Between the persona and the private

John Theodore Comino

Born: Brisbane, 2 June 1929

Died: Brisbane, 16 January 2019

John Comino (left) and Jon Stephenson on the summit of The Thumb, Hinchinbrook Island, following their first ascent in 1953 (Photo: Geoff Broadbent)

It was only recently that I learned of the death of John Comino at age 89, an innovative and pioneering climber-bushwalker, who pushed the boundaries of the possible during an intense period of outdoor activity in 1950’s postwar Queensland. John was an integral part of a small core of adventurers who formed the influential University of Queensland Bushwalking Club (UQBWC) in 1950. Along with my peers and, I suspect, many others, I was lured into the world of bushwalking and climbing by reading the exploits of John and his cohort in the pages of the UQBWC magazine, Heybob. We planned our local forays into the Southeast Queensland wilderness based on the vivid accounts of first ascents and dramatic events, but more often, encouraged by the engaging perceptions of landscape and environment and our place in it.Although I did not know him personally, I’ve drawn together these memories from a series of interviews with him between 1999 and 2003. 

When I first spoke to John Comino 20 years ago about those halcyon years, he recalled the precise set of circumstances that led to the formation of UQBWC. In December 1949, he was attending a UQ Science Camp near Mount Coolum on the Sunshine Coast when a fellow student, Jon Stephenson, asked him if he wanted to climb to the top of the low-lying peak. It was the view from the summit that day that triggered something inside John to pursue the heights with a vengeance.

As a result of that Science Camp and people picking around the bush — and we were happy about the climb up east Coolum — we decided we’d form a bushwalking club. Now I’d heard of bushwalking in 1946 from Ross Barber and Graham Jarrott — a remarkable photographer. They were telling me about how they went bushwalking. And I said, ‘What do you want to walk in the bush for? What’s this in aid of?’ And I thought, ‘What a waste of bloody time.’ That was my first introduction to the name bushwalking.

Despite his early misgivings, in the first few months of 1950, he and others — including Dave Stewart, Stephanie Henson, Ian McLeod, Geoff Broadbent, Bob Waring, Sid Williams and Jon Stephenson — formed the UQBWC. The original idea was to have a small group of about a dozen keen walkers — but the first trip to Mount Elphinstone at Brookfield attracted around 120 people! Jon Stephenson decided to ‘prune back’ the numbers by climbing the mountain at breakneck speed — and it worked as John recalled:

I think a lot of them thought it was going to be little boysies and girlsies holding hands tiptoeing through the tulips but this was not the idea at all from our point of view. So those with the wrong idea found that it was very difficult physically because we were virtually running. We moved very fast and had to deplete them by attrition. That diminished the number from 120 down to about 30, maybe 20.

It was the start of an extraordinary chain of events that set up the framework for the development of postwar climbing and bushwalking in Queensland. Bert Salmon had dominated the climbing and walking scene between the wars but John sensed that a changing of the guard was imminent:

Bertie Salmon used to have the Alpine Journal — he had every issue of the Alpine Journal since it was first published bar one issue and he was quite proud of this. He spent a lot of time and money all his life. It was the pride of his life this Alpine Journal, believe me. He used to sit and read about all of this stuff and I used to think, ‘Well, how bloody dull.’ We were brash I suppose — so I didn’t give Bert his full due, by any means.

It was around this time that his nickname, ‘Johnno’ was coined:

I was always what I would call antisocial. When I started at university, I purposely changed my persona to be ‘Johnno’, the life of the party, instead of the introverted wallflower that I’d been previously all my life. I’m probably about normal now [laughs]. But that was my persona.

On the next UQBWC trip — to Mount Barney’s North Peak — ‘Johnno’ struck up what would be a lifelong friendship with the inimitable Bob Waring. They shared a powerful desire to reach summits in the shortest possible time so when the group stopped for lunch, gazing up at the massive hulk of East Peak, Bob Waring was puzzled. ‘Why are we all sitting around?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t we going up there?’ The group leader, Sid Williams, tried to dissuade them but John and Bob headed off regardless, promising to return in 20 minutes. Perhaps predictably, they were back before the rest of the group had finished their sandwiches!

This no-nonsense ‘just do it’ approach quickly came John Comino’s defining characteristic.

Shortly after the formation of the UQBWC, he was also involved in another Queensland milestone — the Brisbane Climbing Club (BCC), the second such organisation devoted to climbing activities in Queensland [Bert Salmon started the first around 1926]. Although the UQBWC lasted well into the 1980s before being superseded by amongst others, the current UQ Mountain Club, the BCC lasted barely eight months. Its demise had nothing to do with climbing — but Communism! John’s version of the meeting that saw the club torn apart differs in places from others’ accounts but essentially captures the spirit of the times. Essentially, the instigator of the club, Kemp Fowler — a New Zealand radar technician — was accused of having Communist sympathies. An extraordinary general meeting of the BCC called by Bert Salmon, Jon Stephenson and Raoul Mellish (amongst others), asked noted geologist Dr Fred Whitehouse to address the gathering. John rembered the tone of the meeting that evening:

'Can you trust your companion when he’s holding your life in his hands?’ was essentially the précis of what he [Whitehouse] was saying, and if he’s not the same political persuasion as you — namely a Communist — then beware, take care.

John and others claim that Fred Whitehouse had ASIO connections which led him to make the accusations, demanding that club members declare their support either for King and country — or for Communism.

The idea was to expel Kemp Fowler from the club. Kemp walked out, the schism was broad and deep. [Secretary] Shirley [McKenny’s] affiliation in working with Kemp made her walk out. My association with Shirley made me walk out. Waring’s association with me made Waring walk out. So we all walked out down Edward Street, fuming: ‘They can do whatever they like with their club if that’s the way they feel about it.

But while a difference in political ideology may have led to the demise of the BCC, it did little to prevent the climbing activity that followed. Friends split by the incident soon realised that their common love of the outdoors overrode any political differences and climbing activities resumed.

John Comino soloing the first ascent of The Pinnacle, the Steamers, in 1952 (photo: Jon Stephenson)

  John was the first to repeat the exposed traverse above the north face of Leaning Peak soloed by Bob Waring in 1949 and was soon pursuing the last unclimbed summits in southeast Queensland — in the Steamer Formation on the Main Range near Killarney. In 1952, John and Bob soloed the steep north face of The Pinnacle in the Steamers, making the first ascent. In January 1953, John joined with Jon Stephenson, Geoff Goadby, Geoff Broadbent, Dave Stewart and Ian McLeod to make the first ascent of the Thumb — a pinnacle on the side of Mount Bowen on Hinchinbrook Island.

It was three days going up there to do Mount Bowen and for those three days we just about sweated blood. It was right in the middle of summer. It was hot as hell. And when we got up on the top that night we could see in the distance a thunderstorm coming and thereafter it rained and rained. It averaged eight inches a day for 10 days.

It was actually a cyclone and as they approached their objective, John described his plan of attack to climb the steep, weathered granite to the summit of The Thumb:

I was going to take a flying leap at it but they said, ‘No! No! Don’t be silly’ — or something — and dissuaded me from jumping across. It was about from you to here [1.5 metres] away and dropped away to nothing but I reckon I could have taken a running jump — woomph — and stuck. I suppose that would have been foolish but I was quite confident I could do it so I expected I would have. They dissuaded me from doing that.

On the summit of Leaning Peak, Mount Barney, 1954 -- from left, John Comino, Italian Consul Felice Benuzzi, 

Geoff Goadby, Peter Barnes and (rear) Alan Frost (photo: Peter Barnes)

Following their successful ascent on Hinchinbrook Island — and a subsequent escape from the cyclone — John joined with Jon Stephenson to take Bert Salmon up the long south face of Mt Beerwah, remembering it as the most enjoyable climb he did: "We were using ropes then. Bert had never used a rope before, or so he said. He was shit-scared to say the least."

Unlike many of his peers, John was not an avid reader of climbing literature nor did he have an interest in climbing history. He heard about Bert Salmon through Jon Stephenson who was keen to maintain contact with the 1930s climbing pioneer but to John, he was just ‘an old bloke who was working at Ag [Agriculture] and Stock’ although he remembered Salmon’s white, curly hair.

In December that same year — 1953 — he joined Jon Stephenson again, this time to make the first (and still the only verified) ascent of Vidler’s Chimney with George Ettershank and Ron Moss. He had few recollections of the challenging climbing conditions:

The idea to get up Vidler’s Chimney is to climb up faster than you’re sliding back. That, in essence, is what it is, but it’s terribly exposed.

 John Comino instructing in climbing techniques at Kangaroo Point circa 1958 (photo: Ron Cox)

In the following years, John became one of the stalwarts — albeit initially a reluctant one — taking part in climbing training sessions at Kangaroo Point cliffs for UQBWC members. Peter Barnes and Alan Frost were already climbing there being boarders at the nearby King's College in River Terrace. Peter introduced Geoff Goadby to Alan and the three began regularly climbing together. 

Geoff was keen on showing people who wanted to climb how to climb. I thought this was a dumb idea. I wasn’t very enthusiastic. I think Geoff took the first couple of climbers. We were trying to dissuade people from climbing, let’s say, because it’s a dangerous pursuit because if you think you’re just going to go out and climb solo on something very dangerous, you’re going to have an accident for sure. And it would reflect back on the club. As far as the bushwalking club [UQBWC] was concerned, we weren’t officially into climbing. If there were a few ratbags among us who went climbing, that was OK — they weren’t doing it under the auspices of the club.

It was at one such Kangaroo Point training session that he first met Ron Cox. He learned that Cox had managed to climb a buttress on the lower cliffline — a route that still bears his name — and that it had reputedly repelled all other attempts. A small group of climbers was standing around the base of the cliff, discussing the route.

I don’t know whether they’d been in our class earlier in the afternoon or not. It was just about going home time and I think it might have been Ron who was just about up to the top of it when we went to have a look. That was about 100 yards downstream from where we were. I thought, this fellow can climb alright, he didn’t need any instruction. Then I got baited into having a go at it. I said ‘You insolent little bastards, I’m not going to be dared on this. I’ll take you on!’ [laughs] And so I did. I was belayed from above and it was very safe. Stephanie was there, too, and I think this was after we were married. It was quite a good climb until you get to this Cox’s Overhang and I thought that this was quite difficult and I couldn’t reach the handholds — they were about two or three inches out of reach. I was standing on tippy toes sort of thing and stretching as hard as I could stretch but they were a few inches out of reach.

Describing Ron Cox as being built ‘like a bloody spider’, he decided to make a lunge for a crucial handhold.

I wouldn’t have got over that thing without the rope.Anyway I got up there and after that I think Ron thought, ‘Well, this fellow can climb’ and that’s probably what caused him to look me up about the Crookneck thing some time later.

The ‘Crookneck thing’ was, of course, the first ascent of the East face route in 1959. John had attempted East Crookneck some years before with Bob Waring but had realised it was beyond him.

"I shinned up this column and I’m standing on top of the thing. Bob said, ‘Can you see anything from there?’ As I was standing there — the column’s only about eight inches diameter — I could feel the thing starting to peel off the side. I said to Bob, ‘Get away from down the bottom there, I think I’m coming down. Just get out of the road.’ I don’t know what I would have done if it had peeled right off. I ended up putting my arms around the thing and sliding back down it [laughs]."

John recalled that when he and Bob Waring first contemplated climbing Crookneck, the gear they had was rudimentary, to say the least:

I’ve seen young people out at Kangaroo Point with thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment draped over them and I thought, ‘Oh God, climbing was never like this!’ We rappelled over here [the East Face] to see if there was a route that would go. We thought it would from the bottom…We decided that one of these days we’d go back and do that and we reckoned if we took some wooden chocks about 18 inches long down to about four inches long and a big hammer, then we could whop these into places that we could see. They wouldn’t be permanent pitons but they’d more than do the job.

On their recce of the climb, they had abseiled down to a large ledge [the second stance] they dubbed the Eagle’s Eyrie — and then had climbed back up to the summit ridge. But in September, 1959, John found himself standing below the east face with Ron Cox and Pat Conaghan.

So Ron and I went up and we had these etrier things that he and Pat had made up — marvellous things to use — it’s like a hangman’s noose [a prussik knot] that you wrap around the rope and slip up the rope. A good idea but there was only one catch: I’d never used them before. I’d never seen them before and I’m starting up on what I think is the most difficult pitch, the beginning of the thing…Where we started the climb, there was no column and, Holy Mackeral, there was an awful shortage of handholds. As far as I recall, you get up as far as you can and then traverse about 20 feet [six metres], diagonally. That first part there is where we used the etriers, as I recall. Of course, I was swearing about the things but once you got the hang of them they were marvellous to use. But it’s only in the beginning part of the climb we used them. It’s fairly easy up to the overhang but Ron had conveniently put a piton in before the overhang…You’d clip onto them and you were safe.

John reached the Eagle’s Eyrie just before nightfall so he and Ron settled into a bivvy while Pat sheltered at the base of the climb. The slow pace of climbing was testing his patience.

"It wasn’t until after the Eagle’s Eyrie that I led because I was so cheesed off with Ron taking so much time. After the Eagle’s Eyrie it’s just a stroll. Ron was super, super cautious because he hadn’t done that part before. When I got the opportunity — I didn’t like to say to him, ‘For God’s sake hurry up will you?’ I said ‘Look, I’ll do this part’ and he said ‘Righto’, so I went straight off up to the top. We ended up getting to the top of the mountain in darkness, holding a torch in my mouth."

John Comino was from a generation who saw climbing and bushwalking as inextricably linked — and it may explain one of his most enduring memories of his years spent exploring the wilderness regions of southeast Queensland:

It was after the climbing club’s climb of the north of Beerwah — coming back in the truck, the most outstanding thing in any of the climbing was the view at sunset — a red sky and an absolutely full moon beside Crookneck with Beerwah purple-black. In the back of this truck it was the most beautiful scene I’ve ever seen in my life. We’d had a good day climbing Beerwah on the inaugural trip and that scene sticks with me.

He had a strong belief that anyone who ventures into the outdoors should understand their limits — and he had little time for those who indulge in self-promotion based on their climbing achievements:

"I thought that all this self aggrandisement was a lot of bullshit. That’s frankly what I thought then and it’s what I think now. And this is what I see as a danger in climbing — if you have that mentality then you’re going to kill yourself or someone who’s with you very easily. That’s the downside of climbing. The other downside is that if you have such a high opinion of yourself you can over-climb and if you outclimb yourself, you should bloody drop dead or get back your own way, not get a helicopter to help you. You shouldn’t outclimb yourself; you should know your capabilities. That’s what I believe anyway. It worked for me because I’m still alive but a couple of other people aren’t."

John Comino leaves behind a rich personal legacy — a string of daring and sometimes outlandish tales that still hold their own today in terms of achievement, without the fanfare of self-promotion that seems to have become almost de rigueur in today’s social circles. He and his cohort have inspired generations perhaps because his no-nonsense approach seems to better reflect the real world of bushwalking and climbing we have inherited. It brings to mind one of my favourite quotes, entirely appropriate in describing the essence of John Comino’s contribution to the pantheon of Australian climbing history.

The history of mountaineering is about the firsts, mosts, and disasters, but behind the dozens of famous faces are countless mountaineers whose rewards have been entirely private and personal — Rebecca Solnit.