Australia

We flew into Melbourne and promptly realized that most of the hostels were full due to the holiday weekend. Luckily, we found one, but it was the highrise ghetto version. It was bad as hostels go, but luckily we were in the heart of downtown Melbourne and it turned out to be perfect for us due to all of the things we needed to get done before heading out to Arapiles for a few weeks of climbing. This time we wouldn't have a car, to save money, and had a lot of preparation to do before we got there.

We needed to sell books, buy carrot hangers (specialized gear for climbing in Australia), buy a new tent since the other one barely fit us and the new one had to fit us and gear, mail as much as possible to my brother since we didn't need all of the stuff we had to Asia like mosquito net or pills, resupply on a few items, and the worst one was go grocery shopping since we needed to bring a few days worth of food all the way from Melbourne to Arapiles since we would be camping without a car.

We ditched the lonely planet since it wouldn't help us much for all of the things we needed to do and proceeded to spend our first day in Melbourne walking the downtown grid finding not only everything we needed, but where it was cheapest! It was a wild day of exploring, but by the end we had found everything we needed and at great prices! Our best find was a tent orders of magnitude better than the one from NZ for a mere $45!

That night, we planned out our strategy for buying and selling everything the next day and had a wonderful dinner of yummy kangaroo! The next day we woke up with our mission of getting everything everything done and again walked all of Melbourne executing all of the good deals we found the day before. There were half off sales, floor models, and more. I even found a guy heading to NZ for some climbing and sold our NZ climbing guide to him! It was great to get everything done so quickly, but unfortunately we didn't have much time to appreciate the city. Our last trip of the day was to the grocery store, where we bought enough food for at least 3 days of camping.

The next day we woke early and started packing. It was ridiculous. I'm sure my backpack had over 80lbs in it, and then I was carrying two more bags in my hands! Nath was also loaded down pretty bad so we decided to call a cab to go the 10 minute walk to the train station since it would have taken a lot longer with all that food along with everything else we were carrying! Of course the cab didn't come, Nath flagged one down in the street, and we made it to the train station with only a few minutes to spare. Luckily, we had bought the ticket already so it was just a matter of finding the correct train terminal. We read the destinations as we ran by, and luckily caught it just before it left. We probably ended up running about a half mile with all that weight. I was wrecked. The worst part was, we were just beginning 3 weeks of camping and we were already covered in sweat...

Over the next 5 or so hours we managed to take one train and two busses directly to the Arapiles campground! We were there! The world famous Araplies, where I'd heard many times was the "best cragging in the world!"

We were staying in the Pines campground, one of three that are all close together, but the Pines has all the climbers, it seems. The campground is great, there are no campsites, you just throw a tent where ever you want. It's only $2/person/night, and the enforcement is almost nonexistant. We paid, but when the guy would occasionally come throught I would say, "we don't know how long we're staying, can I pay later?" "No worries, mate!" There's something you'd never hear in the US!

Everymorning you wake to the beautiful call of the black and white magpies. I have no idea how something can make so many beautiful sounds at the same time. It's like a symphony coming from a single bird! If you wake up early enough and walk 100' out of the campground, there are kangaroos everywhere! They are so cute, how that stand there and stare at you. The animals of Australia have no natural predators and are relatively fearless. The other amazing animals were the parrots! They had such beautiful vivid blues, greens, and reds, that even I could see them easily! The worst were the large black birds that looked like ravens. They would make this sound like an old man doing three death groans in a B- horror movie. It was a horrible noise, but at least it just got funnier the more we heard it. I saw the Australian version of the porcupine, and two huge lizards with large scales and stubby tails. It was really fun to spend so much time outdoors and see so much new wildlife.

The climbing was what we were there for though, and it was truly amazing. The rock is highly featured (weathered) metamorphic sandstone that is extremely hard. The routes are wildly steep for the grade, due to huge hand holds and footholds on many of the faces. Both of us started climbing relatively easy stuff since we hadn't been climbing for a while on gear, and the gear placements were predominantly nuts, as opposed to cams which we were used to. We both lead some easy stuff to see what the rock was like, and by the end of the day I had onsighted a grade 24 (5.12a) on gear, Orestes. Nath took longer to get used to the gear climbing again since she hadn't done much before we left the states and worked on routes in the 16-18 range (5.8-5.9 or so). On day two I managed to onsight Have a Nice Flight (25), which was all bolted.

As my confidence grew, I decided to gun for Kryptonite Crack, a sandbagged 23 known for spitting everyone off. At the end of the third day, when Nath was tired from onsighting her first two grade 19 gear leads (5.10a), I gave it a try. I worked through the awkward severely overhung and leaning crack, but as soon as the crack ended, there were hardly any holds! I whipped off, lowered, pulled the rope and decided to try again. I clipped the rope through my first piece of gear again, which was a textbook quality placement and started climbing. I had to dynamically handjam past my previous jam since there was now a #2 camalot sitting in it, and this didn't work... I came whipping out of the crack and to my horror felt the first cam, instead of catching me, blew out of the crack! I whipped quite a ways past the ledge the route starts from, and was caught about 10-15' below before I hit the ground. While I was fine, Nath wasn't. I had just taken a very severe fall, and she caught me because she had wrapped the rope around her hand which was now crushed into the belay device and I hung off of her crushed hand with all my weight. As quickly as I could, I went hand over hand up the rope until I had something to start climbing on, but her hand was already injured. She had pretty bad bruising and range of motion was limited. I was pretty worried about it being broken, but she kept insisting that it wasn't. I ran up, built and anchor, rappelled down to retrieve the gear in the crack, and we retreated to camp. There we found someone with ice for Nath's hand, and she took some Vitamin I (Ibuprofren).

Unfortunately, as her hand healed over the next 2-3 days, Nath apparently caught a virus of some sort. Everyone in the campsite seemed to be sick from something or other, but Nath caught the worst of it. She had extreme pain in her stomach to the point where walking, and even sleeping were difficult. That saw us in the emergency room twice while we were out there, quite the hassel when you're without a car and it's 37 km away, but we pulled it off through friends and hitchhiking. Her stomach pain lasted for quite a while, and put a huge hamper on our climbing. She couldn't walk far, and I was afraid to fall while she was belaying since her stomach hurt.

Over the next few weeks, we dealt with her stomach problems, climbed while we could, and dealt with the crap weather. It was cold, windy, or rainy most of the days we were there, enough that I started doubting that Australia was in a drought. Despite the difficulties, we still had some good days. I redpointed Yesterday, a grade 26 (12c) gear line that was so hard I had to stop putting gear in at the top in order to reach the anchor. Looking at a huge fall (all air since it was overhung) I somehow managed to top the line out on my 3rd time on it. Nath and I also had a huge day linking every "good" route on the Right Watch Tower face. Each climb was over 100m long, so we borrowed a rope to make the rappels down the face possible, woke up early, and went to work. We ticked off, Mantle (14), Brolga (16), Auto Da Fe (21), Watch Tower Crack (16) and Skink (19). It was an amazing day, all of the pitches were top quality, but boy were we tired when we finished. Most people complete one of these routes in a day. Auto Da Fe was one of the best routes I did at Arapiles. Wild climbing on the thinnest of holds and thinner protection. When I got to the upper crux I realized that if I blew it, I'd end up with Nathalie 20m below! The moves weren't too bad though, and the climb was phenomenal!

After much time spent in Arapiles, it was time to head back to Melbourne. We caught a ride with a friend of a friend, and spent about 2 days exploring Melbourne. It's a great town with a lot of nice restaurants and places to go. When that time was up, it was time to hop a plane to Tasmania! We were off to climb the world famous Totem Pole!!!!