Blah, blah, did some climbing in boring ol' NZ, blah, worked, blah went to Ausralia for a week of trad climbing, blah, bl.... oh, sorry... I guess that deserves a LITTLE more detail!
So yeah, packed up the bags last Sunday night and headed to Wellington Airport with my mate Romeric. (He is french, but we can't hold that against him.) We hoped on a plane and zipped off to Melbourne on a early morning flight... 4 hours, one "Lion, Witch and Wardrobe" movie, an egg and cheese sandwich resembling a plastic movie prop and 3 bloddy marry's (to chase down the sandwich) later, we arrived safely in the land of OZ.
The plan was, rent a car and zip down to the Grampians National Park- a world renouned climbing area full of cliffs, boulders, bolts and trad. Ah, fate... if things worked the way they were supposed to.... we'd have vacations, not adventures! Romeric had reserved a rental car. The rental car was there waiting for us. Romerics Credit card wanted NOTHING to do with the transaction though. This would have been fine if I had been clever enough to bring mine, but I actually had been clever in NOT bringing it so I would not buy too much of Australia's inexpensive climbing gear and/ or didgeriodoos! And so the adventure began!
We got a cab (the rental guys were nice enough to ring one up for us). We got to the train station, which got us to a bus station. We caught a bus to... another bus and then to Horsham. This is a smallish town close to both the Grampians AND Mount Arapillies (another world class climbing area just "down the road." As that it was now 10:30 at night we decided to take the bus driver's recomendation to stay at the local hostel.... unless of course that hadn't actually been in service for 3 years! The Horsham botanical garden WAS open and, with my extensive knowlage of landscaping, I was able to find us a nice BIG shrub to camp out under for the night!
After scraping the frost off our sleeping bags in the morning, a quick coffe on the local public bench (thank god for camp stoves!, and a "shower" in the local public bathroom's sink.... we went into town to buy supplies for the week. After buying groceries, we explained our situation to the local outdoor store owner and were recomended to go to Arapillies INSTEAD of the Grampians due to the location of all of the climbs in respect to all the campsites. So after a bit of discussion involving "you can go where ever you want when we GET a rental car," we hoped on the good old "Thumbnail Express" and after about a half an hour of watching empty pick-up trucks and vans drive past us... a nice Mom stopped in her little coup and drove us (and ALL our gear) all the way to the Arapillies camp ground. I will admit, it was a bit difficult trying to set up camp with all those cliffs and boulders RIGHT THERE..... but we managed to set up and then rushed off to play on the boulders closest to camp until dark.
The week was perfect. Perfect weather, perfect rock. There was SO many good routes to do... we were quite snobby about what we chose to climb... in fact if a route was not listed in the guide as a 3 star classic... we didn't even think about doing it! All the routes were on trad gear. All of the routes were at LEAST 450 feet tall. All of the routes offered beautiful moves (some muscley, some thought provoking and some just plain scary), extrodinary views, and great gear placements JUST when you started to be afraid of falling! When we were not up to the commitment of ANOTHER perfect 200 meter line... we would just play on a few of the colosal pinkish-orange quartzite boulders that littered the base of the cliff band until we couldn't lift our arms anymore... or it just got too dark to see!
The wildlife was incredible as well. On 2 different mornings I was woken up being snuffed by kangaroos (due to weight issues on the flight we only had 1 tent so I slept outside a- to make sure the gear would stay dry and safe and b- well... it seemed better than sleeping with Romeric- he's french. I rest my case). There were flocks of wild Cockatoos, Rainbow Lowekeetes (I think that's what they were called), Falcons, Cookaburies, Magpies and coutless others.
We made it back to Melbourne with out TOO much inccident. In fact, the only "minor" issue we had before getting back to good ol' Palmy was at the Melbourne airport when Romeric and his passport become temoporarily seperated somewhere between the check in desk and customs. Thankfully there are still some honest people in the world and about 10 minutes before we would have needed to find a hotel for the night and call the Frech consulate..... the international "lost and found" rescued us and off we went. I was happily on my way to another 4 bloddy marry's, another dumb movie and a good nap before getting back "home!"