Between wars

Virtually all of the early mass climbing activity in Australia before World War II was in southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales with Bert Salmon and his coterie the instigators. Eric Dark inspired a smaller group of climbers to make first ascents in the Blue Mountains and Warrumbungles and in the late 1920s, two key figures emerged in Tasmania—Fred Smithies and Gustav Weindorfer. Smithies climbed around 80 peaks in the state, adopting the same unroped style as the Queensland cohort. He made the first recorded winter ascent of Cradle Mountain in 1924 and reached the summit of Frenchman’s Cap in 1931. Like his Queensland climber-photographer counterpart, Bert Salmon, Smithies captured many of his exploits on film. Apart from a handful of isolated ascents, climbing was virtually unknown in the rest of the country until after World War II. Anticipating the end of hostilities, the Melbourne University Mountaineering Club formed in 1944—the year that climbing in Victoria formally began. Compared with the standards of climbing in Europe and the United States at the time, activity here was very limited. But it was a period in which Australia was experimenting with its own version of climbing. Eric Dark and his Blue Mountaineers adopted European traditions that accepted the logic of belaying and the safety factor implicit in the use of ropes. Salmon and many of the Queenslanders followed a purist climbing ethic, akin to pioneers like American John Muir in Yosemite and some of the early Lake District climbers in England. It led to different directions in the development of climbing in Queensland and New South Wales. Although mass climbing in Victoria started almost two decades years after activity in Queensland and New South Wales, from the beginning it adopted a ‘modern’ approach in terms of use of ropes and protective equipment like pitons and quickly emerged from its slumber.

Picture: Queensland climbers in the Blue Mountains 1934 serenaded by George Fraser on bagpipes. Ken Rogers collection.