a personal thing. For some people, climbing a 17 is something equivalent to another person climbing something much, much harder. And that’s the beauty of climbing—it’s such a personal thing. You have to be really careful that you don’t get arrogant and start thinking that you’re better than other people.

Alison Moes (from the late 1990s): I think it’s almost the grace of it sometimes. Like it’s almost dancing when you move on a cliff. I really love that. I think it’s a combination of things like with the power and stuff like that. I like that as well. I think it’s also an achievement thing. It’s actually taught me a lot about ways of setting goals and reaching your own goals because it’s such a short-term thing. You can have one climb that you can really set your mind to and if you get it, it’s a really good feeling of achievement.

‘Tash’ (from the late 1990s): If I’ve climbed something that for me is really challenging, and I manage to get to the top of it, and I manage to get to the top of it with pretty good technique and all of that and I feel really great about it, it is the most euphoric feeling in the entire world—apart from sex. It is fantastic. It is a great feeling. I can’t explain to anyone apart from a climber or someone who is really into their sport. When they do something that was a real challenge and they just kick its arse, they know how good it feels. It’s just fantastic—it just makes me want to cry. No honestly, it’s the best feeling in the world. That’s why I climb because of those moments—they’re few and far between but they happen.

Picture: Climbers' camping area at The Pines, Mt Arapiles. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-11T12:27:00.000+10:00

Attitudes to climbing through the years...

2005-10-11T12:26:00.000+10:00

Michael Groom
(from the 1970s)

And people say, ‘Well, what are you going to do now with your life?’ But I feel so content with what I’ve done that I have no burning desire to go out and test the limits, or push the limits. I feel in some ways very fortunate that I do feel content that I’ve done so much with the early part of my life. It’s been a good life. There wouldn’t be too many things I’d change. I was able to find my passion or calling early in life—and that is, climbing—and even luckier after my second chance at it, to be able to re-live it, and continue living it after the problem with my feet; and then luckier again still by being able to earn a living from it. But as some people say, you make your own luck.

Picture: Three generations...Michael, Donn and Harry Groom. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-11T12:24:00.000+10:00

Scott Camps
(from the 1970s)

I guess it became more of a personal journey—that’s what I really liked doing. I think it’s very important that a first ascentionist should be heavily active in repeating routes, particularly in a local area because you’re always broadening your knowledge and you know what you’re comparing it against. I know for a fact, a lot of the young guys haven’t done Out of the Blue and Into the Black [Tibrogargan] or Phaedra [Mt Maroon]—all those classic cutting edge routes for their time. That’s really important if you’re going to run around and beat your chest and demote routes that have previously been done and you don’t have anything to compare them against. You don’t understand how well people were climbing back then—climbing with hexes, small stoppers and a basic rack of Friends on this hard technical stuff.

2005-10-11T12:23:00.000+10:00

Robert Staszewski
(1970s to present)

The cornerstone of rockclimbing is that the climber must bring himself [sic] to the standard required by the climb, not lower the climb to your standard. If you’re not doing that, you’re not doing rockclimbing—that’s the first ethic of rockclimbing.

Picture: Robert Staszewski above the east wall on Mt Maroon, 2000. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-11T12:21:00.000+10:00

Ian Thomas
(1970s to present)

Climbing gives you the time to sit down and minutely examine your immediate surroundings—a ledge, ‘There’s a rock on the edge of the thing’; ‘No I won’t touch that’; ‘There’s another rock. Look at that one—I wonder how that got there.’ It’s a funny little microscope that you have. I remember those sorts of thoughts back then. Part of the deal is you can’t get rid of that no matter where you go. If you’re sitting at a meeting and two tables are put together, your fingers can’t help but slip in between those two tables and form a little finger lock. You can’t help but feel under the table for the undercling. You can’t walk down a city street without accidentally brushing a brick and giving the mortar a bit of a tap. So I think those sorts of things are just fantastic, even if I never climbed again I would be doing that. Just driving around the countryside you can’t help but look at cliffs and things. If you travel overseas, you look at a cliff and you can’t help thinking, ‘There’s probably a route there’; or ‘There is a route there.’ That sort of stuff is with you and I don’t think that changes.

Picture: Ian Thomas in a tendon-flexing engagement with Scarab at Bundaleer, 2000. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-11T12:20:00.000+10:00

Dave Gillieson
(1970s to 1990s)

I think that climbing and caving gave my life purpose and developed strong self-reliance and tolerance of others. When I was in dead-end jobs, the prospect of the weekend dominated my thoughts and kept me focussed. I made lasting friendships with people who I could rely on absolutely. I have been in difficult situations with them in deep New Guinea caves and in the Himalayas. Those shared experiences forge strong bonds that transcend geographical location.

2005-10-11T12:15:00.000+10:00

Marion Darveniza (nee Speirs)
(late 1960s and 1970s)

[Climbing gives you] a wonderful sense of achievement and freedom. It certainly tests your problem solving skills. Perhaps it has given me the confidence to try new things and knowing that I have got good balance.

Picture: Marion Speirs in the Warrumbungles, 1967. Hugh Pechey collection.

2005-10-11T12:14:00.000+10:00

Greg Sheard
(late 1960s to present)

I guess climbing’s something that gets into your blood. You always enjoy going back to it. I gave it away for 20 years and still came back to it for different reasons. It’s something about the mountain, the climb, the exposure and the enjoyment of it. I don’t make a tick list. I don’t climb to increase the grade. If a climb’s enjoyable I go and do it. It’s always something you go back to. You run into a lot of people who retire from climbing but they’ll still go and do it occasionally…For me, it’s not trad [traditional] climbing—the ultimate is the multi-pitch climb, regardless of whether it’s easy or not. It’s a different style of climbing. It’s as different from Frog Buttress as Kangaroo Point is from indoor climbing. I think the long multi-pitch climbs are the ones that offer the enjoyment that is most likely to appeal to people because you run across people who run across those climbs and they say, ‘This is great. This is not doing 22s, 23s, 24s—this is doing a 13 which is phenomenal.’

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-11T12:11:00.000+10:00

Rick White
(late 1960s to 1990s)

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Grade 15 climber or a Grade 30 climber—there’s always something you can’t climb, you just can’t climb the next level. It doesn’t matter how good you are, there’s always going to be someone better. So everybody climbs and has excitement at their level of difficulty and their level of mental power. It’s different for all people, of course. It can be widely applied to people because of that—you don’t have to be the best climber to have a good time out on a crag with your friends…I think that’s the attraction of climbing. And of course you can improve and you can test yourself, you can test your physical strength, you can test your mental strength. It tests all those sorts of things in people.

Picture: Rick White a few months before his death. Jane White collection.

2005-10-11T12:08:00.000+10:00

Donn Groom

(from the early 1960s)

I’d define myself as a mountaineer more than a rock climber or bushwalker. My whole life has revolved around the outdoors. I suppose, and has me at the point now where I could never contemplate living for too long in any suburban setting, having lived so close to the forest at Binna Burra where at night while you sleep, the whole forest tries to move in with you—or on our boat at night with your ear only inches from the sea swooshing past—or in the Alaskan bush at night scared shitless waiting for a twig to snap in case it’s a brown bear. It’s a bit off-putting for me to sleep in a city and all you hear is police sirens etc at night. I can't stay there for long.

Picture: John Larkin collection.

2005-10-11T12:07:00.000+10:00

Ted Cais
(early 1960s to the present)

Improvements in rockclimbing standards mostly result from some creative individual having the appropriate mental desire with reference to achievements of the previous generation. Interestingly, the rules of the previous generation often had to be changed for technical progress. Thus the ethic of the mountaineer “the leader never falls” had to give way for the harder climbs requiring dynamic and committing moves. Then the “clean climbing” ethic of the trad climber was replaced with the redpoint goal of the sport climber on pre-protected routes too steep and sustained for resting and arranging gear. More disturbing, perhaps, is the mainstream popularity of climbing bringing crowds to crags once utterly desolate for us in the 70’s. Such crowding creates a new set of logistical issues including environmental impact, liability and resource management so the times are no longer simple. People can now make a full-time living from climbing (guiding and producing gear, for example) so this commercial angle inevitably creates significant conflict.

Picture: Ted Cais and Greg Sheard on the summit of Tibrogargan after climbing Clemency, 1998. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-11T12:02:00.000+10:00

Les Wood
(1960s to 1980s)

A lot of it's chicken and egg, isn't it? I don't know where things start—whether you end up being a climber because you've got certain characteristics or whether those characteristics develop because you've been a climber. For me, I've got some ability to stay calm in a stressful situation and I think some of that might be a reflection of just learning how to cope on a cliff. I've had a few cases where things have been really quite hairy. Everybody has. The epic's a part of the game. If you don't keep calm and quiet and work things out as best you can, you're going to come unstuck in a big way. I think some of that's carried over into my life. I think life needs a bit of salt and pepper in it—you can't all be bland; you need things spiced up; something that's going to get the adrenalin going, I suppose. And for me, it was climbing.

Picture: Les Wood collection.

2005-10-11T12:00:00.000+10:00

Pat Conaghan
(late 1950s to 1980s)

It must have been the adventure, I guess, I don’t know. I guess I was always a sucker for seeing what was on the other side of the hill or seeing if you could go someplace that looked a bit difficult. I don’t know. I guess we’re all a bit like that…it’s taught me to be more tolerant, more patient about things. And it taught me humility. When you’re climbing, you are often in situations where you’re forced to endure intolerable situations, even life-threatening situations because if the weather changes, for example, you could freeze to death in the next half day or something if things don’t work out. I suppose you become dependent on other people in those situations. And I suppose it’s given me a greater respect for natural history and landscapes.

Picture: On the summit of Tibrogargan after the 1st ascent of Northeast Buttress in 1964. Pat Conaghan collection.

2005-10-11T11:56:00.000+10:00

Ron Cox
(late 1950s to 1980s)

I was much attracted by the adventurous aspects of it and the danger, of course. It wasn’t really dangerous but one felt it was dangerous. It just seemed so much more thrilling than doing ordinary bushwalks. We were dissatisfied. Queenslanders are now proud to be Queenslanders but for us, it was the sticks, really, and maybe I’m speaking for myself here but what I was looking for was high mountains without trees on them. What Queensland provided was low mountains covered with trees. People love this now—we’ve got more appreciation of the trees and nature. We didn’t have this at all. I’d read all the mountain books and what I wanted to see was high, craggy mountains with rock and ice and Queensland didn’t have that. The nearest thing to it were the cliff faces.

Picture: Ron Cox in Grenoble in 2000 with the Belledonne Range behind him...the start of the Alps. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-11T11:51:00.000+10:00

John Comino
(1950s)

Look, I think the thing that it gives you, as you well know, is this beautiful sense of freedom. That’s what it gave me, plus vantage points to take photos.

Picture: John Comino at a training session at Kangaroo Point in the late 1950s. Ron Cox collection.

2005-10-11T11:50:00.000+10:00

Hugh Pechey
(1950s and 1960s)

You ask my wife— ‘Not another bloody rock!’ She doesn't usually use the word ‘bloody’, of course. 'I don't know what you see in these rocks!' When I say that I want my ashes scattered on Mount Barney, she just looks at me and shakes her head.

Picture: High Pechey contemplates the south face of Beerwah during a solo ascent in 1954.

2005-10-11T11:43:00.000+10:00

Graham Baines
(1950s)

Motivation, satisfaction…getting to the top was satisfying but I realised there’s a shortcoming in that response because, sure there’s an exhilaration in having got there and looking at the grand view and feeling good, but there must have been something more to it. I realised it must have been the problem-solving on the rockface and particularly in the context in those days there weren’t guides. Although there were established routes people could describe to us, we were also sometimes exploring new routes. And it’s as if I came to the conclusion that that must have been an important element in the satisfaction.

Picture: BBW collection.

2005-10-11T11:42:00.000+10:00

Neill Lamb
(1^st new climbs on Tibrogargan after World War II, 1950s and 1960s)

You’d often be for some time on some tiny little stance and you’d admire the bloody texture of the rocks and the feel of the rock—so there was a definite feeling for the rock.

Picture: Neill Lamb collection.

2005-10-11T11:40:00.000+10:00

Marg Kentwell (left)
(1950s)

Earlier on, people went because they knew what they were doing. And then we get all the leisure industry and shops selling everything and anybody and everybody goes out and they don’t know what they’re doing. They get stranded in their boats, they have to be rescued by a helicopter or some rot—there is a difference in attitude there. I won’t say the wrong sort of people are going—everybody’s entitled to go and do whatever—but in the earlier times, people knew more of what they were doing. They were less likely to get into trouble.

Bernice Noonan (right)
(1950s)

We were all experienced in a good sport and we all enjoyed it and unless we all pulled together we weren’t going to get there. I didn’t feel that the men were superior or that there was a difference because of the sexes. I never felt that at all. It might have been there for some people but it never bothered me… When I was 27, I had a cerebral haemorrhage and I was paralysed for a while and that part of my life ceased. The doctors told me, ‘No more sport.’

Picture: Neill Lamb collection.

2005-10-11T11:39:00.000+10:00

Alan Frost
(1950s and still climbing)

And I guess when you start doing that [climbing], it never leaves you really, does it? Everything’s just so much more urbanized and pressurized and so on. So many people just don’t get out, really, and don’t get any opportunity to appreciate what it is like not to be living in a concrete jungle…it’s so good to be out on one of these climbs or faces or wherever it might be in great weather, but it’s also good to be there in terrible weather because that’s the mood of the mountain…it gets under your skin and you need to go back again.

Picture: Peter Barnes collection.

2005-10-11T11:37:00.002+10:00

Peter Barnes
(late 1940s to the present)

…as one of many animals that are most closely associated and tied up with the environment and dependent on the environment that we live in, I think if we separate ourselves from that environment, we are the loser…I get fairly touchy if I can’t get out into the hills. I don’t spend any time on the beach, I like to get out into the hills, into the rainforest, the waterfalls, the creeks. I like lying back and looking at the stars at night, looking at flowers and birds and animals—if possible, photographing them. I think that’s where I belong.

Picture: Peter Barnes collection.

2005-10-11T11:34:00.000+10:00

Russ Kippax
(Co-founder Sydney Rockclimbing Club: late 1940s to 1970s)

Camaraderie was always important all through the bushwalking thing, gatherings for any excuse—birthdays, and we’d cart half a sheep down to Bluegum and have a party. That was a very big part of bushwalking and rockclimbing just continued on in the same way. I think the challenge of being on top—I still look at a mountain now and think I’d like to be up there, even if it’s only a conical hill.

2005-10-09T22:32:00.000+10:00

Raoul Mellish
(late 1940s and 1950s)

We started on our own bat, Reg Ballard and myself. As far as I was concerned, it all came back to that wonderful sight [Tibrogargan]…winter time and the clarity of the air and the outline of that beautiful mountain…I had the urge to paint in those days but I wasn’t doing much about it. I was looking forward to it. But I had that urge to go and climb it and we did that. You get bitten by a bug, don’t you, and away it goes.

Picture: Raoul Mellish (left) and Coll Taggart on the east face of Mt Warning, 1949. Raoul Mellish collection.

2005-10-09T22:26:00.000+10:00

Jon Stephenson
(late 1940s to present)

[It was] partly the people but it was largely the places—and largely the environment. But over the campfire at night a few people tried to explain why in earth they did it and I never thought they did very well. I had no idea. I couldn’t explain it. I could not explain it…I’ve been back to some of the places and what I didn’t accept was that they are so exceptional. The environment was so…wow! I’ve been back to Mt Barney a few times after a long period when I wasn’t there and I was so astonished that it was such a handsome place. It was for that reason, I’m sure, that I got absolutely sucked in. I couldn’t put it aside. I still find good forest, rainforest especially, and one can walk through it by yourself, it’s like going into a church.

Picture: John Comino collection

2005-10-09T22:22:00.000+10:00

Bert Salmon
(1923 to World War II: ‘the spiritual father of Queensland climbing’)

Why do they climb? I have often wondered…but I have never been able to satisfy on the point. Some are born climbers; nothing can keep them from the mountains. They keep on climbing until they die—or until they slip, which often means the same thing. Others not so apt often join climbing parties to learn the rudiments of the game. For these we carry a rope, but we do not use it if we can avoid doing so.

Picture: Bert Salmon collection.

2005-10-09T22:21:00.000+10:00

Nora Dimes
(Regular climber throughout the 1930s)

Should you believe, with Addison, that the proper study of mankind is man, you may have met in your researches a mountaineer. He is one whose soul is blent of heights and depths, and in extreme cases his admiration of the tallest and newest building in town is confined to the possible hand or footholds on the facade. I have known one such, seized suddenly with the climbing fever, clamber onto a foot-wide parapet and walk airily along it seven stories above street level.

2005-10-09T22:20:00.000+10:00

L. M. R., Sunday Mail, 1932.

What is it that makes city toilers expose themselves to the dangers, hardships, and discomforts that must accrue from scaling sheer walls of rock when they might admire the great peaks from terra firma? Is it because they believe that reward is proportionately great: that he who gains the crest of the mount will discover beauties undreamt of and experience a full measure of the elusive joys of achievement? Yes, maybe they do compensate for the toils, doubts, and difficulties experienced before anyone, no matter how adept at the sport (they call it good sport), can reach the summit of a real mountain.

2005-10-09T22:14:00.000+10:00

Why?

Rockclimbing has become more and more part of everyday society, as the cover of Qantas's Frequent Flyer magazine (above) demonstrates. And despite all the debates over ethics, one thing is for sure: people will continue to climb for many and varied reasons. Here’s the first of a collection of Australian climbers’ thoughts on this from across the ages...

Freda Du Faur
(1915: Australia's first mountaineer)

Every now and then a voice seemed to rise from nowhere in a faint cry. Again and again I have started up, sure that some one was calling me, to confront only the silent, snow-clad mountains. Some stone falling from the heights, the gurgle of an underground stream, or the wind sweeping into a hidden cave and raising an echo from the distant ridges—clear and distinct it comes, this call of the mountains, sometimes friendly and of good cheer; but often eerie, wild, and full of melancholy warning, as if the spirit of the mountains bade you beware how you tread her virgin heights, except in the spirit of reverence and love.

[Freda Du Faur, The conquest of Mount Cook and other climbs: an account of four seasons’ mountaineering on the Southern Alps of New Zealand, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1915]

2005-10-09T22:03:00.000+10:00

Where do we go

from here?

The very nature of sport climbing, along with a huge increase in the numbers of climbers, has led to some perhaps unforeseen consequences: climbing crags on private land have been closed down across Australia; climbing access to previously public cliffs—the Three Sisters in New South Wales and Crookneck in Queensland, for example—is increasingly being banned; and there has been a growing concern over environmental degradation of climbing areas. This has compelled rockclimbing clubs to align themselves more forcefully with conservation ideals. Perhaps it has come full circle...the climbers emerging from the earliest bushwalking clubs in Australia at the end of World War II generally had a close association with wilderness. This was not so apparent with new climbing clubs emerging in the 1960s, many of whom saw climbing and the environment as separate issues. With increasing pressure on the environment, there has been a return to the importance of conservation amongst newcomers, many of whom began their vertical journeys in climbing gyms rather than on an isolated, scrubby cliff, several hours’ walk from a carpark. This does not mean that one form of climbing is any better or worse than another. It is simply suggesting that things can’t go on as they are without a significant change in attitude, particularly towards bolting—or perhaps gyms and practice cliffs like Kangaroo Point in Brisbane will become the only approved destinations for hard climbing in Australia. The debate over bolts is as old as the practice itself, stemming from the early 1950s in the Blue Mountains, in particular, but increasingly, national parks’ regulators are taking more notice of the permanent damage it does to rock surfaces. And it’s worth remembering that it’s only in the past decade or two of the 100 year history of modern climbing in Australia that bolting has become accepted as the majority practice.

Picture: Rob Hales on the final headwall of the north face of Leaning Peak, Mt Barney, September 2003. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-09T21:58:00.000+10:00

Changes...

Early in 2005, the strange hiss of an electric bolt drill echoed around the overhangs on Tibrogargan. I’d just finished Prometheus II, an exposed climb below Cave Five with Greg Sheard, Jane White (pictured) and Cass Crane. I felt a great sadness, watching the trachyte powder drifting down as a couple of climbers forced their way up through the previously impossible overhangs. Just to their north was the classic Trojan, climbed in 1966 by Les Wood and John Tillack. And a few metres to the south, Overexposed, another special route climbed by Les Wood and Donn Groom the same year. No bolts were placed (or carried) on the first ascent of either climb. Perhaps it is symptomatic of the current era that the claim for the longest climb in the country is a route which uses almost 100 bolts—the difficult 568 metre Lost Boys on the north face of Mt Warning by Tim Balla and Malcolm Matheson. A significant achievement according to the rules of today’s game—but even more difficult, perhaps unclimbable, without bolts. I wonder how far we can honestly say we’ve travelled when we consider this in light of the first tentative steps taken by the first European climbers in Australia, more than a century ago.

Picture: Jane White reaches easier ground after the delicate traverse on Prometheus II. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-07T18:04:00.000+10:00

Climbing for adventure

Wendy Steele and sister Katie ( closest to camera) high on the north face of Leaning Peak making the 1st female ascent, September 2003. At 410 metres, it is arguably the longest bolt-free climbing route in Australia.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-07T18:00:00.000+10:00

Bolts and the Buttress

The first bolt was placed at Frog Buttress in 1981 in a climb called Yodel up the Valley. It was repeated shortly after by Rick White and Kim Carrigan who found the bolt to be unnecessary. But the practice has continued. Rick White died hoping that Frog Buttress might one day reclaim its bolt-free status. The crag that he played a major role in developing over the years has been central in identifying Australia as an international rockclimbing destination. The clean climbing ethic that created Frog Buttress was one of its foundation pillars. Some have begun removing the bolts they placed in their climbs there following Rick White’s death but it will take more than a few fine gestures to turn around the bolting juggernaut that dominates modern Australian rockclimbing. Ethics — including climbing ethics — will always remain the domain of the individual. But to have one bolt-free crag in Queensland (or Australia, for that matter) would make a powerful statement in the current environment. It would be akin to the impact American environmentalist-climber John Muir had on the early days of exploration and development of climbing in Yosemite. And perhaps it would go some way towards acknowledging the central role that clean climbing ethics played in pushing Queensland to the forefront of Australia rockclimbing in the early 1970s. Surely that alone is worthy of such recognition.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-07T17:10:00.000+10:00

Women’s place

By the mid 1980s, as female climbers in Australia were beginning to establish themselves on the hard sport routes. Louise Shepherd in the early 1980s was climbing in Yosemite, Nyrie Dodd led Passport to Insanity, one of the hardest climbs in Australia, and visiting French climber Christine Gambert bagged India, even harder. It was clear that women could mix it with the men on the most difficult routes in the country. Within 12 months, American Lyn Hill would be described as the world’s best rockclimber—male or female. In 1990, Hill’s former arch rival in climbing competitions, Catherine Destivelle, soloed the Bonatti Pillar in five hours. Hill went on to make the first free ascent of The Nose on El Capitan in 1993, taking 23 hours, climbing part of the route in darkness—an extraordinary achievement. In the same year, 1993, Scottish climber Alison Hargreaves became the first person to solo all classic North Faces in the Alps in a single season. Two years later, she was the first woman to solo Everest but was killed in a huge storm on K2 along with six others a few months later. In 1991, 52 year old Junko Tabei became the first woman (and 11th person overall) to climb the Eight Summits—including Carstenz Pyramid—reaching the top of Kosciuszko. Bridgit Muir became the first Australian to climb Seven Summits—excluding Carstenz Pyramid—two years later.

Out of the gym

From the early 1990s in Australia, women returned to rockclimbing in numbers seen only in Queensland between the wars in the 1930s. It seems that the climbing gym culture played a significant role in this. Whatever the reasons for the sudden upsurge in interest, throughout the 1990s, women began to rediscover a place for themselves in Australian climbing culture. Ironically, their battle for acceptance was not so very different from the struggle by their European sisters, 100 years before. Strong female climbers were soon a regular sight on crags around the country and no route, regardless of how intimidating it might be, was out of bounds. Adventure climbing was firmly on the agenda for some, at least. One milestone in Queensland was in 1998 when Jacqui Kiewa and Wendy Steele (pictured) became the first women to climb the East Face of Mt Barney—32 years after the first ascent.

Picture: Wendy Steele collection.

2005-10-07T17:03:00.000+10:00

Challenges

for

Rick White

Rick White returned to the Himalayas for a second time with Michael Groom in 1991 to climb Everest, but the trip ended in disarray with White having to fly home urgently to attend to a business crisis. With a long-time financier going to the wall, White was virtually forced out of Mountain Designs with huge debts. But by 2000, he was getting restless again and set up a small, hi-tech sleeping bag design and manufacturing company. In 2001, he was invited back to Mountain Designs by a new owner as adviser in research and development of new products, or, as he wryly observed, ‘as a walking historian’. His extraordinary business career had come almost full circle. It was during this period of re-adjustment that White had to confront a new and unknown challenge—a muscle-wasting illness called inclusion body myositis: ‘It was diagnosed in 1991 after I came back from Everest and I suspect I got it in 1990 after going to Cho Oyu. I definitely had it before I went to Everest because I was getting weak and then I got stronger by training but as soon as I stopped, it just went boom…really, really weak.’ For someone who had made a career out of climbing and who had played a major role in Australian climbing for more than a quarter of a century, it was a bitter blow. But his approach to this was characteristic of the attitude which propelled him into the ranks of Australia’s top climbers. White took up coaching a small group of talented sport climbers and insisted on taking part in significant milestones at Frog Buttress until his death from a brain tumour in 2004.

Picture: Rick White abseiling down Infinity at the 1998 Frog Buttress anniversary. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-07T16:57:00.000+10:00

Twenty years ago today...

The 'discoverers' of Frog Buttress (from left) Rick White and Chris Meadows, with Jane White, prepare to climb Corner of Eden in November 1988 on the 20th anniversary of the first ascent. Ironically, it was their last climb together: Chris Meadows took his own life in 1991 and in the same year, Rick White was diagnosed with a muscle-wasting disease that effectively ended his active climbing career.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-07T16:42:00.000+10:00

Challenges for Michael Groom

Queenslander Michael Groom (pictured) had decided that climbing would be a big part of his life at an early age. With a grandfather like Queensland wilderness pioneer Arthur Groom and a father like Donn Groom, he probably had little say in the matter! By the early 1980s, was well advanced in his quest to climb the highest mountain in the world. It all started at age five when he was looking at Mt Barney with his father, Donn, who explained that Mt Everest was about six times higher! In 1982, Groom made several trips to the Himalayas with Australian climbers Tim McCartney-Snape, Lincoln Hall, Geoff Bartram, Greg Mortimer and Andy Henderson and following a season in the French Alps in 1986, he found himself on Kangchenjunga (8598m). But a decision he made to turn back close to the summit probably saved his life. The following year, he and his climbing partner John Coulton reached the summit of Kangchenjunga in a howling wind. A nightmare descent began as, snowblind and hallucinating, they stumbled along in the darkness. When Groom removed his boots, the ‘black rot’ of frostbite had reached the arches of both feet. For most, it would have meant the end of a climbing career—but not for him: ‘Losing my toes really changed my outlook on life in that unless you experience a situation where everything that’s so important to you is very nearly taken away, you don’t really appreciate how much it means to you.’ He realised that somehow, he’d been given a second chance and that’s when he decided to take up mountaineering with a vengeance.

The five highest mountains in the world

Groom joined Rick and Jane White’s expedition to Cho Oyu in 1990 and they attempted a new route before retreating. With the rest of the team suffering from either altitude sickness or exhaustion, Groom climbed to the summit alone up the standard route. His determination to climb Mt Everest (8848m) was rewarded on 9 May 1993 when he stood on the summit of his dreams. The following year he climbed K2 via the Abruzzi Ridge and 12 months later, became the first Australian to climb Lhotse (8511m). In 1996, he was back on Everest as an expedition guide when a huge storm swept across the region. In its wake, eight climbers on the south side of Everest died, including his employer, New Zealand climber Rob Hall, and another of Hall’s guides, Andy Harris. It was three years before Groom returned to the Himalayas. At noon on 16 May 1999 with partner Dave Bridges, he climbed the last few metres of solid ice to the tiny pyramid summit of Makalu (8481m), becoming the first Australian to climb the world’s five highest peaks.

Illustration: Michael Groom on the summit of Cho Oyu, The Courier-Mail, 1990.

2005-10-06T22:46:00.000+10:00

The East Pillar

of Shivling

In May 1981, Rick White and Greg Child joined Britons Doug Scott and Don Whillans, along with Frenchman Georges Bettembourg to climb Shivling’s East Pillar in Nepal (pictured). They were stormed in for two days at the halfway point where White celebrated his 35th birthday. Jubilant after making the first ascent, but weakened from a lack of food, White and Child began their descent on very steep ice. They reached a small notch in the ridge and were just about to sit down for a rest. White continues:

The snow started slipping but we didn’t have axes because somehow or other Doug and George had the axes and Greg and I had hammers. But you can’t self-arrest with a hammer—you can’t belay with a hammer as Greg found out, so he got ripped off the belay and we went tumbling down. We fell 200 metres, 250. We were really lucky because there’s a col between the two peaks—Shivling’s got two peaks—and we landed in this little valley. I blacked out and woke up at the bottom and I thought, “O shit, my arms are working”—and we were fine. It all happened so fast. If we’d slid a little bit to the left we would have gone over a six thousand foot drop.

Doug Scott remained a close friend of Rick White's until White's death in 2004. The 13-day East Pillar route was the most technically difficult climb ever done at altitude and remained unrepeated for 15 years.

Picture: Rick White collection.

2005-10-06T22:37:00.000+10:00

New games: new names

Kim Carrigan’s and others’ adoption of European sport climbing techniques and training strategies set up a framework for climbing in Australia that has persisted from the late 1970s. Until that time, a handful of mostly weekend climbers in the country had ever contemplated training as special preparation for climbing. This was a turning point when ‘climbing’ became many different things. The gradual dominance of sport climbing, most usually accompanied by a reliance on bolting, toproping and multi-day sieges of one pitch problems, pushed ‘traditional’ or ‘adventure climbing’ to the periphery—even creating new names for what in the past was simply ‘rockclimbing’. But traditional climbing persisted and pockets of resistance remain. This trend continues today and although the divisions between various genres of climbing remain blurred, the dominance of sport climbing is apparent in the pages of Australian and international climbing magazines and websites. The focus of the experience has shifted with numbers seemingly playing a more central role than other criteria. This was exemplified by publicity around the one-pitch Punks in the Gym at Arapiles by German climber Wolfgang Gullich which claimed to be the world’s hardest route in 1985. Few, if any, climbers in Australia would have known that it was the same year in which pioneering Lakeland climber Bill Peascod died on the 1st stance of a climb in Wales. He was climbing with Don Whillans at the time—Whillans himself died in his sleep exactly three months later. Six years after his 1st ascent of Punks, Gullich was also dead—killed in a car accident in Germany.

Picture: Rick White and Ted Cais gear up for climb at Frog Buttress, 1987. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-06T22:11:00.000+10:00

Climbing high

For almost a decade, Fred From was a significant force in Queensland climbing. He refused to use either climbing boots or chalk. Raised on a farm at Coominya, just west of Brisbane, From soon acquitted himself on the Frog Buttress classics, leading Conquistador in fine style. By this time, the Brisbane Rockclimbing Club had fizzled out and a new University of Queensland Climbing Club had started up with From its ambassador. He had soon added new routes on the steep columns of Crookneck, at Girraween and Knapps Peak. In 1984, Fred From set out on his greatest adventure—an attempt on Everest via the West Ridge. Tragically, he fell to his death, tripping on his crampons, while searching for another Australian climber, Craig Nottle, who had fallen in the same way, at the same place. It happened on From’s 28th birthday—9 October. At the same time as From fell to his death, another Australian expedition was on Everest forcing a bold new route, White Limbo, up the Great Couloir the North Face, climbing Alpine-style without supplementary oxygen. Of the team, Tim McCartney-Snape and Greg Mortimer reached the summit.

Illustration: The Courier-Mail, Brisbane.

2005-10-05T22:27:00.000+10:00

East Barney solo

Robert Staszewski (pictured) made the first and only known solo ascent of the east face of Mt Barney in March 1979. He was on the brink of an ethical epiphany following years of climbing at Girraween, about to reject the use of bolts as protection. He climbed the east face route using a combination of free-soloing and a back rope, anchored to a belay, which entailed climbing each pitch twice. Staszewski found himself facing a dilemma as he contemplated the crux of the climb which entails lassooing a tree and pulling up the rope, hand-over-hand. He had thrown a nest of nuts and carabiners around the infamous tree, planning to climb the exposed pitch as others had done before him. But there was a problem—the rope had jammed, but not on the nest of nuts and carabiners, and he could not see how reliable it was. Eventually, he swung out over the huge drop. When he reached the tree he saw all that held the rope was a small loop, jammed in between the tree and the rock!

Picture: A younger Robert Staszewski muscles up Electronic Flag at Frog Buttress. Paul Caffyn collection.

2005-10-05T22:19:00.000+10:00

Climbing solo

Rick White made the first solo ascent of Ball’s Pyramid in 1979 in one hour 45 minutes while on a trip there with members of the University of Queensland Climbing Club. It was a time when soloing was becoming popular amongst the experienced core of climbers in Queensland and beyond. White recalled that Ball’s Pyramid was his best solo performance:

It’s not technically hard but then again, with the style of the rock on those kinds of sea stacks, you can climb quickly. If you read any article written by solo climbers, it always has the same theme—the way you can focus and just flow over the rock. It’s not often you have to think about a crux move because you’ve got to have it pretty much wired in your mind and you can do it—if you have to think about it you’re likely to fall off it.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-05T21:58:00.000+10:00

Climbing by numbers

In Australia by the mid 70s, another generation of young climbers was filling in the gaps at Frog Buttress and various other crags around the country. With Rick White pursuing his business interests in Mountain Designs and other climbing projects, this cohort was a lot more mobile than in previous eras and many moved from crag to crag, picking off the prime routes as they pushed the upper limits of the possible. It included Greg Child, Chris Peisker, Kim Carrigan, Mike Law and Nic Taylor. In January 1976, Taylor was the first to break from the pack, climbing Australia’s first grade 24—Country Road, at Mt Buffalo. Peisker was hot on his heels and produced Horrorscope at Mt Arapiles, a climb of equal difficulty. The gauntlet had been thrown down. Taylor spent almost a year in Queensland, much of it climbing with White. Then it was time for something special, as White recalls:

Nic and I hatched a plan to go to Mt Buffalo and simply blow everyone away by doing a hammerless ascent of Lord Gumtree. I guess we picked Lord Gumtree because it was the hardest, I had prior knowledge and we had not forgiven the uncharitable locals after our second ascent a few years earlier. Thinking back, it’s hard to justify hammerless climbing. Why make a hard aid route even harder by leaving behind some crucial gear? I guess as Lito Tejada-Flores would say it’s just another game climbers play. Pitches that were easy on pegs now became M7 and we weren’t at the crux rurp pitch yet! I led all the hard pitches with grades of M6, M7 and M8. When we finished, we ran into Roland Pauligk, whose home-made nuts had helped to solve the crux, and convinced him he should make a smaller size. Thus the RP size 0 was born.

One new face on the Queensland scene was Coral Bowman. The expatriate American spent some time working with Rick White in his growing Mountain Designs business but found time to make the hardest female ascents in the country, including Insomnia and Black Light at Frog Buttress. Two years later in 1978, she was regularly climbing the hardest routes graded then at 24—and put up a new climb at Maggies Farm on Mt Maroon, Little Queen, grading it 22. Rick White teamed up with Greg Child in 1978 on the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the cliff to climb Decade, and do the first free ascent of Impulse, grading it 24. Boundaries are there to be pushed and in April that year, Chris Peisker climbed Australia’s first grade 25, Ostler, at Bundaleer in the Grampians. It was the country’s hardest climb for just five months—Kim Carrigan found Procul Harum at Mt Arapiles in September, pushing the grade up to 26.

Illustration: The Mountain Designs logo.

2005-10-05T21:36:00.000+10:00

White punks on chalk

Over the Christmas-New Year period in 1974-75, Rick White and Robert Staszewski made a bold attempt to climb a new route on the FitzRoy in Patagonia. Surviving a near-death experience with a huge loose block, they returned to Australia where White set about expanding his climbing equipment business and Mountain Designs was born. A few months after their return, 21 year old Boston climber Henry Barber arrived in Brisbane at the start of a short climbing holiday in Australia. White had met him in the Yosemite Valley, two years earlier. Barber introduced two new elements into Australian climbing, both destined to create controversy—gymnasts’ chalk, used to improve a climber’s finger grip on small and sloping holds, and a new climbing ethic. Barber (pictured) left Australia six weeks later with an impressive record: 14 new ascents, 39 climbs on which he eliminated aid, and claiming the hardest route in the country. The use of chalk caused a major debate. Victorian climber Nic Taylor had returned from a season in Yosemite around the same time as Barber and he, too, was sold on the magical qualities of the white powder. But many local climbers, including Rick White, spurned the use of chalk for years, arguing in part that the unsightly tell-tale white marks climbers left in their wake was like a series of ‘how-to’ dots others could simply follow up a cliff.

New ethics, new debates

But it was Barber’s ethical style that was the biggest challenge to local techniques. It had become common practice by then for hard climbs to be put up by ‘hang-dogging’, either falling or resting on a runner, then starting to climb again from that point. If Barber rested or fell on a runner, he always lowered off, pulled the rope through, and started from the bottom again. He was brimming with confidence and frequently used long, unprotected runouts. It was this latter aspect of Barber’s climbing ethics that appealed to Ian Thomas and Keith Bell who teamed up to do a series of long, serious climbs in the Warrumbungles and the Blue Mountains. Barber had a significant impact on many local climbers, if only in changing their attitudes on dress sense. Almost overnight, everyone seemed to be climbing in white cotton trousers! The debate over the impact of ‘Hot Henry’s’ visit was very much alive three years after his brief visit when the first edition of the climbing magazine, Rock, was launched, edited by Chris Baxter. Strangely, Queensland climbing did not rate a mention, despite Rick White's support for the venture through a full page Mountain Designs' advertisement. Meanwhile in the deep north, Trevor Gynther had been busy developing new rhyolite cliffline near Binna Burra with various partners, calling it Whitenbah Wafers. Competition for new climbing areas was keen and one of Gynther’s tactics was to name and grade the best lines before he had climbed them! The Brisbane Rockclimbing Club Mark I was virtually defunct and it would be 10 years before Mark II emerged. The collapse seemed to be catching as across the continent, the Climbing Association of Western Australia, too, folded. It would not re-emerge until encouraged by visits from the east coast by Kim Carrigan in 1986, and Mike Law and Louise Shepherd, three years later.

Illustration: 1st issue of Rock, 1978.

2005-10-05T21:29:00.000+10:00

Bootlaces and Beerwah

Ian Thomas (pictured) and Robert Staszewski teamed up in 1973 and almost immediately took on the hardest classics in southeast Queensland. One of their chosen climbs was a long bolt route Sid Tanner had put up through the Beerwah overhangs in the Glasshouses. It turned into an epic with them spending an unplanned, rainy night on the climb and having to bail out, leaving their gear behind on the face. The recovery process proved to be a challenge, as Thomas recalls:

It led to the singularly most dangerous thing I have ever done in climbing which was abseiling over the whole thing, tying three ropes together and tying them to small bushes at the top—because that’s all there was—and throwing it over, so there’re three rope lengths hanging down. I lurched off the top one—it was my old Miller’s rope—and the friction was incredible. And I sort of ground my way down to the overhang, dropped below the overhangs and you’re way out in space. I couldn’t obviously get back in 50 feet to get the gear so I just had to keep on going down. I went down another 20 feet and suddenly came to a knot and realised I had no idea how to get over a knot. What was this? I was spinning around and around. I didn’t have any tapes to make a prussik loop or anything like that. I didn’t know how to do it. In the end, I took off one shoe and took the lace out of it and made a little loop to stand in and then that took my weight off and I was hanging by one hand from the knot and unclipped the carabiner from above the knot. So I was hanging totally by one hand 300 feet off the ground. But my foolish mistake was that the second rope was a 9 mm and I’d only clipped in one cross crab so I basically fell the next 150 feet down onto the next knot—dong! [laughs] Squeak’s eyes were out on stalks. And mine were as well.

Surviving Beerwah, Thomas eventually moved south to Mt Victoria in the Blue Mountains to run a retail outlet for Rick White’s expanding climbing business although strangely, even though it was in the thick of climbing activity there, it never really seemed to succeed. Back in Queensland, Steve Bell and Dave Kahler continued climbing new routes at Mt Maroon, Frog Buttress and the cliffs on Ngungun while more new names appeared on new route descriptions—Kim Carrigan, Trevor Gynther, Rhys Davies and Joe Friend. Meanwhile, Robert Staszewski had turned his attention to Girraween, climbing the first of hundreds of routes there he found over the next two decades.

Picture: Ian Thomas collection.

2005-10-05T21:25:00.000+10:00

First Australian ascents in Yosemite

Rick White at Frog Buttress in 1973 shortly after returning from becoming the first Australian to climb both The Nose and the Salathe Wall in Yosemite National Park. And his matter of fact assessment of the Yosemite experience? ‘It didn’t particularly influence me because there was nothing there that we weren’t doing. It was just bigger. I guess it was an introduction to big wall climbing and it’s a different game, suitable for places like Patagonia and even the Himalayas, where I went later.’ On his return to Queensland, White found Ted Cais had linked up with Ian Thomas after the Porter’s Pass climbing meet and the three of them began to push the limits at Frog Buttress again, making the first free ascent of Corner of Eden, and climbing new routes like Venom, Child in Time and Black Light.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-05T21:18:00.000+10:00

Into the maw of The Minotaur

One of the strongest memories of the Porter’s Pass climbing meet for Ted Cais was his second ascent with Rick White of the intimidating John Ewbank classic wall climb, The Minotaur. ‘Rick and I had been thugging up cracks for most of the time on our Easter 1973 national climbing meet so I was more than ready to indulge in my preferred edging style,’ he remembers. ‘That night, while everyone else was quaffing quarts of ale at the Mt.Victoria pub, I retreated into my mind seeing myself sailing away on the line of thin edges past the notorious loose flake. And so it was the next day, but first I launched out with no gear except for hammer and lost arrows to place the one key pin at the flake (pictured) before reversing back to finally gear up and go.’

Picture: Ted Cais collection.

2005-10-05T21:08:00.000+10:00

Porter's Pass climbing meet

With the interstate climbing ‘war’ at its peak, a large contingent of Queensland and Victorian climbers joined their New South Wales colleagues at the Easter 1973 climbing meet at Porter’s Pass. One emerging new climber at the time was Ian Thomas or ‘Humzoo’—the nickname stemming from his early penchant for playing the voice-generated instrument called the ‘hum-a-zoo’. He recalls being aware of the interstate rivalry well before he met any of the protagonists. ‘I remember pissing myself laughing at articles by Greg Sheard about him chopping bolts,’ he recalls. ‘So in ’71 when Squeak [Robert Staszewski] and I went down there, the first thing we did was not climbing, but we got our hammers out and chopped bolts. It just seemed to be the thing to do!’ To the exuberant Thomas and the ambitious Staszewski, it was simply good fun. Thomas recalls the interstate tension at the Porter’s Pass climbing meet when, in front of a highly critical audience, Chris Baxter retreated from Flake Crack, packed up his car and left. ‘That Queensland versus the south is mirrored in the wider community, too,’ he muses. ‘Maybe we were enacting something which is there culturally anyway. I’m not sure.’ With the hostilities at their peak, Thomas delighted in fanning the flames, referring to Grampians’ classics as ‘loose, crumbly lines on Mt Crumblebar in the Crapians’. It did little to improve interstate relations but it was the source of great mirth.

Picture: Ted Cais, Rick White, Trevor Gynther and Rick Jamieson contemplating the great climbs on the steep walls around Amen Corner at Wirindi, 1973. Ted Cais collection.

2005-10-05T20:32:00.000+10:00

Beyond the Buttress

The first recorded climb on the Girraween granite near Stanthorpe—Late Afternoon Flake (pictured)—by Dave Gillieson and Richard Sullivan. Gillieson recalls the moment:

Right at the lip I had to take time to place a small leeper bolt, more psychological protection than real. Surprisingly this held a fall on the first free attempt later on. Beyond that, the angle eased, and I was able to reach a small ledge about two centimetres wide. From there, the crack continued cleanly for thirty metres, just off vertical but with a rounded edge. I laybacked about ten metres up to a point where a chockstone allowed me to stand and enjoy the situation. It was an exciting lead and very committed, with a fair bit of rope drag. From there, an off width crack continued, the angle easing all the while, to the upper slope of the dome. I brought Richard up to me and we soloed up to the top. We scrambled down off the dome as the sun set, the rock glowing ruby red in the twilight. That night we downed a bottle of the local rough red and celebrated a fine climb.

Over the next 15 years, around 1,000 new routes were put up there with Sullivan, Robert Staszewski, and brothers Stuart and Scott Camps involved in most of them. Steve Bell, who was active at Frog Buttress and in developing the cliffs on Ngungun, in the Glasshouses, linked up with Lesley Rivers to climb a new route, Urea Crack. Meanwhile in central Australia, Andrew Thomson and Keith Lockwood climbed 140 metres up the Kangaroo Tail on Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) before being ordered down by a park ranger.

Picture: Dave Gillieson collection

2005-10-05T20:20:00.000+10:00

Coomera Gorge: 1st descent

In December 1972 in the heat of another Queensland summer, Donn Groom, Ted Cais and I decided to try something entirely different—a descent of the Coomera River Gorge from its source in the border ranges of Lamington National Park. Donn had pioneered abseiling into the Coomera crevice for guests at Binna Burra lodge years before, but no one had made a descent of the entire gorge. We started our journey at the headwaters—where the graded walking track crosses the barely-flowing stream. One hundred metres into the scramble we had our first swim across a pool of dark green, freezing mountain water. Around us the lush, deep green vegetation hung from the walls and small waterfalls sprayed into the gorge on both sides from dizzying heights. It was a magnificent place. We swam through several more rock pools and slid down a huge log angled down a steep cataract before reaching our first impasse—an overhanging waterfall, disappearing into the dark depths of the canyon. Ted started the abseil and swung heavily into the cliff under a big overhanging rock, finally shouting from below above the roar of the water that he was safe. Donn and I followed, discovering that the rope ran out about four metres above the surface of the pool below us. Pulling the rope down after us meant that we were committed—there was no easy way back from here. And there was no other option—we had to jump. Donn went in first, taking one end of the rope with him and we sent our waterproofed packs across to the other side of the pool on a makeshift flying fox. We could hear the water boiling ahead of us and it suggested one thing—another big drop. And it was! A sinuous water race plunging 50 metres into an unseen pool below. The roar was incredible and we had to shout at the top of our voices to be heard above it. It was a slippery, sliding descent, festooned with long strands of algae of the deepest green. The sheer walls, rising up perhaps 100 metres above us, were matted with a wild array of different kinds of vegetation. Donn left his pack behind for this one. When Ted and I reached him, he was on a small ledge, six metres above the pool. Another jump—the third so far.

The Hidden Falls

Donn peered over the edge of the next big drop—it was steep, partly overhanging, and he thought he recognised it as the Hidden Falls—the last big drop in the canyon before the 70 metre Coomera Falls. He had looked up at the lip of the canyon where we now stood many times before, wondering what it was like up here. Now he knew. And for the first time, we looked down into the Coomera Crevice. But there was a problem—there was nowhere close to the top of the falls to anchor our abseil rope. Donn hammered in an angle piton and was set to use this but Ted and I spotted a large tree about six metres above him on the side of the gorge. I cut 20 metres from the emergency rope we carried—an old No 3 laid nylon—and we made a long sling, linking the tree and the peg. We threaded our two 40 metre ropes through the sling and Donn disappeared over the edge. His shouts from below confirmed it was the Hidden falls and he was down—we had made it. We quickly joined him and swam through the pool, wading downstream to the top of the Coomera Falls, descending it in two abseils. After a quick lunch, it was a one kilometre rockhop downstream to the start of the ‘Mystery Track’, a steep climb up near-vertical slopes, swinging off small trees and tree roots. It was a fast way into and out of the Coomera Gorge discovered some years before. We arrived back at Binna Burra Lodge seven hours after we had left.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-05T20:04:00.000+10:00

Queensland takes the lead...again

From the early 1970s, Rick White continued to push the boundaries of hard aid and free climbing in Australia, driven by a strong ego and a powerful drive to reach the top echelons of his calling. By 1972, he was ready to take the lead and with Ron Collett and Ted Cais, they climbed a direct start to Beau Brummell on Mt Maroon's big east face. White wrote: ‘The route is significantly harder than all other routes I have ever experienced. The climb is awkward and sustained jamming up a 30 degree overhanging corner-crack which runs straight into a roof (aid). There are no rests. Once the roof is reached, the idea is to hang off one lousy hand jam and quickly place the first aid—you have approximately 15 seconds to solve the situation.’ They called it Valhalla and graded it 22 M2—the hardest in Australia. A few months later, Bryden Allen eliminated the aid moves from The Kraken at Wirindi (formerly Mt Piddington) in the Blue Mountains, creating Australia’s second grade 22 climb. White made the second free ascent of The Kraken a short time later, confirming that Valhalla was its equal.

Working on Maggie’s Farm

In May that year, Rick White and Ted Cais blitzed a new climbing area on the southeast corner of Mt Maroon which they called Maggie’s Farm. Along with a queue of other top climbers at the time—Coral Bowman, Chris Peisker, Ron Collett and John Hattink—they steadily climbed one new route after another. In a matter of days, White and Cais climbed 23 new routes at the cliff, commuting each day from Frog Buttress where a national climbing meet had attracted about 20 people from interstate and overseas. During that event, White put up Conquistador with Sydney climber Warwick Williams—Queensland’s first and Australia’s second Grade 21. White completed his Maroon odyssey with a solo mixed free and aid girdle traverse of the east face in November, calling it Animal Act, finishing up the classic, Ruby of India. Frog Buttress was not forgotten but climbing had slowed there. Nevertheless, White and Cais led more hard new routes including Elastic Rurp, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The Noose, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and Iron Mandible.

Picture: Tony Kelly, Greg Sheard, Rick White and Ron Collett sort gear on Mt Maroon. Within weeks, White and Collett joined with Ted Cais to climb Valhalla. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-04T22:14:00.000+10:00

'Dirty Don' in the deep north

Greg Sheard moved to Townsville in 1970 and soon tracked down some locals who were interested in climbing. One was named ‘Dirty Don’—that should have raised his suspicions—and the other was Craig. For a reason best known to himself, Sheard decided to abseil down the vertical face of Townsville’s Castle Hill, using two ropes tied together. He went down first, managed to get past the knot halfway and scrambled back to the top of the mountain. By the time he arrived, Dirty Don was on his way down—but he was taking a long time. Too long. Sheard continues the story:

I hooked up another rope and went over the edge and Dirty Don was hanging there—he’d actually unclipped himself and had wrapped his arm around the rope and that’s all that was holding him. It was a bloody long way to the deck from there—70 odd metres off the deck just hanging by his arm wrapped around the rope! I went back and started trying to organise some gear to get down to help him. A crowd had turned up by that stage and one character said, 'Get the rescue equipment, get the rescue team!' Craig turned around and said, 'We are the &*#@*& rescue team!' And he was right, we were! We were the Townsville rock and rescue team! That’s all there was and one third of the team was stuck halfway up Castle Hill about to die because he’d stuffed things up. I got down to him and hooked him up—he’d totally freaked out—and got him to the bottom. By this stage it was well and truly after dark. But Dirty Don never went climbing again.

Picture: Greg Sheard in action on the east face of Maroon in 1970 shortly before moving to North Queensland. Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-04T21:36:00.000+10:00

Big wall battles

Big wall climbing was news in various Australian magazines (pictured) at this time with the antics of John Ewbank and others the focus. Meanwhile, Keith Bell and Ray Lassman braved the 1970 summer heat on Bluff Mountain in the Warrumbungles, climbing the 291 metre Icarus. Further south, on the north wall of Mt Buffalo, Chris Dewhirst, Dave Neilson and Ian Ross had spent two days climbing Conquistador, a hard aid route with some free climbing sections. Climbing in Victoria was beginning to take off with a vengeance—earlier in the year, the powerful Keith Lockwood and Roland Pauligk had climbed two hard routes in the Grampians, Frumious Brandersnatch and Liquidator. Activity in Queensland followed the lead and big wall aid climbs were suddenly in vogue. Sid Tanner teamed with Andrew Speirs to climb a new aid route through the huge roof on Beerwah in the Glasshouses, calling it Leviathan. At Mt Maroon, Rick White and Ron Collett with Keith Nannery put up the classic Ruby of India—a climb that has since had more ascents than any other on the east face.

Rajahs of rhetoric

White joined with Ron Collett and John Oddie in 1970 to climb The Antichrist on Mt Maroon, grading it M6—and claiming it as the hardest aid route in the country. Throwing down the gauntlet, Chris Dewhirst and Peter McKeand put up a climb at Mt Buffalo, calling it Lord Gumtree and grading it M7—now it was the hardest in the country. White had enlisted 16 year old protégé Robert Staszewski (Squeak), planning to climb Ozymandius. But when they heard about Lord Gumtree, they had a quick change of plan. White later quipped: ‘Of course, it was not as hard as our Antichrist.’ Their ascent was controversial in that both Staszewski and White jummared up the last easy pitch on a rope used by another climbing party. ‘The Victorian press led by Chris Baxter and urged on (I’m sure) by Chris Dewhirst—whose route we had just repeated before it could get a reputation—screamed foul,’ White remembers. ‘We had not climbed the last pitch therefore I had not repeated the climb.’ The battle raged on.

Illustrations: From the magazines Australian Outdoors 1969 and Pix 1970.

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Deep Purple on Rock

By 1970, many of the easy, obvious lines had been climbed at Frog Buttress and it would be a hard core who would eke out the remaining climbs there over the next decades—Rick White, Ross Allen, Ted Cais and Ian Cameron amongst them. In 1970, 10 hard new routes went up there with Odin perhaps the pick of the crop. Climbing Odin would eventually be the subject of a home movie, set to the music of Deep Purple, one of Rick White’s favourite bands at the time. In the last years of his life, his mobile phone ringtone punched out the opening riff from Smoke on the Water. The super eight movie, called Deep Purple on Rock, did the rounds of Australian climbing clubs with White relishing the occasion as it showed Queensland climbers demonstrating their ‘jamBing’ skills to disbelieving southerners. In the same year Ted Cais and I climbed Dreadnought, a new route up the highest part of the east face of Tibrogargan and the second longest climb in Queensland (log book account pictured).

Climbing 'Mt Bastard'

Around this time, Greg Sheard decided to have one last attempt at climbing the East Face of Mt Barney. Two previous attempts had been washed out and he had started calling the mountain, ‘Mt Bastard’! It was getting serious. This time, the weather held and he found himself and Alan Millband at the base of the climb despite the challenging walk in. Greg Sheard takes up the story:

Alan led the first pitch. To quote the guide: ‘One already feels the exposure.’ To quote me: ‘Pig’s arse!’ Second pitch, I scored. There just happened to be a tree at the start of the pitch so I climbed it. This was destined to be the first of a long series of botanical aids on the climb. Belay in tree. Alan followed up (with pack on back), swinging through the trees like a constipated Tarzan.

And so it continued: Millband grabbed a snake on the crux pitch and Sheard managed to climb it free on a toprope, finding the ‘rotten’ tree to be ‘as solid as buggery’. Greg Sheard had once again dealt a body blow to any romantic notions of big wall climbing on Mt Barney!

Southern snippets

Earlier that year, a team of climbers from Sydney—Keith Bell, Ray Lassman, John Worrall, Bruce Rowe, Keith Royce, Hughie Ward, and Howard Bevan—made the first ascent of the North Arete on Ball’s Pyramid in a six day epic. Several new areas were opened up by climbers in New South Wales including Medlow Bath, Mt Blackheath, Nellies Glen, the Dogface to Echo Point cliffline and Mt Boyce. John Ewbank was talking of retiring and pursuing a career in the music business, having climbed more than 400 new routes in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. In Western Australia, rockclimbing attracted the attention of the Australian Broadcasting Commission which filmed a quarry climb and included it as a feature in a local sports program.

Picture: Ted Cais collection.

2005-10-04T21:11:00.000+10:00

Ethical adventures

Ted Cais with an array of pitons and ‘crackers’—a central element of clean climbing ethics applied in Queensland from the late 1960s. At the close of the decade, debates over a new approach to climbing and climbing ethics swept through Australian climbing circles. One of the most notable and eloquent protagonists was New South Wales climber John Ewbank. Through the pages of the national climbing magazine, Thrutch, Ewbank advocated the use of forms of protection less damaging to the rock than bolts, as well as opening up placements impossible with the limited range of pitons available. Queensland climbers were quick to take up the option, playing a leading role in promoting the application of clean climbing ethics. This helped to set up a strong relationship between Queensland and New South Wales climbing that persisted throughout the 1970s with climbers in the two states often joining forces to resist a growing Victorian propaganda machine. Ewbank started to manufacture his own crude versions of ‘crackers’—essentially hexagonal-section lengths of aluminium rod, drilled to enable threading with a sling. As his manufacturing zeal waned, Rick White quickly followed suit with his own versions. Several local climbers in Queensland—Dave Reeve in particular—took this a step further, borrowing from sailing technology and using swaged stainless steel slings on the hexes, probably the first local application of this technology in Australia.

Picture: Ted Cais collection.

2005-10-04T20:34:00.000+10:00

Victoria versus the rest

From the mid-1960s, the Sydney-based climbing magazine, Thrutch, had become the main conduit for Australian climbers' ideas and opinions. And its policy of publishing almost anything provoked some lively debates which stirred along a growing rivalry between Victoria and the rest of the country. It was exacerbated in 1969 when Victorian climbers Chris Dewhirst and Chris Baxter spent two days on the north wall of Mt Buffalo in October 1969 to create Ozymandius. They graded it M6 and claimed it as the hardest aid climb in Australia. Twenty years later, expatriate British climber Steve Monks would climb it free, grading it 28. But back in 1969, it became the most publicised rockclimb in Victorian history, stemming from a newspaper photographer who happened to be staying at Mt Buffalo at the time. Meanwhile, John Ewbank and Bryden Allen returned quietly to Bluff Mountain in the Warrumbungles in October to complete Stonewall Jackson. The 290 metre long route was probably the hardest and most serious yet climbed in Australia. Fresh from his Warrumbungles’ success, Bryden Allen then made the second ascent of The Janicepts at Mt Piddington in November that year with Roland Pauligk making the second ascent of Victoria’s Blimp at Bundaleer.

Beaks on the peaks

It was a time, too, when climbers from Victoria were making their mark internationally with Michael Stone, Ian Guild and John Fantini having successful seasons in the European Alps. The interstate 'war' wasn't confined to the letters' pages in Thrutch. Out on the rock, the rivalry was as intense as New South Wales climbers Keith Bell and Howard Bevan discovered. They were making the 4th ascent of Lieben in the Warrumbungles with a gaggle of Victorian climbers watching, including Roland and Anne Pauligk who always travelled with a flock of their pet parrots. As Bell reached the crux of the climb, one of the birds flew up and landed on a ledge next to him, creating a dilemma: each time he stretched for the crux handhold, the parrot nipped at his fingers. It seemed that even the birds had decided which side they were on!

Internal exile

In the climbing press, Rick White constantly extolled the virtues of Frog Buttress—and any climbing area in Queensland, for that matter—stirring along the public relations’ battle with Victoria. White once told readers: ‘Frog Buttress is without doubt the greatest and most exclusive crack climbing outcrop yet visited by climbers on the Australian mainland!’ And, of course, he was right! His main sparring partner was Chris Baxter who visited Frog Buttress and admitted to his Victorian disciples that it was, indeed, a climbing destination of significance. Baxter recalls the era with a wry smile:

Initially there was the absurd interstate rivalry between Victoria and New South Wales and Victoria and Queensland and a lot of that was due to the lack of contact. It was childish on all sides. I suppose it was taken seriously and the letters would fly back and forwards through Thrutch and that would trigger it off. And there’d be raiding parties down to free Victorian routes or free NSW routes or whatever it was...

While much of the debate through the pages of Thrutch was tongue-in-cheek, it got to a point where bitterness began to creep into the exchanges. White recalls the impasse: ‘There was a point in time where I made a decision never, ever to write another article—ever! I didn’t break that pledge until probably around 1996 when Chris Baxter talked me into writing a history of something or other for Rock magazine. So I didn’t write anything from probably 73 onwards.’ Eventually, Victorian climber Nic Taylor who was working with White's company, Mountain Designs in Brisbane, was instrumental in bringing them together in the late 1970s and they subsequently became good friends.

Illustration: Thrutch logo.

2005-10-04T20:28:00.000+10:00

Back to the 'Bungles

Easter 1969 saw another small, strong contingent of Queensland climbers heading for the volcanic spires of the Warrumbungles. Rick White and Paul Caffyn strayed off Crucifixion, climbing a new direct start to Lieben, the airy Out and Beyond had another three ascents, and climbers from Sydney and Brisbane were again hell-bent on avoiding the ranger who was hell-bent on collecting camp fees. With constant groups of tourists stopping at the campsite water tank—the only one in the area—Sheard became annoyed with the amount of water being used. So he removed the handle from the tap and hid it. As yet another group vainly tried to turn the tap on using sticks, one parent patiently explained the intricacies of climbing equipment to his inquisitive son. Climbers’ gear was draped on a frame near the water tank. Greg Sheard takes up the story: ‘And this little kid’s asking, “What’s that there?” “O, that’s a carabiner to clip into the pitons which are over there.” “What’s that?” “O, that’s a sling.” “And what’s that, dad?” “That’s the bloody tap handle!”’ Over the Easter weekend, we had heard that Ewbank and Allen were trying a new climb on Bluff Mountain at that very time—the 362 metre Ginsburg. Bryden Allen recalls one memorable incident from that climb—but it was when he and Ewbank were returning to Sydney. They hitched a lift, realising that living on dehydrated food for a week was beginning to take its toll. ‘Both of us had fairly ripe guts,’ Allen recalled. ‘There was this dog in the back of the car with us and the bloke turns around and says, “What an awful stink you’ve made, get out of the car at once…” John was just about to do so when the man said “…Fido!” Fido took the blame for John’s fart. And I knew it was John, of course.’

Picture: Chris Meadows, Greg Sheard and Paul Caffyn, Warrumbungles 1969. Paul Caffyn collection.

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The 1st Frog Buttress guidebook

Around the middle of 1969, Rick White produced his own guidebook to Frog Buttress and it was quickly out of date, requiring a second edition, published in December that year. The guide (pictured) listed more than 60 routes and suggested there would be many more. White observed: ‘This small outcrop, discovered climbingwise in November 1968, has been the scene of more activity in the past year than all other areas in the past ten years.’ And he was absolutely right. The explosion of climbing activity was unheralded in Queensland climbing history. It was something Rick White and Chris Meadows could never have imagined when they walked down the scree that day in November 1968. While the overall number of new climbing routes in Victoria and New South Wales at this time exceeded the Queensland achievements, climbing populations in the southern states far outweighed the small core of pioneers active in the deep north. It was an extraordinary and frenetic period which would last for at least another two years. Frog Buttress and the climbers it produced took Queensland to the forefront of climbing activity and achievement in Australia—at least until the early 1970s. For many climbers at this time, Frog Buttress and its style of climbing represented something akin to the Holy Grail. But dissent was in the ranks. Some viewed the climbing there as too short, or too strenuous, or too competitive—or all three. Others found jamming either difficult or unpleasant or both, and continued to search for new climbs elsewhere.

2005-10-04T20:18:00.000+10:00

The revolution continues

Although still very much a male-dominated world, talented 16 year old Marilyn Dall (pictured left) joined with ‘veteran’ Pat Prendergast in 1969 to put up the first all female climb at Frog Buttress. They called it Revolution, perhaps celebrating the year in which Australian women finally received equal pay for equal work—in theory, at least. The most novel ascent at the Buttress and perhaps anywhere in Australia that year was Macraderma. All 35 metres were climbed entirely underground! Paul Caffyn and Rick White abseiled to the bottom of the cleft and with White unable to get off the ground on the damp, slippery rock, Caffyn took over. Applying his considerable caving skills, Caffyn managed to solve the difficult start. Ian Cameron abseiled in to join White at the bottom and they both were forced to prussik up the first 10 metres, unable to follow Caffyn’s inspired lead. Another significant ascent that year was the hard aid climb, Brown Corduroy Trousers, climbed by Rick White and Ian Cameron. Thirteen years later, Kim Carrigan would climb it free, grading it equal to Australia’s hardest climb at the time—28. Along with the new routes at Frog Buttress came another wave of new climbers—Barry Overs, Steve Bell, Dave Kahler, Chris Knudsen and Alan Millband.

Picture: Pat Prendergast collection.

2005-10-04T18:59:00.000+10:00

Hi-ho, hi-ho, de-bolting we will go

In August 1968, the Brisbane Rockclimbing Club became the first in Australia—after the Sydney Rockclimbing Club—to adopt John Ewbank’s open-ended numerical grading system. Following the discovery of Frog Buttress, Rick White, Chris Meadows and Greg Sheard decided to head south in January 1969 to sample grades of climbs in the Blue Mountains and to sharpen their jamming skills. They spent a week at Mt Piddington (Wirindi) and Narrow Neck, climbing 18 routes, including the imposing Amen Corner and Flake Crack. With Queensland virtually a bolt-free zone, the sight and frequency of bolts on all manner of climbs appalled them, as Greg Sheard recalls: ‘There were bolts everywhere and we decided to chop a few. We would never chop them unless we could find alternate placements for equipment.’ The real fun began when they turned up at a Sydney Rockclimbing Club meeting at the Hero of Waterloo Hotel in Sydney and were confronted by the Safety Officer, demanding to know which climbs had been affected. Chris Meadows took exception to his officious approach, as Sheard relates: ‘He was going to have a severe discussion with this guy’s head using both of his fists.’ After dragging the two apart, White and Sheard decided to come clean. ‘He got angrier and angrier when we told him how many we’d done,’ Sheard laughs. ‘We did do a fair few. I suppose we did get a bit carried away because it wasn’t exactly clean the way we pulled some of the bolts out.’ Despite John Lennon’s urging that we should all Give Peace a Chance, the Queenslanders’ brash approach reflected a growing interstate rivalry in Australian climbing circles—albeit most of it good-natured. As Frog Buttress became better known across the country, an intense propaganda war broke out through the pages of Thrutch, with each State claiming to have the best cliffs and the hardest climbs at some stage or other. But it all seemed to come down to Victoria versus the rest.

Illustration: Supplement to Rock Climbs in the Blue Mountains, John Ewbank, 1970.

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Ted Cais ' jamBs' over the bulge on the 2nd ascent of Infinity at Frog Buttress. He recalls his relationship with Rick White and the climb:

We complemented each other well and several times on new routes I would figure out the technical moves only to back off and have Rick punch the route through to the finish. More often we were friendly rivals and I usually was the first one to repeat Rick’s new routes at Frog, although Barry Overs filled this role for a while. I realized, too, I needed to lead new routes independently of Rick to establish my own style so we never became regular partners but helped push each other locally, although Rick was more driven by the achievements of John Ewbank in the Blue Mountains. My first climb with Rick and also my first introduction to Frog Buttress was on the first ascent of Infinity...

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-04T18:43:00.000+10:00

'Paradise found'

It was a Saturday afternoon—9 November 1968—when Rick White and Chris Meadows on the spur of the moment decided to take a closer look at a low line of cliffs on the northwest slope of Mt French. They drove up a rough track to the top of the mountain from the west and walked to the edge of the cliff—the explorer Patrick Logan had stood there 141 years ago. White recalls the moment: ‘We walked along the cliff and thought we’d found a lot of good aid climbs.’ My brother Chris confirmed this when he arrived home that day, raving about the 50 to 60 metre high cliffs of columnar trachyte. He was more impressed by the geological formation they had discovered than by the potential it represented as one of Australia’s foremost climbing areas. They returned the following Sunday—17 November—and climbed the first route, Corner of Eden; a week later, Liquid Laughter Layback, naming it after my brother’s near out-of-stomach experience. The name ‘Frog Buttress’ did not come from the mass on which it is located, Mt French—it was a less obvious derivation. White initially called the cliff ‘Paradise Lost’, but the presence of several abandoned contraceptive aids (or ‘French Letters’) in the locally-frequented car park at the top of the cliff prompted Chris Meadows to suggest the name ‘Frog Buttress’—and it stuck. A handful of people were let in on the discovery of the cliff and over the first month or so, Rick White and Chris Meadows climbed Satan’s Smokestack, Witches’ Cauldron, Pirana (pictured), Clockwork Orange Corner, Strawberry Alarmclock, Orchid Alley, and Chunder Crack. News of the cliff lured Ted Cais away from his studies to second White up Infinity—the first real jam climb on the cliff.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-04T14:52:00.000+10:00

The Brisbane Rockclimbing Club, Warrumbungles, 1968

From left (standing) John Shera, Ted Cais, Kirsty Jensen, Cec Murray, Sandra Tillack, John Tillack, Chris Meadows, Bob Fick, Lance Rutherford, Geoff Cullen. From left (sitting) Pat Prendergast, Dave Reeve, Dennis Stocks, Greg Sheard, Michael Meadows. Absent: Mick Shera, Rick White, Paul Caffyn. Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

For many of us climbing at that time, the trip to the 'Bungles was a turning point. Cries of ‘Razzamatazz!’ echoed from cliffs everywhere. Here was a climbing area, a bit like the Glasshouses in that it was hard, volcanic rock, but the pinnacles near Coonabrabran were twice as high! Rick White, Paul Caffyn and John Shera spent a cold night on Belougery’s Spire helping rescue and injured British climber, Brian Shirley, who had fallen on Out and Beyond, burning the hands of his second. Mal Graydon and several others were injured in a car accident on the way down and spent a few days in hospital with minor injuries. Within a few months of returning to Queensland, Greg Sheard decided on a bold, new tactic—to eliminate aid moves from as many climbs in southeast Queensland as possible. His aim was to do ‘the big three’ in the Glasshouses—Clemency, East Crookneck and Flameout. Surviving the Clemency ascent, he eliminated the aid move from the final overhang on East Crookneck with Chris Meadows seconding this time, but he was tricked out the first free ascent of Flameout by a wily Paul Caffyn. It was all part of a mostly friendly rivalry that had emerged—mostly friendly! But the peer group pressure at times was intense.

2005-10-04T14:40:00.000+10:00

The fall factor

Not to be overshadowed by the exploits of his peers, Greg Sheard (pictured) decided to give up smoking (an elusive goal he pursues to this day!) and launch an all-out assault on the local climbing scene. He was one of the first to test out the limits of the new protective gear in Queensland, particularly through his several falls at Kangaroo Point. But he also came to prominence through his inimical approach to writing in the Brisbane Rockclimbing Club Circular, RURP. He quickly developed a reputation for his brutally honest, remarkably perceptive analyses. Sheard challenged several of the newer and existing club members to prove their skills in belay practice at the Kangaroo Point training cliffs. This entailed throwing an 80 kg piece of railway line off the top and actually experiencing holding a lead fall. It was well before the advent of sticht plates or belay brakes of any kind—back in 1968, gloves were mandatory for a second. And for Sheard, the impact of a good belay on a climb at Kangaroo Point was perhaps more important than for most, as he acknowledges:

I think I’d already had a serious fall there—a head-first plummet off By Ignorance after getting on the wrong route. Mal Graydon was belaying and actually saved my neck because I did actually touch the ground with my helmet. Mal had done a static belay but had also jumped backwards and my first peg had pulled out but the next one took it up. If he hadn’t done either a static belay or made a jump backwards, I would have been dead.

The sight of Greg Sheard, curled up in a ball, plummeting head-first towards the ground became a common one at the Kangaroo Point cliffs. He continued to push the limits and seemed to lead a charmed existence. But it couldn’t last and he managed to break an ankle—and, as he discovered years later, a vertebrae—in a 10 metre fall at Kangaroo Point while trying to free an aid climb started by a rival. But this didn’t stop Sheardie who quickly discovered crutches are very good at bashing a pathway through lantana en route to Glennies Pulpit or as a stabilising prop abseiling down Caves Route on Tibrogargan. Sheardie had emerged as the character of the late 1960s—a very strong climber, with an unconventional approach and an ability to create havoc, in the nicest possible way. Like his ankle and vertebrae, his infamous black Hillman also came to grief when one 'friend' painted fascist slogans all over it and another 'friend' then dropped an 80kg belay weight from the top of the cliff onto the boot, almost piercing the petrol tank. But it was all in good fun and at least he was still able to drive it to the wreckers next day!

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-04T14:34:00.000+10:00

Leaps of faith

Rick White had quickly established himself as one of the most active and innovative climbers amongst the new cohort in Queensland in 1968 and the new routes he led began to mount. With Chris Meadows now his regular climbing partner, he climbed a series of hard new routes at Binna Burra, Mt Greville and Mt Maroon—and a steep, bold line on the southwest buttress of Glennies Pulpit, Prepare to Meet Thy God (pictured). It was named after a sign bearing those words was ‘liberated’ from a gum tree a few weeks before. For many years, the sign hung on the climb as a warning to non-believers! Taking leave while on his honeymoon, White linked up with Paul Caffyn to do the second ascent of the East Face of Mt Barney in damp and sometimes slimy conditions on the anniversary of the first ascent. Caffyn balanced his interest in speleology and climbing throughout the years he was active in Queensland, studying geology, until, like others before him, the lure of the New Zealand mountains and eventually, kayaking, became too great. But during his brief time as a climber in Queensland, he managed to channel much of his nervous energy and talent into some memorable and difficult ascents. White chose him to try a bold new route on the East Face of Mt Maroon. They began their assault in July, climbing four pitches on the steep, bare wall. It had all the hallmarks of being Queensland’s hardest route—and they were only halfway! Six weeks later, White and Caffyn started from their previous high point and climbed the last four pitches to the summit—Caffyn falling twice on the crux. They called the climb Beau Brummel. Five months later, White returned with Ted Cais and made the first complete ascent of the route under a blazing Queensland February sun.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

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And the women?

Although climbing in Queensland (and the rest of Australia) in the late 1960s was largely a boys’ club, several women had been active on the climbing scene in Queensland since the mid-1960s. Pat Prendergast (pictured) was the first woman to join the Brisbane Rockclimbing Club in November 1965. She was also the first woman to lead Carborundum on Tibrogargan and made one of the first female ascents of Desperation Wall in 1966. But the lure of the New Zealand Alps was too great and she left Brisbane, making several return trips over the years. But most of her life has been spent climbing and drawing the mountains she loves, publishing a book of her paintings. From February 1968, Marion and Sue Speirs, along with Lesley Rivers, were regular climbers who mixed their activities on the rock with bushwalking. But like Pat Prendergast, they, too, were attracted to snow and ice climbing in the high mountains of New Zealand. In December 1968, Marion, 26, and Sue, 21, went missing in the Southern Alps for three days, caught in a freak storm while climbing in the Malte Brun Range in New Zealand. Their survival skills were acknowledged by the Chief Ranger at Mt Cook who believed no one had ever been rescued before after having been on the mountain for so long—74 hours. Another strong, enthusiastic climber-bushwalker Lesley Rivers was a regular at Kangaroo Point and on crags around southeast Queensland in the late 1960s. She was the first woman to climb East Crookneck with Greg Sheard in 1969 and like others before her, was eventually drawn into mountaineering, first in New Zealand, then the European Alps. She was killed in an accident on the Jungfrau, in the Swiss Alps, going to the aid of an injured climber, in the 1980s.

Picture: Pat Prendergast in action. Pat Prendergast collection.

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Maintaining a long tradition of climbing a prominent cross-river structure in Brisbane (from left) Chris Meadows, Greg Sheard, Michael Meadows, Rick White...June 1968.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-04T13:33:00.000+10:00

In high places

Rick White, climbing with Dave Reeve, found the first route up the big east face on Mt Maroon in February 1968. They called it Deception I—a bold and circuitous 250 metre climb through a maze of loose blocks, clifflines, caves and corners. The following weekend, John Shera (pictured), my brother Chris and myself climbed the North Face of Leaning Peak. We were forced to bivvy on a ledge about 60 metres from the summit, completing the climb the following day. At 410 metres, it is the longest climb in Queensland and amongst the longest in Australia. With three of the biggest faces in southeast Queensland now climbed—the East Faces of Mt Barney and Mt Maroon and the North Face of Leaning Peak—attention turned to other problems, other lines. For the first time since the early 1950s when Kangaroo Point had been used as a top-roping and training cliff, climbers led the first hard routes there—Cais started the deluge with a bold lead of Cox’s Overhang in January. White followed with Nightfell and the classic, Adam’s Rib. Cais found Tombstone Row and four weeks later, the hardest climb on the cliff: the fiery Pterodactyl. The status of the Kangaroo Point cliffs had changed significantly and a hard core of new climbers had emerged.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-10-04T13:20:00.000+10:00

New waves

in the deep north

Rockclimbing had become firmly established in the eastern states in Australia by 1968. In Queensland, more new climbers began to emerge: Dave Reeve, John Veasey, Greg Sheard and a bloke called Rick White. I first laid eyes on White stuck on a tiny ledge at Binna Burra, 25 metres up Alcheringa—reputedly the hardest climb in Queensland—wearing a pair of Volley OCs. It was an indication of his strong mental resolve to push himself to the limit. Apart from Ted Cais, who had started climbing in the early 1960s, all of the previous generation of climbers in Queensland had moved on when Rick White, Greg Sheard, Paul Caffyn and others stormed onto the scene. White, Sheard and Caffyn moved quickly to repeat the hardest existing climbs in southeast Queensland and then began to look beyond. It was a time when most of the current crop of Brisbane Rockclimbing Club climbers had either moved away or slowed. Ted Cais was still climbing sporadically, balancing time on the rock with the demands of his postgraduate studies. But another generation was emerging. Early in 1968, Dave Reeve climbed East Chimney on Glennies Pulpit and Rick White put up two new routes on the Beerwah slabs, Scotch Mist and Gambier I. Paul Caffyn led my brother Chris and I up a delicate climb on the scaly northern edge of Cave 3 on Tibrogragan. We called the virtually unprotected one-pitcher Superdirettissima, another tilt at the traditionalists. Meanwhile, the number of climbing clubs in Sydney had increased from one to four—and in the previous two years, the number of climbing gear retailers there had trebeled. The Climbers’ Association of Western Australia formed, launching its ‘Golden Era’ which lasted until 1972. Several women were involved from the earliest days there including Jan Kornweibel, Hazel Adams and Helen Harrison-Lever. The association ran training sessions in a Perth quarry and it was characterised by a number of expatriate Europeans as members. At the same time, the first recorded climbs in the Northern territory were put up by Paul and Pam Oates and English expatriate Pauline Mason around Alice Springs.

Picture: Rick White and Paul Caffyn, summit of Crookneck, 1968. Paul Caffyn collection.

2005-10-04T13:12:00.000+10:00

Tilting at tradition

By the close of 1967, John Ewbank had convinced his climbing compatriots in New South Wales to adopt a new open-ended grading system—a significant break from the European approach that had influenced Australian climbing from the very start. At the same time, an ethics’ war raged over the placement and use of bolts in the Blue Mountains (and beyond), with Ewbank leading the anti-bolting lobby in his own inimitable style. With Les Wood returning to the UK to climb, momentum in Queensland eased although several climbers remained active—Ted Cais, Donn Groom, Pete Giles, Geoff Cullen, Ken Purcell, Neill Lamb, Dennis Stocks, Bob Fick, Pat Prendergast and Marion Spiers included. In December, three new names appeared on the records of new routes in Queensland—Paul Caffyn, Chris Meadows, and myself. Searching for the new climb, Wasp, as a way of reaching Prometheus II on Tibrogargan, we inadvertently found what amounted to a direct start and called it—with a lot of tongue-in-cheek—Direttissima.

Picture: Paul Caffyn belaying the author up to the first stance of Direttissima on Tibrogargan during the first ascent in December 1967. Paul Caffyn collection.

2005-10-03T22:19:00.000+10:00

The east face of Mt Barney

In May 1966, John Tillack solved one of the great climbing challenges in southeast Queensland, making the first ascent of the 300 metre east face of Mt Barney. He and Ted Cais had climbed the first part of the route but Cais decided against continuing the route next day. A week later, 26 May, Tillack returned, this time with Donn Groom and Les Wood. Wood, who was suffering from a hangover, remembers little of the climb, not even mentioning it in his diary. The face had been surrounded by an aura of invincibility ever since Logan and his team first commented on it during the first ascent of Mt Barney in 1828. But fresh from the recce the previous week, Tillack was confident and the team of three were soon at the previous high point below a large cave, as Tillack later recounted:

Unfortunately, I now remembered a trick [Walter] Bonatti used on the Dru, so I made a line of slings weighted with karabiners and flung this out so that the karabiners jammed behind a small tree. After appropriate incantations to the Gods of the mountain, I swing out into space and then, using the rope, climbed up to the tree. I then discovered that the tree was rotten.

The remaining four pitches followed a scrub-filled chimney to the summit. It has become something of a rite of passage for those who value ‘traditional’ or ‘adventure’ climbing, as it is now called.

Pictures: (from top) John Tillack [Ted Cais collection]; Donn Groom [John Larkin collection]; Les Wood [Les Wood collection].

2005-10-03T22:15:00.000+10:00

Loaded

Ted Cais’s introduction to climbing came at an early age with Bert Salmon introducing him to previously unknown scrambles on the crags and cliffs of southeast Queensland. He read about the exploits of Ron Cox and Pat Conaghan, immortalised in the pages of the University of Queensland Bushwalking Club’s annual journal, Heybob—a collection of inspiring tales of the early exploration of the heights in southeast Queensland and beyond that have impacted on generations of climbers since. But it was Les Wood and later, Rick White, who influenced him to break away from the ethic where the leader never falls and to push himself to the forefront of Queensland and Australian climbing. He is pictured above at Easter 1966, loaded up for a walk into the High Tops at the Warrumbungles on a Brisbane Rockclimbing Club visit.

Picture: Hugh Pechey collection.

2005-09-28T17:43:00.000+10:00

East Crookneck free

...almost

Perhaps the piece de la resistance for Les Wood (pictured) during his 1966 sojourn in Queensland was making the first (almost) free ascent of East Crookneck. Swinging leads with Donn Groom, they used some aid on the first pitch and then another aid move to climb the last big overhang on the second pitch. Les Wood continues the story: ‘We found most of it could be climbed free and that the etriers were necessary in one place. Much of the climbing was wide bridging around overhangs and the last pitch was done in very heavy rain.’ Shortly after the climb, Wood teamed up with Ted Cais who led an all-free version of the first pitch. The first free ascent of the climb was made by Greg Sheard and Chris Meadows in June 1968. Crookneck's southwest buttress was another problem that attracted the attention of Les Wood and Ted Cais in 1966. They started a new climb there that would eventually be called Flameout:

My first attempt was in August 1966 with Les Wood but he backed off the second pitch realizing this would probably be the first VS [Very Severe] in Queensland. So I returned in the heat of November with Donn Groom and he passed the overhang that was Les’s previous high point with two points of aid but took a whipper on an upside-down peg—it held—before figuring out the thin moves above. For a while this was indeed the hardest route although John Tillack claimed an equally difficult climb named Medusa on the organ-pipe columns somewhere on Beerwah’s northwest flank.

Donn Groom and Ted Cais were emerging as the strongest and most consistent leaders amongst the cohort of Queensland climbers of the mid-1960s. In July, Groom teamed with long time friend John Larkin to climb Alcheringa on the vertical rhyolite columns of Binna Burra’s east cliffs, again vying for the hardest climb in Queensland. Cais later made the first free ascent, eliminating the few aid moves. Cais played a key role in the last new route climbed by Les Wood during his Queensland stay by solving the tricky first pitch puzzle on Overexposed. Wood and Groom joined forces again to complete the route which offers sensational, exposed climbing through a series of small, shallow caves on the southern edge of the summit overhang on Tibrogargan. In the pre-cam and hex days, there was little protection on the route but modern equipment has helped to make it less psychologically challenging. Nevertheless, the aura surrounding the climb has meant that it is rarely repeated.

Picture: Les Wood-Donn Groom collection.

2005-09-28T17:27:00.001+10:00

Seeking Clemency

On his return to Queensland after the Brisbane Rockclimbing Club's Warrumbungles climbing trip in 1966, Les Wood teamed up with Donn Groom again to put up the first route on the high southeast face on Tibrogargan in the Glasshouses. It was classy and clever route-finding through sometimes steep and poorly protected rock. 'Things like that didn't really bother me,' Wood recalls. 'I always felt that I was a very cautious climber. I was climbing within myself. I only ever had one real fall and that wasn't in Queensland. That was because something broke. I always I felt I'd got things covered but I suppose things can become uncovered if you're doing a few things that you can't reverse and you find yourself stuck-but that [climb] seemed OK to me.' The climb was probably the hardest climb in Queensland at the time and up with the most difficult in the country. Wood's diary records the climb having 'a few VS [Very Severe] moves, delicate and a bit technical'. He continues: 'I think I used a piton for aid. I seem to remember in those days people weren't at all touchy about using aid-you'd whip one in without thinking about it. But now they put those bloody bolts all over the place anyway.' They called the climb Clemency after Wood's close friend and climbing partner John Clements who had just been killed in a climbing accident in Scotland.

Picture: Les Wood-Donn Groom collection.

2005-09-28T17:02:00.000+10:00

Out and beyond

In March 1966, Les Wood began his assault on Queensland putting up the climb,Trojan, weaving its way through the summit overhangs on Tibrogargan in the Glasshouses. ‘We went up there and let it unfold,’ Wood recalls. ‘It was just exploring really. I don't even remember if there was a guidebook. I don't remember finding it hard. Quite exhilarating. And I thought, “This has got a bit of class to it.” I don't know why “Trojan”—like something was hiding, maybe?’ Climbing every available weekend, he soon teamed up with Donn Groom and with Brian Driscoll, climbed a new route on Beerwah, calling it Slipknot, after a climb on White Ghyll in the Lake District. A week later he was back on Beerwah to climb Whynot, again with Groom. At Easter, he joined the BRC climbing trip to the Warrumbungles, seeking out the classic, Out and Beyond. ‘It had had only one ascent, classed as hard severe,’ Wood remembers. ‘It has a most impressive first pitch. So I did that but from the end of the traverse I had to retreat because Col Hocking didn't want to second it as he was getting married three weeks later. We did Vertigo and added a final pitch to it. The next day I went back to Out and Beyond with Ted Cais and John Tillack. John was a bit worried. Ted decided not to come. I can't remember why. I remember the route—really nice. I suppose, fairly exposed.’

Picture: Ted Cais collection

2005-09-28T15:59:00.000+10:00

A new climbing ethic

In Queensland in 1966, more than 30 new routes went up on crags in southeast Queensland, many of them destined to become classics. It was a combination of the formation of the Brisbane Rockclimbing Club, the emergence of several talented local climbers, and the influence of quietly-spoken English expatriate climber, Les Wood. Linking with local climbers Donn Groom, Ted Cais and John Tillack, Wood’s 12 month stay in Queensland took climbing standards to a new level. But he left behind something far more lasting—an approach to climbing that in many ways transcended the old bushwalking-climbing nexus. He drifted into climbing as a 17-year-old in 1961 at university in Durham, England, when he met John Clements who became a long time friend. Surviving an audacious first season in the Dolomites (‘The Dollies’), Wood later worked and studied in Canada, the United States, doing little climbing, and managed to arrange a 12 month contract as a demonstrator in Geography at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. He arrived via New Zealand almost broke, borrowing five pounds from an uncle there to get him to Brisbane. He managed to find a share house, the Brisbane Rockclimbing Club and Donn Groom:

Donn was then at Binna Burra and seemed to have a perfect life in that he and his brothers had taken over the lodge and they seemed to have two years on and one year off. He was an avid climber and a really nice bloke. We got on very well together and he had a car—I didn't have one in the early days—so we started going to the Glasshouses. I think I'd got a background that was unusual to many of them. I was climbing Hard VSs [Hard Very Severe]—but I was only just into those things. I'd fallen off Vector trying to follow John [Clements]. But I was doing Hard VSs without too much trouble and some big routes like Mickledore Grooves—back in the old days it was a route with a reputation—long runouts and no protection. Climbing before I left England occupied all my life. It wasn't like a sport, it was a way of life more than anything.

It was this ethic that Wood brought with him, instilling it into myriad Queensland climbing generations since. One of the interesting aspects of Queensland climbing culture is that each new wave of climbers seem to have had little knowledge and/or interest in previous generations of climbers. While individuals certainly stand out, for most, climbing history seemed to have more to do with events that happened last year rather than a decade or more before.

Picture: Les Wood collection.

2005-09-28T15:58:00.000+10:00

John Ewbank leads out on the 17th pitch of his girdle of the Wirindi cliffline, The Masterpiece. Although in this photograph, taken during the first ascent in March-April 1967, he carries an etrier, it was not used. John Worrall (belaying) and Ewbank swung leads on this climb.

Picture: Donn Groom collection

2005-09-28T15:55:00.000+10:00

The times they

were a-changin’

New South Wales climber John Ewbank picked up on a popular Rolling Stones’ hit of the time and penned an article on climbing ethics for Thrutch entitled, ‘Here comes your 19^th breaking runner’. Perhaps it was a clue as to the career change Ewbank would take on with gusto within a decade. But he had plenty to write about in 1966—he had just put up the hardest climb in the country at Mt Piddington in the Blue Mountains, a single pitch route called The Janicepts. He used jamming techniques to climb it—an approach virtually unknown in Australia at the time. Although climbers had used jamming moves on routes in Australia before this, no-one had applied the technique in such a sustained way. Most climbing relied on using existing hand and foot holds—jamming moved climbing technique into a new zone and Ewbank quickly became the unrivalled master although he revelled equally on the steep walls of the Blue Mountains. He is pictured (above) making the first ascent of the direct finish to The Eternity, at Wirindi in February 1967. But his activity was not confined to sandstone—in the December heat in the Warrumbungles that year (1966), climbing with partner John Worrall, he made the first ascent of The Crucifixion, a steep, 250 metre line to the right of Lieben on the west face of Crater Bluff.

Victorian milestones

In Victoria at this time, climbers began to use reamed-out nuts threaded with rope slings as protective devices as new routes multiplied on the cliffs of the recently-discovered Mt Arapiles. Two significant climbs done this year included the classics, Eurydice and Watchtower Crack, led by Bob Bull and John Fahey respectively. This was the year that a new wave in Victoria was champing at the bit and names like Chris Dewhirst, John Moore, Chris Baxter, the Gledhill twins—Alan and Geoff—and later, Roland Pauligk (creator and manufacturer of the famed RPs) were starting to appear on new route descriptions. They would dominate Victorian climbing for years. But all the activity in Victoria was not at Mt Arapiles—in February 1966, Ian Speedie, Mike Stone, Ted Batty, and Reg Williams made the first ascent of the huge granite north wall of Mt Buffalo, calling the climb, Emperor. Six months later, Dewhirst, Moore, Philip Seccombe and Philip Guild spent three days on the Mt Buffalo north wall, climbing Fuhrer.

Picture: Donn Groom collection.

2005-09-22T18:50:00.000+10:00

The Brisbane Rockclimbing Club

The third incarnation of climbing club in Queensland—the Brisbane Rockclimbing Club (BRC)—was formed on 1 September 1965. Instigated by Donn Groom, it attracted members from four southeast Queensland bushwalking clubs—BBW, UQBWC, Binna Burra Bushwalking Club and the YMCA Ramblers. It represented a significant shift in emphasis from previous associations in that rockclimbing was identified as the main activity—not bushwalking or mountaineering. The objects of the club were simple: ‘To rockclimb and instruct interested people in rockclimbing; and to abide by and assist in maintaining conservation laws and create interest and preservation of natural beauty and wild life.’ To this point in Queensland’s climbing history, virtually everyone who became involved in rockclimbing had also been interested, even in a peripheral way, in bushwalking—the two activities were closely linked. The new club was ‘open to either sex’ with four membership levels: probationary, members, leaders, and instructors, determined ‘at the discretion of the committee’. Meetings were held once a month and instructional weekends were planned for probationary members. Climbers were urged to provide details of all new climbs to an Archives Custodian. At the first meeting, there was a display of some of the equipment being used by climbers for the benefit of new members and the annual subscription was set at one pound ($2.00). Hugh Pechey was elected President; John Tillack was Vice-president and membership officer; Col Hocking the Secretary; Dennis Stocks, Archives custodian and outings secretary; and Treasurer was Bill Walker. At the second meeting on 6 October 1965, Pat Conaghan gave a talk and showed some of his climbing slides and a film from the Sydney Rockclimbing Club of the first ascent of Ball’s Pyramid was screened. Members were encouraged to subscribe to the Sydney Rockclimbing magazine, Thrutch. The open invitation to new members in the first club circular read as follows: ‘If you are interested in rockclimbing then we extend an invitation to you. If your climbing standard is low we shall endeavour to help you; if it is high, you may be able to help us. All members are not expected to be “superhuman rockclimbers”—we hope to cater for all tastes. WE DO NOT WISH OUR MEMBERS TO BE THE BEST IN AUSTRALIA—MERELY THE OLDEST.’

Picture: Hugh Pechey collection.

2005-09-22T18:49:00.000+10:00

Donn Groom (pictured) was a key influence on climbing in Queensland and Tasmania the 1960s and 70s. His father Arthur Groom became the first honorary secretary of the National Parks Association of Queensland in 1930 and was active in the promotion of national parks and environmental protection until his death in 1953. With Romeo Lahey, Arthur Groom established Binna Burra Lodge, on the edge of the Lamington National Park, in southeast Queensland, in 1933. Arthur was known for his extraordinary ability to walk long distances and his sense of humour-in many ways the equivalent of Yosemite's John Muir. Donn lists his father as a key influence in his life. Arthur Groom's photographs and articles featuring the wilderness of southeast Queensland filled the pages of the early Queensland press from the late 1920s. He played a central role in forming ideas of wilderness and conservation the minds of members of the public, many of whom would never visit the regions he immortalised in his wonderful photographs and stories. Donn describes him as 'a mountaineer and an explorer'. He was a great influence on his son's life and his desire to climb.

Picture: John Larkin collection.

2005-09-21T23:09:00.000+10:00

Northeast Buttress on Tibrogargan in the Glasshouses, north of Brisbane. The route followed by Pat Conaghan and Grahame Hardy in 1964. At the time, it was the longest climb on the mountain.

Picture: Pat Conaghan collection.

2005-09-21T22:54:00.000+10:00

Tibrogargan's

Northeast Buttress

Pat Conaghan (pictured) teamed with Grahame Hardy in the Glasshouses to force a new route up Tibrogargan’s huge, bare Northeast Buttress in October 1964 — at more than 250 metres, it was the longest climb on the mountain. The climb was one of Conaghan’s first on local rock since he and Ron Cox completed the traverse of Geryon in 1961. The first five pitches weave their way cunningly through a series of steep walls and overhangs, reaching a steep, smooth corner which splits the arete. Next the climb traverses out left onto bare, seamless rock and it was here that Conaghan resorted to bolts to climb the 10 metre crux. As a climb, it offers some airy and sensational positions and like many of the multi-pitch routes on Tibrogargan, requires a high level of route-finding skill. A young Ted Cais joined Conaghan for the second ascent of the route along with chemistry honours student, John Tillack. With a strong southeasterly wind blowing the occasional rain squall in from the sea, the trio started their climb up sometimes greasy rock, reaching a tiny ledge, where Cais takes up the story:

Before we had time to re-arrange the ropes the rain really hit us. Right out to sea was just one big haze, and quite soon, there wasn’t a dry square inch of rock around us. We grimly hung onto the rope handrail trying to find a comfortable position on that confounded ledge, sheltering under our one leaky anorak while discussing the big question: should we go down or up?

The rain eventually stopped and a cutting wind added to their discomfort but it at least began to dry off the rock. They decided to climb on, with just three pitches remaining. Conaghan led off at 4.00 pm, reaching a small ledge, tantalisingly close to the next belay bolt, but separated from it by a greasy traverse. He decided to place another bolt for protection and 20 minutes went by as he patiently drilled—hit-twist; hit-twist; hit-twist. By the time he had reached the stance and belayed up Cais and Tillack, it was almost dark as even darker rain clouds raced towards them from Moreton Bay:

As I belayed him from the new bolt, Pat led up in the darkness with our only torch gripped firmly between his teeth, since there was no provision for tying the torch onto his waistlength. The slippery rock soon stopped his progress, however, and he found it necessary to place a new bolt, in attempting to reach a higher one from the first ascent which had served both as a runner and an anchor for a delicate tension traverse to the left. Time passed, and soon it was pitch black; not a start could be seen in the inly vault above our heads. I looked down to the Bruce Highway, where we could see the lights of cars that passed, their occupants being oblivious of the struggle we were having up on this rainswept cliff. Eventually Pat had the bolt in, and having then reached the higher bolt, he set out on the tension traverse. Groping for holds in the feeble light of the torch, at realised that he was going to come off. I heard him mumble something with the torch still in his mouth, and then he came off. The trusty bolt held and Pat fetched up a few feet above John and me. Conaghan came off again, realising he would have to bolt his way across this impasse. He set two more bolts and reached the belay stance, a very welcome tree.

They stumbled, exhausted, onto the northeast shoulder at midnight. Descent in the dark without a torch was impossible but they managed to find a rock shelter where they shivered until dawn.

Picture: Pat Conaghan collection.

2005-09-21T22:26:00.000+10:00

Arapiles awakens

Two new rockclimbing clubs formed in 1963—in the Australian Capital Territory and South Australia—as a large outcrop of promising cliffline was ‘discovered’ near the township of Natamuk in Victoria by Bob and Steve Craddock. Mt Arapiles (pictured above) was destined become Australia’s most visited climbing cliff, one offering perhaps the greatest variety of climbing of any location in the country. In the nearby Grampians, Greg Lovejoy led a climb called Wrinkle then claimed as the hardest in the country. But this was 1963 and there was a long way to go. The open-ended Ewbank grading system had not arrived with climbing difficulty graded according to the British system. In New South Wales, Bryden Allen published the first local guidebook, the most comprehensive yet in Australia—Rockclimbs of New South Wales. Allen was in action on the rock as well, climbing the imposing Heartstopper with Chris Regan on the west face of the Breadknife in the Warrumbungles. The University of Queensland Bushwalking Club magazine, Heybob, continued its important role as a purveyor of climbing literature publishing accounts and descriptions of early climbs in Queensland. And towards the end of that year, the veteran Bert Salmon climbed Mt Lindesay for the second last time—his 26th ascent—with six Ramblers including 16-year-old Rudolph Edward Cais. Over the next 10 years, Cais would play a pivotal role in the development of climbing in Queensland before leaving to pursue a career as a research scientist in the United States in the mid 1970s.

Milestones on- and off-shore

As Kevin Westren put up the first climbing route —Hocus Pocus — at Mt Piddington (Wirindi) in the Blue Mountains near Blackheath, Bryden Allen and British immigrant, teenager John Ewbank, climbed a new route up the highest part of the face on Bluff Mountain, the 358 metre Elijah. It took them eight days to complete, retreating and returning. The guidebook advises: ‘Not exactly beginners’ stuff.’ Allen recalled their trip back to Sydney after the climb:

Certainly the most amusing experience of all was hitch-hiking back with John Ewbank after living on dehyds for a week in the Warrumbungles which had included the first ascent of Elijah. Both of us had fairly ripe guts. There was this dog in the back of the car with us and the bloke turns around and says, “What an awful stink you’ve made, get out of the car at once…!” John was just about to do so when the man said, “…Fido”. Fido took the blame for John’s fart. And I knew it was John, of course.

Like Allen, and perhaps even more so, Ewbank’s name would become synonymous with rockclimbing in Australia over the next decade. He moved out of climbing and is a musician, now living in New York. New South Wales climbing received a major boost in February 1964 with the 1st ascent of Ball's Pyramid, a magnificent spire near Lord Howe Island, by Bryden Allen, John Davis, Jack Pettigrew and David Witham. This paralleled an audacious first ascent of the southeast face of Frenchman's Cap by Allen and Pettigrew. At the time, it was undoubtedly the most serious rockclimb in Australia. Bolts first appeared on climbs in Victoria in 1964, the same year as John Fahey and Peter Jackson climbed Witch at the newly discovered Mt Arapiles—put forward as another contender for Australia’s hardest route. With the discovery of Mt Arapiles and the arrival of Allen and Ewbank on the scene, rockclimbing in New South Wales and Victoria was about to make a quantum leap forward. But a new wave of Queensland climbers was waiting in the wings.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

2005-09-21T21:55:00.000+10:00

The swinging sixties

Climbing in Australia went through an extraordinary period of development during the 1960s. As Queensland entered a period of calm, in New South Wales, there was a shift from the longer ‘adventure’ climbs to shorter and harder routes. The Sydney University Mountaineering Club formed in 1960 and initially started developing Narrowneck as a climbing destination. Around this time, a team of climbers from the Victorian Climbing Club made an assault on Tasmania, climbing the east face of the Foresight on Mt Geryon. Back on the mainland, they climbed classic routes like Buddha’s Wall and The Cat Walk in the Grampians, followed up in 1961 by two bold routes on Federation Peak — the Northwest Face by Bob Jones, Jack O’Halloran and Robin Dunse, and The Blade Ridge, climbed again by Jones and O’Halloran.

Sandshoes and steel

At the start of the 1960s, the vast majority of climbers in Australia still used the redoubtable Volley OCs as footwear, hemp rope, mild steel carabiners, pitons and — increasingly in New South Wales and Victoria — expansion bolts. Climbers in New South Wales in 1960 had begun to seriously investigate the potential of expansion bolts as a form of protection on the friable sandstone cliffs in the Blue Mountains. It provoked ‘strong feeling’ over their use—and a long and continuing ethical debate—although as protective devices they have become a central element of modern rockclimbing globally. Existing rockclimbing clubs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane experienced a dramatic increase in membership in the 1960s, although the overall numbers of core climbers remained small, particularly in Queensland. By 1961, rockclimbing had split into two categories in Australia: free and artificial or aid climbing. Nylon ropes were becoming more common, along with advice on the best boots for rockclimbing, costing between £4/6/0 ($9.00) for a pair of RLs (Robert Lawrie) or £6/-/- ($12.00) for a pair of PAs (Pierre Allain). This description is from a 1961 MUMC catalogue:

The desirable features of a boot for rock climbing are narrow and slightly pointed toes, rigid and almost flat soles flush with the upper, with little or no protruding welt, low cut ankles, and a comfortable fit.

Perhaps encouraged by all the foreigners snatching local routes from under their noses, Tasmanians formed their own climbing club early in 1962. Across Bass Strait, the first climbing guide to Victoria was published, listing 15 routes. Fewer than 12 climbers were in action there but one figure soon stood out—Peter Jackson. Over the next few years, he was rarely far away from the cutting edge routes being climbed. And, like their Queensland colleagues, several Victorians were drawn into mountaineering imbing in the Alps and the Dolomites at this time.

The return of Bryden Allen

In the year that Australia pledged support to the United States in ending what appeared to be a small skirmish in Vietnam, 1962, three memorable new routes went up in the Warrumbungles—Out and Beyond, Lieben, and Cornerstone Rib. All would soon become classics and the climbers who created them—Bryden Allen and Ted Batty—would be as well-known across the country. Allen was born in Canberra in 1940, moving to England with his family when he was 11. He started climbing at age 18 when studying at London University and considers himself more of an English climber than an Australian. When he returned to Australia in 1961, he sported the latest European equipment, including a pair of climbing boots called PAs—reputedly the stickiest friction boots available at that time, taking their name from their creator, the French climbing star Pierre Allain. Over the next five years, Allen assumed the mantle of Australia’s top climber, figuring strongly in the development of climbing in the Warrumbungles, at Frenchman’s Cap, Balls Pyramid (first ascent) and the Blue Mountains. Allen described his ascent of Lieben—then Australia’s hardest climb—as ‘possibly the most foolhardy’ route he ever did on his ‘fourth or fifth weekend’ of climbing in Australia. Several climbers had eyed off the route on the west face of Crater Bluff, and the line Lieben took in particular. Russ Kippax was one of them and planned to climb the route as his swansong—but Allen beat him to it. Kippax recalls with a wry smile: ‘I wasn’t too happy about that.’ Ted Batty seconded Allen on the route wearing sandshoes and it was many years before it had a repeat ascent. Meanwhile, activity in Western Australia was starting in earnest, described in one magazine story as ‘one of WA’s newest sports’ with Latvian-born climber Arvid Miller pioneering climbing in the west.

The 1^st ascent of Carstenz Pyramid

In Irian Jaya, Heinrich Harrer enlisted Russ Kippax, New Zealander Philip Temple and Bert Huizenga to make the first ascent of Carstenz Pyramid (4883m) in January 1962. The team made an additional 32 summits to their first ascent list. Kippax recalls meeting Harrer, a member of the 1938 Eigerwand first ascent team, in Sydney after he gave a talk to a Sydney Bush Walkers meeting. Harrer heard about Kippax's climbing experience and asked him to join the expedition but he would have to pay his own way. Kippax, a medical student at the time, sold his prized MGA sports car to pay for the trip without hesitation. Kippax led virtually all of the rock pitches and after the event, Harrer asked him to come on a world lecture tour. It was tempting, but Kippax decided instead to complete his studies.

2005-09-21T21:53:00.000+10:00

The Southern Alps of New Zealand

Ron Cox leading on the 2nd ascent of the lower section of Nazomi's Southwest Ridge in January 1962. Nazomi is a satellite peak of Mt Cook's South Summit. Scottish climber Hamish MacInnes made the first ascent of the ridge a few years earlier, describing it as 'one of the longest continuous rock ridges in the world outside the Himalaya'. Within a week, Cox and Conaghan went on to make the first ascent of the entire Bowie Ridge on Mt Cook.

Picture: Pat Conaghan Collection

2005-09-20T22:28:00.000+10:00

Mt Geryon: 1st winter ascent, 1960

Ron Cox had emerged as a dominant figure in the Queensland (and Australian) climbing scene and always saw his activities as part of a bigger picture. In August 1960, he set off with Pat Conaghan, Peter Reimann and Basil Yule to attempt the first winter ascent of Mt Geryon in Tasmania’s Central Reserve. It was a bold move and Cox’s laconic style captures the essence of how they came to be there:

They’d never climbed snow before. Their only knowledge of the art came from text-books…They started up the face, climbing on high angle snow, kicking steps and using their axes as an aid to balance. For safety’s sake, they belayed as in rock climbing, except that their belay anchors were axe shafts driven deep in the snow. As they climbed, they learned.

The team split up with Reimann and Yule completing the first winter circuit of the Ducane Range from the Labyrinth to Falling Mountain. Cox and Conaghan decided on an audacious attempt to traverse Geryon’s four peaks from north to south. No one had done this before, even in summer. They climbed Geryon’s North Peak again, bivouacking in a snow cave near the summit. But the weather closed in, as Cox writes:

The thick mist and freezing conditions, added to the immense technical difficulties of this winter climb, were more than enough to scare the usually optimistic duo into retreat. Descending the mountain, they narrowly averted disaster when Cox, climbing down a steep couloir of snow and ice too quickly and too carelessly, slipped and fell 150 feet. Conaghan held him on an ice axe belay. Had the belay gone, they would have fallen over a thousand feet down the western face.

Their first experience on snow and ice did nothing but whet their appetite. Although they failed to traverse the mountain, they had made the first winter ascent of Geryon’s North Peak—climbing it twice. Later that year, they made the first full ascent of the Bowie Ridge on Mt Cook with Cox making the summit of New Zealand’s highest peak twice in his first season. It was an extraordinary transformation. Cox and Conaghan returned to Geryon in the sweltering summer of 1961 to make the first traverse of all of Geryon’s peaks. Within four years, Cox and Reiman would be climbing in the Alps, Cox moving to Grenoble in France to work. He is still living there today, now retired. Conaghan has since travelled the world, visiting various remote regions in his capacity as a geologist. Hardy, too, felt the call of the bigger mountains and eventually went on to climb in the Himalayas, the Andes, Canada, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and Africa with his wife, Margaret. ‘On my first climb,’ Hardy recalls, ‘I knew it was what I wanted to do.’ It was an extraordinary era, defined by an extraordinary cohort of adventurers, all emerging from the University of Queensland Bushwalking Club.

Picture: (from left) Peter Reimann, Basil Yule and Ron Cox in Tasmania, 1960. Pat Conaghan collection.

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A long abseil

Over Easter 1960, Ron Cox, Grahame Hardy and Basil Yule made the first descent of the 350 metre East Face of Mt Barney, following the line of the chimney splitting the face (pictured). Carrying every bit of rope and ironmongery they could muster, they had descended three pitches without incident when, with the light fading fast, Hardy abseiled over the edge in search of a bivvy ledge. Cox captured the mood in his diary: 'Fourth abseil off tree. Hardy led. Darkness and mist arrive together (7 hours so far). Hardy lets out agonising scream from the darkness below causing Cox and Basil to nearly have kittens. Turns out Hardy has come off diagonal abseil and hit head on rock. But for crash helmet, and fact that head is extraordinarily solid, would no doubt have been knocked unconscious.' They managed to find a small ledge but with light from a full moon soon spilling across the face, they decided to continue their descent, reaching the base of the vertical wall about 1.00 am. At dawn, they skirted the foot of the wall, finding a trickle of water and their first for 24 hours. It was typical of Ron Cox's adventures in southeast Queensland which commonly seemed to become epics.

Picture: Michael Meadows collection.

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The 1st ascent of East Crookneck

Ron Cox began his epic on a biting, cold winter’s day in June 1959. With Pat Conaghan belaying, he slowly and carefully put into practice double rope and etrier techniques they had read about in books. Using homemade pitons, he managed to climb just 10 metres the first weekend. On the next attempt he reached the first stance, 20 metres above the base. And so it continued for the next three months until Cox decided that a team of three strong climbers would be needed to complete the route in one single push. He asked John Comino to join Conaghan (pictured left) and himself and on 18 September 1959, the three sorted out their gear at the base of the climb. Three hours after starting up the climb, Cox had reached the Eagle’s Eyrie—the second stance. They had decided to bivouac here but it soon became clear that there was room for only two. As Cox and Comino settled in for the night 50 metres above, Conaghan nestled into a cave at the base of the climb directly below, sheltering from the heavy rain squalls that swept across the mountain during the night. It was a late start next day and the three eventually scrambled onto the summit in darkness. Their entry in the log book read: ‘First ascent East Crookneck—8^th attempt—40 pitons, 7 wooden wedges—last man up at 8.30 pm.’ The homemade wooden wedges and pitons Cox had placed deep in the crack remained there for years, protected from the weather by the overhangs. It was the steepest and most difficult climb in Queensland, albeit employing liberal use of aid. Ironically, it reflected the siege tactics that had already begun to emerge on the big walls in Yosemite, as well as offering a prescient glimpse of tactics now de rigueur for the hardest new routes, particularly in sport climbing. It marked the beginning of a new era in Australian climbing, not only for the way in which it was climbed, but for the vision it represented. It was the first sustained use of double rope and aid techniques in Queensland—probably Australia—literally learned from books. Cox and his cohort were interested in the existing climbing routes, but they were more concerned with what lay beyond. From the beginning, it was clear that Cox was drawn more towards mountaineering than rockclimbing and within 12 months of his success on East Crookneck, he was testing these skills—again based on what he had read.

Picture: Ron Cox collection.

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Pushing the limits

As Cliff Richard and the Shadows burst upon the popular music scene, university physics student Ron Cox launched a three-month siege on a spectacular crack on the imposing east face of Crookneck in the Glasshouses. In doing so, perhaps inadvertently, he set up a template for the development of the next stage of modern Queensland rockclimbing. Formed in a huge rockfall in 1893, East Crookneck is perhaps the most attractive and purest line of any climb in Queensland. It starts from the base of the mountain, weaving through a series of balancing, truncated trachyte columns to the first stance, nestled at the base of a deep, overhanging chimney. The route continues up, with wide bridging moves needed to negate the effect of the relentless overhangs. A final bell-shaped overhang demands a series of delicate, exposed, balance moves to reach the safety of the second stance. A stone dropped from this point lands about three metres out from the base. Climbers in the early 1950s had nicknamed this stance the Eagles Eyrie and had abseiled down to it—and climbed up from it—several times during their early exploration of the route. From the Eagles Eyrie, a short, easier pitch leads to the shoulder below the summit. Every climber in Queensland had mentally climbed the route but none had actually done it. Bob Waring and Jim Gadaloff had first abseiled down the 70 metre face in October 1950 (pictured above). John Comino had made a half-hearted attempt at climbing the first pitch around 1954 and had earlier abseiled down to the Eagles Eyrie. But the full route—particularly the savagely overhanging middle pitch—had never been climbed. Perhaps that was the challenge Ron Cox needed.

Picture: Bob Waring collection.

2005-09-20T20:54:00.000+10:00

First Australian at the South Pole

While his former climbing partners grappled with the heat of a 1956 Queensland summer, Jon Stephenson (pictured) was about to start the journey of a lifetime. He had left for Antarctica from London in November that year, three days after finishing his PhD thesis on the geology of Mt Barney. In December 1957, he set out with colleague Ken Blaiklock to cross Antarctica with a dog team. They reached the South Pole on 19 January 1958.
On his return from Antarctica, Stephenson then led a 3-month expedition in 1960 to the Karakoram in Pakistan. After having collected a range of scientific data, Stephenson contemplated a possible attempt on K12 (7428m). He was awestruck by the surrounds as he explained in a letter to Bert Salmon: ‘This is quite fantastic country and surely the most thrilling in the world. Never have I dreamt of such magnificence on such a scale—it is astounding. Granite rock with spires and needles to rival Chamonix.’ The party set up Camp II and began searching for a route up the ridge, finding a crevasse barring their way—40 metres wide and 30 metres deep. Another Queensland climber on the expedition, Keith Miller, described the scene:

The chasm was spectacular. Never in my life have I seen such a place. Often it was necessary to climb between great slabs of ice as though pot-holing. The skyline silhouetted giant icicles 20 ft. long some 100 ft. above one’s head, just waiting to drop off. Twenty minutes down there was enough to find an escape route out up to the other side and many prayers were offered.

The wind raged for the next three days and they were tentbound. They deciding to retreat to base camp but first, Miller and Stephenson would ‘have a quick look at the ridge and try to reach the summit’. Miller continues:

What an abortive attempt we made. Within five minutes of leaving camp we were swallowed up in cloud. Then came a white-out in which it was impossible to discern the demarcation between ground and atmospheres. At this time we were advancing along a steep ridge when suddenly Stephenson walked over the edge and simultaneously I went through an ice hole. When we extracted ourselves we quickly descended to camp to be greeted by, “That was a quick excursion to the top!”

On the descent, Miller was struck by a block of falling ice and required hospitalization. Stephenson and a porter were the only ones fit enough to make one last summit attempt. But shortly before they were due to leave their high camp, the porter, too, fell ill. Stephenson decided to climb on alone:

The view was just extraordinary—and it kept getting better as you got higher. I couldn’t believe it. You just started to see further and further—you could see that horizon wasn’t flat, it was curved. And there was K2 and the other high peaks I could recognise…I got as far as I could and I sensed that I was going more and more slowly. You get to the point where I was counting my steps and I could only do 20 steps and then I’d have to rest. I could see how far I had to go and I judged that I’d be on the summit at five o’clock that night. In the end I took a round of photographs and had no difficulty in saying, “OK, it’s time to turn around.”

Jon Stephenson had reached 7000 metres—the highest point reached at that time by an Australian without supplementary oxygen. It was a record that would stand for many years. An American team on the summit of Masherbrum (7821m) that day for the first time could almost have waved at him. It was the 6 July 1960. Stephenson subsequently returned to Australia as Professor of Geology at James Cook University and spent years climbing and walking on Hinchinbrook Island in the 1980s and 1990s. He climbed Logan’s Ridge on Mt Barney in 2002, aged 71.

Picture: John Comino collection.

The modern Australian climber, circa 1958

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By the mid to late 1950s, climbing down under had become ‘an exhilarating and exciting pastime’, according to the magazine Australian Outdoors. One article described ‘the modern Australian climber’ in these terms:

Climbing is a young man’s game and you will find few climbers over 26. The average age seems to be from 16 to 22 but there are exceptions of course. You start by combining bushwalking with rockclimbing and after 26 you grow out of climbing and stick to bushwalking and mountaineering. Basically, the rock climber’s attitude is somewhat immature; it is a search for danger and glory. It is for the excitement of risking your life on a cliff face and the immeasurable self-satisfaction you feel when you reach a point where above you there is only the sky. Above all, rock climbing is character forming. It develops both individuality and mateship, it pits your physical endurance to the highest test, it makes you feel the utter smallness of man in the face of raw nature and makes you humble. It is the best school your son can attend.

The writer seemed oblivious of the presence or achievements of female climbers in the pantheon of Australia’s climbing history—Freda du Faur, Marie Byles, Dot English, Jean Easton, Muriel Patten—not to mention the international achievements by climbers like Elizabeth Le Blond, Annie Peck, Miriam Underhill, Claude Kogan and Gwen Moffat. But it reflected the postwar domination of male membership of climbing clubs in Australia. Whereas in Queensland, at least, women and men climbed in roughly equal numbers before World War II, from the late 1940s, climbing in Australia had become a noticeably male domain. It would half a century before women would return to climbing in numbers equivalent to those active in the 1930s.

Rumblings and the Rhum Dhu

Formation of the Rhum Dhu group within the Sydney Rockclimbing Club (SRC) in 1958 shook the foundations of the New South Wales climbing and bushwalking establishment. Frustrated with the slow pace of the development of climbing—a national trend at the time—Rhum Dhu was formed by disgruntled climbers with three simple aims: disbanding all forms of organization; drinking; and the opening of new climbing areas. The move almost split the SRC but the dissenters were instrumental in opening up new climbing areas like Medlow Bath, Cahill’s Lookout (the Rhum Dhu area), and Sublime Point. Both directly and indirectly, Rhum Dhu influenced the imposition of a six month moratorium on climbing on existing crags to encourage the search for new routes. In these early years of climbing in New South Wales, there were four accidents and two deaths. This was around the time that climbing began in Western Australian where small, scattered groups of enthusiasts began to explore and climb the crags in the southern half of the state.

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Geoff Goadby (left) and Alan Frost inside the amazing Shell Rock on the western shoulder of Beerwah, in the Glasshouse Mountains, following their second ascent with Peter Barnes of the West Chimney route, 20 October 1956, a month or so after Alan Frost's first ascent of the route with Dave MacGibbon.

Picture: Peter Barnes collection.

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The West Beerwah chimney

Bert Salmon had discovered a huge hollow boulder, perched precariously above Beerwah’s western cliffs in the Glasshouses in the 1930s. He had called it Shell Rock and it had been a popular destination for him and his cohort before World War II. Jon Stephenson ‘re-discovered’ it around 1949 with Clarrie Bell who called it ‘Draper’s Sanctuary’ after he found the name ‘Draper’ carved on the rock inside the cave. It became a popular destination again with the early 1950s climbers. All visits to Shell Rock had been from above: a 150 metre climb or abseil down from the western shoulder of Beerwah. And everyone who climbed around inside the huge shell would have peered down the steep chimney leading up into it from below. Peter Barnes (pictured) recalls: ‘We used to regard it for many, many years as Johnno’s Chimney—Johnno Comino—because he’d been looking at it and wanting to do it for many years and just had never got down to it.’ The climb up West Beerwah starts from the bottom of the western cliffs and meanders for two or three rope lengths over easy rock and through low scrub to where the slope steepens. Two more pitches and you are in a huge chimney that splits the headwall leading to the western shoulder. The next pitch is a steep 50 metre struggle over an awkward bulge, then up a series of cracks, mostly filled with dirt and small trees, reaching the sanctuary of the amazing Shell Rock. The climb to the western shoulder is up a clean 10 metre corner, followed by scrub-bashing to the top. Another who had peered down the exit chimney from the safety of Shell Rock was Alan Frost—and he decided to do something about it. Alan Frost and Peter Barnes were two extraordinarily fit young climbers who blitzed their way around the crags in the southeast since they began climbing at Kangaroo Point in the early 1950s. For some reason, Frost ended up making the first ascent of the route with a relatively inexperienced Dave MacGibbon. Barnes recalls the time, too:

I don’t know how it happened—but he teamed up with David MacGibbon who later became Senator MacGibbon. MacGibbon didn’t do much climbing but liked the thought of climbing. I’d taken him up south Crooky, north Crooky, Minto Crags. I didn’t know he’d done any more climbing than that but the next thing I heard was that he and Alan Frost had done the west chimney of Beerwah and David MacGibbon with him. Alan Frost said it was the most frightening experience of his life so he reckoned it should be done properly. So the boys better go and give it another nudge. He and I and Geoff Goadby screamed up there one day and had a great time.

Both Alan Frost and Peter Barnes are still actively walking and climbing in southeast Queensland and beyond.

Picture: Peter Barnes collection.

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Buildings and bridges

From the late 1920s, climbing cultures had emerged in Queensland and New South Wales, but even back then, not all the activity was directed at local crags. Climbers’ attention turned to other obvious challenges—buildings and bridges—and night ascents of various structures around Brisbane and Sydney were commonplace. Climbers here were doing no more than following a long-established international tradition.

The 'Queensland mountaineer'

In 1935, climber-journalist Nora Dimes was a regular contributor to local newspapers, describing climbing activity and local climbers. In one article, she described the ‘Queensland mountaineer’:

He is one whose soul is blent of heights and depths, and in extreme cases his admiration of the tallest and newest buildings in town is confined to the possible hand or footholds on the façade.

Post-war climbers are no different and virtually every major climbable building in the country has fallen, usually under cover of darkness. Brisbane climber Neill Lamb recalls enthusiastic support from ‘accomplices’ Bernice Noonan and Margaret Hammond in the 1950s:

I remember we used to go out and climb the Story Bridge—we’d shoot up after dark. And one day we’d made our own flag and we’d called ourselves The Abominables and so we had this flag sewn up—this great big Abominable Snowman—and we had a lot of fun. We climbed up the bridge and we had a bottle of champagne and we sat on top and put the bloody flag up on the flagpole. Of course, we were all back there next morning at first light to see if the flag was still there.

Another young Brisbane climber, Graham Baines, once spent two days hitch-hiking to Sydney in the mid-1950s specially to climb the Harbour Bridge. He was caught and questioned by police but let off with a warning. He even compiled a 1950s climbing guide to Brisbane’s bridges—including five different routes on the Story Bridge. Amongst his ‘conquests’ were the Glen Innes Town Hall and the Brisbane GPO Clock Tower. He once planned to abseil down the side of the Brisbane City Hall Tower, sticking large footprints on the side as he went. He hid in the bell tower one night with 60 metres of rope wound around his body, under his clothing, but at the last minute, had a change of heart, and gave himself up to the cleaners next morning. The tradition of climbing almost any upright object has continued with Brisbane’s Story Bridge (pictured) and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, in particular, having had hundreds of ascents by climbers—always at night to avoid unnecessary attention—and long before either destination became a destination for guided tours.

Politics and police

In the mid-1960s, one of the most popular movies doing the rounds of Australian climbing clubs was a film of top French Alpinists Gaston Rebuffat and Rene Desmaison climbing the Eiffel Tower with gendarmes in hot pursuit! Back in Brisbane in 1968 and 1969, several large politically-inspired signs mysteriously appeared on the sheer face of the MMI Building, at that time, the tallest in Brisbane. It required some ingenuity to devise a belay for Greg Sheard as he gingerly traversed out across a vertical face on small, friable holds to place them. We used a length of wood, cut so we could wedge it in a chimney that runs up beside the face. One of the signs declared ‘QLD—Joh’s police state’, a reference to the then Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen and his government’s draconian laws prohibiting public assembly. As it turned out, that particular sign was placed directly opposite the windows of a popular commercial radio station and although its presence was discussed openly on air, the content of the sign remained a mystery to listeners, such was the paranoia that existed in the Sunshine State at that time. Another popular climbing destination was a church tower at Toowong before the challenge of climbing as many buildings in Brisbane as possible—again at night—took over. There were some close calls with police and security guards but no-one was ever arrested. During the 1980s and 1990s, police scrutiny of climbing activities around the city has increased and several local climbers have been arrested and fined for trespass following various activities on the city’s bridges. But the challenge remains.

Picture: Hugh Pechey collection.

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Reptile

Climber Mike Woodrow on the first pitch of the steep, spectacular route, Reptile, on the Funnel in The Steamers shortly after the first ascent by Bill Peascod, Donn Groom and Neill Lamb in 1956. They named it following 'an incident with a goanna'. The creative route entails climbing 30 metres up a steep rhyolite wall before squeezing through a hole, to be confronted by a steep vertical wall (pictured) with a 50 metre drop below. On the first ascent, their abseil ropes jammed and it took Lamb two days to eventually free them.

Picture: Neill Lamb collection.

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The 1st ascent of Boonoo Boonoo Falls

By 1956, climbing was expanding around Australia with activity in Bungonia Gorge, the Wolgan and Capertee Valleys, Lithgow, Frenchman’s Cap, Federation Peak, and the Glasshouses. Kippax returned to the Breadknife in the Warrumbungles climbing the North Arete with Dave Rootes, Jeff Field and Peter Harvey. That year, the first traverse of The Breadknife was done. Further north, Bill Peascod joined with local climbers Donn Groom, Neill Lamb and L Upfold to put up two new routes on the big south face of Beerwah in the Glasshouses—Pilgrim’s Progress and Mopoke Slabs. While Peascod’s influence on local climbing culture in Queensland was clear, several strong local climbers had emerged. Neill Lamb joined with Julie Henry and Frank Theos, starting the year by climbing the 180 metre high Boonoo Boonoo Falls—calling it the Belvedere Route. Lamb recalls the experience:

I remember when we climbed up the side of Boonoo Boonoo Falls, which had never been done, we just did that on the spur of the moment. It wasn’t a hard climb. The waterfall was thundering down one side of you and the holds were just there and the situation was just magnificant. You’re just there in some of these positions and the goose pimples come out…

The 1st ascent of Prometheus II

Neill Lamb, 19, and Graham Baines, 18, joined up with Julie Henry, 38, Bill Peascod, 36, and his young son, Allan to climb an exposed new route on the east face of Tibrogargan, across the top of Cave Four. Baines was climbing last, this time, and recalls events when he reached a stance below a corner above the cave:

I had a clear view of Neill on the wall above, grappling with almost non-existent holds, his toenails curled over and clinging to rugosities on the rock face. He drove in a piton, to which he attached a carabiner to serve as a running belay. This gave him a slight feeling of security but he still could not progress and returned to the stance where Bill was belaying him. Bill moved out across the face to have a go at it. He had the same trouble as Neill and after a long battle, he, too, returned to the belay stance where he rested and thought things over. As yet undefeated, Bill gave it another go and, after poising precariously on the skyline for about ten minutes, he traversed to the left and disappeared from view. The rope moved forward spasmodically and we knew that he was getting somewhere. We heard a piton being driven in. Then a shout. Bill had mastered the pitch.

Lamb followed and it was clear that Peascod’s son, Allan, would not be able to climb it so Peascod lowered some ropes and slings and the young boy was trussed up in a bosun’s chair and literally hauled up the pitch. Julie Henry was next and she soon ran into trouble and was ‘winched’ from above by Lamb and Peascod.

Picture: Neill Lamb on the 1st ascent of Boonoo Boonoo Falls, 1956. Neill Lamb collection.