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.