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FEATURERRP $39.95 plus postage from
[email protected]This book offers the first de-
tailed account of the virtually
unknown pioneers of Austra-
lian rockclimbing along with
the story of the development
of climbing in Queensland
after World War II. It is based
on a wide range of sources:
existing literature on Austra-
lian climbing, archival docu-
ments, personal diaries and
interviews with surviving
post-war climbers. Author
Michael Meadows started
bushwalking and climbing in
Brisbane as a teenager in the
mid-1960s. Most of his climb-
ing time has been spent ex-
ploring the crags of southeast
Queensland.— also arrived on the scene in the
late 1970s offering a radical shift
in protecting lead climbers on a
route. But despite the availability
of such devices, the growing
popularity of sport climbing
coincided with an ethical shift
and by the mid-1980s, bolts —
permanently attached to rock
faces for protection — had become
commonplace on most crags in
Australia. As a direct spinoff from
the sport climbing craze, Australia’s
first indoor climbing gym opened
in Sydney in the early 1990s with
other large urban centres following
suit. Interestingly, climbing
gyms have attracted significant
numbers of women as members,
lured by the benefits of an all-
body workout coupled with the
challenge of rockclimbing. Female/
male membership of many of the
climbing gyms across Australia is
now close to 50:50, approaching
the proportions of men and women
who climbed in the 1930s on the
crags of southeast Queensland. The
influence of female role models like
American Coral Bowman and the
home-grown Louise Shepherd in
the 1970s have encouraged more
Australian women to see climbing
as no longer the preserve of ageing
men wearing ‘baggy pants and
hobbers’, as the enigmatic John
Ewbank once irreverently described
the ‘old guard’ of the Sydney
Rockclimbing Club.An answer to the age-old question
of why we climb remains elusive.
Jean Easton was paramount in
the large group of women who
climbed with Bert Salmon and
others throughout the late 1920s
and 1930s in southeast Queensland.
She made many first ascents — and
first female ascents — of crags and
cliffs in eastern Australia. So why
did she climb? ‘To realise fully the
true majesty, beauty, and mystery
of these peaks, one must become
intimately associated with them,’
she once replied in a newspaper
interview. Another of Bert’s
climbing proteges was 16-year-
old Val North, a family friend. She
accompanied him on an attempt
to climb one of the last remaining
virgin summits in Queensland in
1939 in the Steamer formation, near
Warwick. Seventy years later, aged
86, she recalled her climbing days:‘Places we went to — it just felt as if
it was the most wonderful place in
the world. It was quite spiritual.’The vast majority of postwar
climbers I have interviewed reflect
similar feelings about climbing and
its impact. But change is in the air
with environmental and cultural
concerns threatening to limit or
ban access to climbing destinations
around the country. The damage
to significant sites caused by some
climbers has led to increasing
scrutiny of bolt placement in
national parks, for example. It has
already led to closure of climbing
areas in several places, most
recently the Grampians in Victoria.
And undoubtedly there will be more
to come. These tensions are real
and climbers must acknowledge
them — they may be the most
challenging future issues to resolve
in the pantheon of Australian
climbing history. Climber turned
musician John Ewbank reflected on
this very question at a gathering
of climbers in the Blue Mountains
25 years ago. His prescient
observations are worth recalling:
‘Obviously everything has changed;
climbing has become a mainstream
activity and the most accessible
and high profile branch of it is
sport climbing. It is up to climbers
themselves to try to develop it in
such a way that it does not ruintrad climbing areas or create such
a backlash among the non-climbing
public and land management
bodies that climbing is banned
altogether.’Little has changed in terms of
climbing technologies since the
1980s: bolts are accepted as
‘common sense’; protection devices
have become more sophisticated;
everything has become lighter;
training regimes are commonplace;
climbing gyms are everywhere; and
the difficulty of climbing routes
continues to advance incrementally.
Traditional (trad) climbing —
where it all began — remains on
the periphery. But regardless, the
common element in all of this is
people and our ability to choose to
climb at a level which suits us.Writer Rebecca Solnit perhaps
best sums it up: ‘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.’ Despite the
disagreements, rockclimbing in
Australia — like its international
antecedents — continues to offer
individuals and groups unique,
rewarding experiences and it is
this dimension that seems highly
unlikely to change.