"Australia is a mere 26 hours away from London" claimed the Oz Rock article in Climber. Perhaps "Australia is a mere £650 from London" would have been more appropriate. Feeling apprehensive and poor, I departed from Gatwick with my rockboots buried deep at the bottom of my rucksack, hoping to do a spot of bouldering on Ayres Rock. A month later, due to a series of lucky coincidences, I had successfully scrounged a full rack, an armchair, a freezer box and a pickup truck, and was firmly installed at Arapiles, THE MECCA of Australian rockclimbing.
My first lucky break occured on the flight to Singapore. As soon as the "seat belts off" light flashed, I rushed to the back of the plane to find some empty seats to sleep on, and met Carleen, who lived in Horsham, the Arapilian equivalent of Hathersage. Later, after counting 34 dead kangaroos from the coach window on the journey from Perth, I stopped off to see her, and was dumped at Arapiles for a few days. After wandering around fruitlessly trying to find a partner, I resorted to soloing and got extremely scared failing to climb a classic chimney. Fortunately, I managed to find someone willing to winch me up a few routes. Within two days, new terms such as "pumped out of my skull" and "dyno" had entered my vocabulary, as every climb over V.Diff seemed to have a bulge or an overhang. As I sat quivering after completely failing to even second "Little Thor", let alone lead it, I decided to stay on longer to get fit. A few hours later, my forearms had recovered sufficiently for me to phone my friend in Sydney and I persuaded him to travel 1000 miles to join me.
Andy arrived in style, and hit the front page of the local newspaper: ''WIMMERA FOG NO MATCH FOR ANDY' – Mr Pearson got the shock of his life when he looked out of his window on Thursday morning and saw intrepid world traveller Andrew Kerr asleep on a bench. "I thought he was dead!" said Mr Pearson’. After Andy had recovered from the trauma of being rudely awoken by Mr Pearson and a reporter, we stocked up on muesli and wine boxes, bought an old armchair, and headed triumphantly back out to the Piles in a pickup truck borrowed from Carleen.
The run of luck continued when I was lent a full rack by a Norwegian who wanted to merely boulder for a few weeks. All we lacked now was a rope. Fortunately, Andy was gullible enough to be persuaded to invest in a pink 9mm, and we were set to take Araps by storm.
After months of thrashing a Metro up the A5 to North Wales every weekend, only to spend 50% of the time sitting in cafes, Arapiles was Utopia. Thousands of routes lay within 5 minutes walk of a free campsite. There were classics at every grade, and routes ranged from complex boulder problems to multipitch megaclimbs. Andy and I set about ticking off the classics in the guidebook. Most of our climbs degenerated into epic struggles, and I developed the skill of falling off into a fine art. However, my climbing was improving, along with my knowledge of climbers themselves. We soon realised the climbers at Arapiles could be divided broadly into three groups:
The Cream Team were a small elite of shit hot, grade pushing climbers, some of whom spend weeks developing one obscure back muscle to enable them to conquer the test piece of the crag. One French guy attempted the same route, "India", every day for about three weeks, refusing to leave the place until he had led the route his wife had flashed when they first arrived.
A more relaxed approach was adopted by a group of about fifty nomadic Hard Climbers, comprising British, Kiwis, Americans, and surprisingly few Aussies. Many spent months camping amongst The Pines, toasting waffles on wood fires, heading down to the local Milk Shop for the best milkshakes in the world, having shopping expeditions to the local metropolis of Horsham, and even climbing. Their climbing carried its own set of ethics. It was quite common for someone to "seige the shit" out of a route. Provided that the climber lowered off after failing on a move, anything went. Occasionally, climbers just left all the gear hanging up overnight, and returned the next morning after a few more waffles. After a while, when even the thrill of a milkshake started to wear thin, they resorted to other pastimes, such as taking the piss out of Bumblies.
Bumblies arrived late on Friday night, woke everyone up, and erected their frame tents under the headlamps of their Subarus. Early the next morning, they would gear up in the campsite, and clank off to their routes, monster hexes swinging about their ankles. During the day they tended to keep themselves to themselves, leaving every else free to toast waffles in peace. As darkness descended, stray Bumblies would wander back through the woods to the campsite, hexes clanking eerily. It was just like the opening scene of E.T.
After notching up some excellent routes, I returned again to "Little Thor", the scene of my miserable failure when I had first arrived. It had all the typical elements of an Arapilian climb: steep strenuous climbing, excellent protection, a small overhang, and an exhilarating, exhausting, finish on huge handholds. After swinging over the bulge, and struggling up the final moves, I arrived at the top on a real high. By the end of three weeks, I had acquired a suntan, a few muscles, a craving for toasted muesli, and my climbing had improved by three grades. It was tempting to stay on longer, attempt the 12ft roof "Kachung", and experience the full range of local milkshakes, however, Ayres Rock and the Barrier Reef beckoned. It was time to move on.