ADVENTURE MAG EDITION 1 - OE EDITION 56 55HISTORY OF ROCKCLIMBING IN AUSTRALIAKippax in 1954. Peascod brought
with him knowledge of protection
for the leader as well as access to
pitons and carabiners — a rarity
in Australian climbing circles at
that time. Climbers in the Blue
Mountains were soon carrying
pebbles to wedge into cracks
for protection — a common
technique used for climbing on
the crags in England and Wales.
Use of expansion bolts, called
‘terriers’, drilled directly into the
rock, appeared on the climbing
scene in New South Wales around
1960, pushing the possibilities of
protection for the leader to new
limits with the difficulty of new
ascents increasing accordingly.
In the early 1960s, the discovery
of the climbing potential at Mount
Arapiles in Western Victoria would
change the face of Australian
climbing. It is arguably the country’s
foremost climbing destination with
thousands of recorded climbing
routes ranging from easy to
amongst the most difficult in the
country. But it was early days.
In Queensland, it was another
expatriate — British climber Les
Wood — who was pushing climbing
standards to new levels. He
introduced the use of specialised
boots with high friction rubber soles
and other climbing technologies
such as carrying brass machine nuts
and ball bearing races on a sling for
wedging into cracks — the earliest
form of lightweight protection
now used by all traditional (‘trad’)
climbers. It was around this time
that arguably the most influential
figure in shaping postwar Australian
climbing culture emerged. Sydney-
based climber John Ewbank
gained a reputation not only for his
visionary climbing performances
on the Blue Mountains sandstone
or the Warrumbungles’ trachyte,
but also for his often acerbic public
pronouncements on climbing
ethics. The brash expatriate Brit
introduced into Australia an
entirely new open-ended grading
system for climbs that eschewed
the clumsy British and American
systems, bedevilled by a complexity
of numbers and letters. Once his
radical, yet elegantly simple scheme
was adopted by his home state of
New South Wales in 1967, the rest
of Australia quickly followed suit.
The system is now also used in NewZealand and South Africa.Ewbank often clashed with
mainstream climbers in the Blue
Mountains when he attacked the
destruction caused by overzealous
drilling and placing of bolts in
the soft sandstone cliffs — and
for the clean climbing ethos he
ruthlessly promoted. It was late in
1966 that the 18 year old pushed
Australian climbing into a new
zone, climbing The Janicepts at
Wirindi. It remained Australia’s
hardest climbing route for six years.
It was the beginning of an era that
applied a new climbing technique
— jamming hands and feet into
cracks and resting on steep routes
— and new ways of protecting the
leader, using artificial chockstones
of various shapes and sizes.Discovery of the crag, Frog
Buttress, near the regional township
of Boonah, in November 1968
propelled Queensland climbers
into a new era where pitons and
the damage they caused to cliffs
were superseded almost overnight.
The vertical cracks of the Buttress
were ideal for placement of ‘clean’
protection devices — lightweight
aluminium chockstones.A handful of climbers began to
train specifically for climbing
as a new European approach —
sport climbing — began to gain in
popularity in the mid-late 1970s.
It involved choosing steep, often
smooth cliff faces which required
climbers to pre-place protection—
usually by drilling and placing bolts.
It pushed the level of difficulty of
the climbs that resulted higher
and higher. Another controversial
international influence on the
Australian climbing scene was
gymnasts’ chalk, first used here
in 1975 by visiting United States’
climber Henry Barber. Inexorably,
the gap between the hardest
climbs in Australia and overseas
was narrowing and by 1985, Mount
Arapiles boasted the equal hardest
climb in the world — Punks in the
Gym — the result of siege tactics
by two international climbers,
Martin Scheel from Switzerland and
Wolfgang Güllich from Germany.Cams — spring-loaded devices
Eric Dark and Eric Lowe (facing camera) climbing on Boar’s Head Rock, Katoomba, in the early 1930s. Blue Mountains Library.placed into cracks for protection