A Random Rock Climb in Australia
(with two strangers)
While living in a hostel in Melbourne, I was sitting at the kitchen table over breakfast one morning, when Jasper and Esme walked in…
“Hellooooooo!! Good morning!!!! they shouted, making their usual dramatic entrance, bursting into the kitchen, full of energy and enthusiasm.
They quickly exclaimed, to me and to the room at large, that they were going on a roadtrip to see the 12 Apostles! And they had one free space in the car… Jokingly, they set about bribing me for that seat. With ‘so many’ candidates to choose from, if I wanted to come with them, I would need to butter them up…
And so I did.
I went along with it, and I cooked them a perfect couple of eggs for breakfast (Giles aka the egg whisperer) and with that, I’d sealed the deal, satisfied their cheeky criteria, and guaranteed my seat in this upcoming roadtrip of theirs.
We set about finding a potential hire car as none of us had vehicles. Through ‘Jucy Rentals’ we found a cool little car. It had a tent that folded out so that you could sleep on the roof 😀
We booked the car for 5 days, so that was to be the duration of our trip.
Skip forward a week later, and myself, Jasper, Esme and their German traveller buddy Isabelle, aka Isa, had packed up all our belongings for 5 days of camping and retrieved the hire car.
This was my first road trip since I started travelling on the other side of the world, and it was pretty awesome, as you will see from this series of photos below.
We drove out following the Great Ocean Road stopping at all the lookouts along the way, meeting some colourful parrots, cute koalas and a series of stunning waterfall’s. We passed the pebble beaches, stopped off for lunch – fish n chups, and of course we had some music to sing along to the whole way, such bangers the likes of Brittany Spears, Backstreet Boys, SClub7 and Atomic Kitten.
The 90’s classics were great… for all of 30 minutes; then it became painful 😀
A few disagreements were had between us as the three of them were quite strong characters, the usual sort of things: where to stop, what to eat, getting a bit lost in the middle of nowhere with no water and waking up after camping when Esme hadn’t had her morning coffee (scary!), but nothing too upsetting, just a bit intense sometimes.
On the fourth day we had arrived in the Grampian Mountains to the site of a grass field filled with kangaroos!!
First time for me to see them in the wild; they are such amazing animals. After spending some time chilling out with the roos, we thought we’d better find our camp site before it got too dark. Turned out, we hadn’t left quite early enough. Darkness had fallen upon us and still we were winding our way up the mountain with ‘maps.me’ (a useful offline map app) guiding us to a free camp site.
Squinting through the night, looking for any sort of sign to tell us the way, we finally came across the signpost we needed and turned in to a camp with a few fellow campers already set up, coaxing a fire into life.
Jasper and Esme made their classic entrance for everyone to appreciate they were there; exclaiming loudly, hitting each other on the arse and shrieking… they sure knew how to get excited about camping.
They went over to introduce themselves straight away to the people sat by the fire, and Isa and I also joined them.
They were two French guys, Benoît or Ben for short, and Vincent, 29 and 35 years old, and in the darkness but with the light of the fire I could just make out that Ben was a tall gangly man with round spectacles and a baseball cap, the other fellow Vincent I could see was older with some lines etched in his face, short dark hair and when he spoke, I sensed a quiet sort of confidence mixed with humility.
Ben didn’t speak so much as Vincent, more the strong silent type, very thoughtful, but I could still tell by his demeanour that he too was a nice guy.
They had come from Melbourne, like us, though not to site see the 12 Apostles but to go ‘bouldering‘.
I asked them “What is bouldering?”
And Vincent explained to me that it was like rock climbing, but without ropes…
“Well that sounds intense!” I commented incredulously.
“We use a crash mat instead” he clarified.
“Oh I see… that makes more sense” now understanding that he didn’t have a huge death wish, though it is true some people actually do that.
After we had dished out and hastily consumed some vegetable pasta, Ben cracked open the Johnny Walker Black Label and offered it around to us; we were very happy to oblige, and conversation began flowing more freely as the drinking continued and our tongues loosened.
Having a grand old time warming ourselves with fire and whiskey, somewhere in the middle of the Grampian Mountains, we got to know one another and listening to one of their stories about bouldering, I became interested in trying bouldering for myself.
I expressed my interest to them and they said “yeah come out with us bro.”
I thought this a kind sort of gesture, inviting me to climb with them, but I didn’t feel much behind it, like it could have been something said in the moment that could be loosely agreed upon, but next morning forgotten about. Also considering, it could be the drink talking.
They said they’d come out to the Grampians the previous weekend to look for some ‘problems’ (routes going up the rocks) and come across a cave in the side of a mountain where they thought looked pretty comfortable to sleep for a night.
They had this idea because they wanted to wake up the next morning and straight away get half a day’s climbing in before the heat of the sun got too intense. So this was their plan for this weekend, and tomorrow they would go and find this cave again.
It all sounded like great fun to me.
As the night drew on, my roadtrip crew had gone to bed, and feeling the tiredness creep in through the alcohol, I decided to turn in as well, so I wished the French dudes ‘Bon Nuit’ and said if we didn’t see each other tomorrow, it was great to meet them.
We had a lot of driving ahead of us the next morning so my friends and I were up early and soon enough we had all our stuff packed up and were ready to go before we saw any hint of life coming from the French guys camp.
10-15minutes drive from camp was a big wooden cabin that served food, so we stopped there for breakfast.
As we tucked into a fry up, we spoke of how nice it was to have that time with the Frenchies by the fire and the sky such a clear starry night, a beautiful end to a great trip.
I mentioned that the French guys ‘sort of’ invited to me to join them bouldering and I was interested but wasn’t sure that they were serious.
Surprisingly to me, Isa pipes up straight away “Oh you should join them! That would be awesome!! I would come too but I have work when I get back.”
I looked at Jasper and Esme and they also agreed with Isa that I could do it! Maybe they just wanted to get rid of me haha, but the more I considered it, and with their enthusiasm for me to do it, I was drawn back in the direction of the campsite after breakfast, to ask them if I could go with them.
Rumbling back up the rocky road we just came down, we arrived back to the camp once again and saw that Vincent must have just woken up, sitting outside his tent brewing some coffee.
“Mornin!”, I said walking over to him,
“Oh hey man.”, came the level reply.
“So we just went for breakfast and then came back because I wanted to ask you if it really was cool…
if I go with you to do some bouldering…?”
I dunno if he was feeling a bit cranky before he’d had his morning coffee, after the night of drinking too, but with much less enthusiasm than the night before, he said:
“Yeah man you can come.”
“Yeah? Are you sure it’s OK?” I inquired again.
… yeah it’s cool, you can come.
…”Sweet man! Thanks! Alright, I’ll get my things.”
I went back to the car and said to my road trip buddies that Vincent said it was cool to go with them…
“Ahh awesome Giles!!” That’s so cool!! they chimed together encouragingly.
So we’ll see you back in Melbourne!
“Yeah, see you back in Melbourne 🙂 and hugging them and wishing them a safe journey, I watched as my friends that I’d come all this way with, pulled out of the campsite waving madly out of the window and blowing me kisses, I was left in their dust, with a couple of French guys who I’d met for all of a few hours, in what seemed a very remote location…
An empty feeling from their sudden absence, plus the lack of connection I was getting from Vincent this morning, with Ben still sleeping away in his tent, caused me to question if I was totally mad making this decision.
I didn’t want to spend time deliberating over it though. It would only make me more nervous.
The decision was made and I had to make what I could out of the new situation.
The French guys weren’t in any hurry it seemed, so I was to wait for them to get themselves up and ready, have breakfast and so on, but then they pulled out a chess board…
Sat watching their morning chess duel, the sun started to rain down on us with more strength and we moved until we were under the shade of a tree in the middle of the campsite.
With no other campers left, it’s just me, Ben and Vincent in the Aussie wilderness and they’re playing a game of chess and talking to each other in French, sort of going about their day, as though I wasn’t there.
Boy, did I feel like a sore thumb!
Feeling further and further out of my comfort zone, somehow I pictured this bouldering trip going a little differently.
When they’d finally finished their chess game they slowly and methodically packed their things into the car and eventually we could leave this campsite, once and for all.
Driving along the road through the barren desert I was struck even more by the remoteness of the place. We didn’t pass another car for a considerable amount of time and a fear ran through me.
“I could be in trouble here” I thought to myself.
Apprehensive about my two new companions who I knew nothing about, a motivation rose within me to be more focused on the situation at hand, to look after myself carefully, and so I reached for my phone to check my battery and signal.
Thankfully I had both. I checked my bag for my portable battery, and I found that to be safe too.
Water, clothes and a couple of snack bars
I tried to offer conversation to make myself included but it wasn’t really flowing as it had done the previous night.
Then we entered a small town and pulled up at a supermarket. This made me feel a WHOLE lot better being around other people. And so I asked them what they needed from here and could I contribute to the food rations for today and tomorrow’s meals.
They briefly described having most things anyway, just a few carrots, bananas, tins of tuna, and also a few galleons of water..
I got some other bits and bobs, probably nuts and dried fruit, that was my go to snack, as well as some biscuits.
Being able to talk to them some more about the plan and see what the guys had in store in the back of the car helped calm me down some what and we set off again down another long, deserted road in the direction of a climbing spot they had visited last weekend.
Then something unusual happened.
Vincent said suddenly “so now it’s time to get pumped for climbing… Ben, put it on.”
Totally intrigued, I’m watching them closely from the back seat to see what was coming…
Some up tempo beat kicked in, then…
IT’S BRITTANY BITCH!
And they were singing along “You gotta work bitch!“
I was SOO surprised. Mostly it made me laugh and I was happy to see that they were more enthusiastic again like when I first met them at the campsite. But, I mean, they were 2 manly French men, out climbing rocks in the desert, drinking whiskey and playing chess and their favourite pre-bouldering session pump song, was from the teenage girl hit sensation: Brittany Spears.
Although it made me laugh, it did also bring some slight concern: namely, me getting raped and killed out in the middle of nowhere.
Apart from that though, I was fine!
We arrived at the carpark when the heat of the day was at it’s strongest and they took out the necessary supplies for lunch, cooking it up on the gas stove.
After lunch the guys said they’d get the stuff out of the car that we needed but it was a bit of a hike up hill to reach the climbing spot, maybe 30-40minutes over rocky ground, so we waited a little while before leaving the safety of the shade.
This was the first time of many coming moments when there was absolutely nothing to do and Ben and Vincent were content in just sitting with a look of contemplation on their faces, deep in thought.
Something that I do remember, because it struck me as odd but interesting, was when I was watching Vincent transfer water from the huge container into a smaller, more portable one.
Exactly how he was tipping the water I’m not sure now, but he was doing it in the slowest possible way.
And I asked him “Vincent, why are you dripping it in so slowly?
He neatly replied “I got the time.”
“Oh, fair enough,” I considered, and I left him to it.
Why it struck me as interesting was because it was the complete opposite behaviour from where I’d just come from: Melbourne, which was a busy city with so much happening there.
Every night you could easily find some kind of entertainment, festivals, comedy nights, rooftop bars with a cinema screen, always something going on.
The pace of life, the atmosphere was fast and loud and social and musical.
Even my roadtrip buddies had carried on this fast pace of life for the last few days, their bubbling high energy very positive and good fun, strangely they too were singing their hearts out to Brittany Spears songs, but after a while, it was also quite tiring.
Now, I was faced with a stark contrast: a man squatting down by himself in the desert, filling a bottle of water as slowly as humanly possible, just to stretch the time out, while we hung around, doing nothing, in… nowhere.
Some time later…
When they were ready, and had exercised their powers of slo motion life, Ben and Vincent strapped the crash mats onto their backs as well as carrying the bouldering shoes, chalk bag and a bag with some first aid and other bits, and I brought my own backpack filled with our collective food and we shared the load of the water, a bottle each.
They set off at a fast pace, striding up the rocky hillside without faltering or slowing even slightly, as though they weren’t carrying anything and the heat of the sun wasn’t causing any effect.
They had obviously done this a thousand times before.
I struggled to keep up, huffing and puffing away as they continued relentlessly upwards, gaining a growing distance between us.
“There is no way I’m going to lose them”, I thought, “I must. not. lose them!”
And I put every effort into staying as close as I could to them, not wanting to think what would happen if I got lost out there.
After what seemed like hours but was probably around 40minutes, I could see ahead that Ben had put his stuff down under the shade of a huge rock and was looking around at the rock faces, already checking out the ‘problems’.
With a sigh of relief, I had also made it to the rest spot and half collapsed in a pool of my own sweat.
It seemed to be an all or nothing way of life for these guys. (and I grew to like it)
They knew how to relax, then apply themselves fully when action was called for.
(A very wise way to live if you ask me)
Recovering from the hike, we sat and admired the view and rehydrated.
Then, it was time for some bouldering!
The crash mat was placed underneath a jutting rock and I had a sideline view as I watched how the pro’s did it.
Then, it was my turn.
Luckily, I had the same shoe size as them, so I was able to use their special shoes to grip the rock, and they showed me possible hand and foot placements for me to get started.
I hadn’t done this kind of exercise in a long time so it didn’t take much before I could feel the burn in muscles I didn’t often use.
So I sat out for a while watching Vincent attack the rock that I had been working on.
I saw him reach out for a hand hold and he just made it but suddenly, he let out an awful roar of pain, like an injured lion, and he crashed back down onto the mat below.
“Shit, are you OK man?”
“Ahhhhh… no, think I’ve pulled a ligament… fuck!”
It was his first climb of the day, the very beginning of a weekend of climbing. He’d come all the way from Melbourne 3-4hours of driving, planned it since last weekend, had this brilliant idea to sleep in the mountainside and wake up to a fresh morning’s climbing and now that plan had gone totally out the window.
With this type of injury he knew it could take many weeks to recover possibly months before he could climb properly again.
He was obviously upset to begin with, as anyone would be, but in no time at all, he’d managed to accept his defeat on this occasion and while he was sat cradling his wrist he assessed why it had happened.
He came to the conclusion it was probably the heat and dehydration that caused it and so he learned never to climb when dehydrated. Soon enough, he was content again in helping Ben talk through the problems.
Many people wouldn’t have taken the situation he was in so lightly.
Some people I know would have moaned and complained the whole rest of the weekend, and so I admired Vince for getting over it so quickly.
I’d seen what could happen if I pushed myself too hard in this environment, so I made sure to drink a load of water and do some stretches before hitting the rock again.
I was finding my feet on my second run, literally, and really enjoyed the shoes capability of gripping even the smallest holes as I crept slowly across the rock face.
At this point, I felt much happier that I’d made the decision to join these two, cool guys in what was my first ever rock climbing experience. I trusted them now and as we stopped for a food break of tuna on crackers, they talked of moving over to another spot where I could try another problem.
Ben explained to me that the rock looked more difficult to climb than it actually was and that it would be OK for a beginner level climber.
“Just remember to breathe, take your time and not panic.”
As you can see from the picture and video, this was a pretty fucking scary climb!!
Especially because I was a total novice and there was no way to put a crash mat down to break your fall. So if I was to fall, I did not stand a good chance of surviving without serious injury, or even surviving at all!
So why the hell I decided to do it, I do not know.
I think I was excited and feeling more confident following my first few climbs, and with Ben telling me I could definitely do it as well as Vincent, even after popping a ligament not a few hours ago, he actually wanted to climb it as well!
He told me “Mostly it’s just stepping upwards with your legs and not much pressure should be on the hands.”
So I watched them go up first and come back down so I could use the shoes. Not knowing quite what I was getting myself into, I began to climb up the rock…
I was trying to take my time and breathe as they said to and I was doing alright, making it half way up and putting feet first, then hand holds into place. Then I was reaching the top (where you can see Ben is in the picture).
Now from this angle of the rock, you can’t see what is behind it… if I had, I probably wouldn’t have climbed it at all.
Because behind the rock, was a sheer drop far greater than that of the drop on this side.
I climbed up one more step higher and then with a “HOLY SHIT” exclamation, I could see exactly what I was dealing with.
I could see so far into the distance from up there, my view suddenly able to extend right across the Aussie wilderness that was the Grampians National Park.
My legs started to shake a little. There was hardly any space at the top to get comfortable and sit down without falling off, but I managed to get into some kind of position which allowed me a brief rest.
Catching my breathe and tentatively daring to look around for a minute or so, I decided to start the descent. Going down was in fact more difficult than getting up there; something else I had neglected to think through!
My muscles were getting tired. I fumbled a foot hold and was left clinging on with just my hands!!
Trying desperately not to panic at the prospect of falling when I was still near the top of the rock, I had to find a foot hold fast otherwise my hands were going to give way.
Without being able to look where I could place my feet I had to feel around, lifting my legs up and testing for holes or little juts where my feet scratched along the surface, I tried one and put my weight on it…
It took my weight! And I raised myself back up onto my leg finding another foot hold for the other leg.
DEEP BREATHES as I quickly had to deal with the shock of almost falling. I had to regain my composure, I had to stay calm and focused if I was to get away from this thing in one piece. It wasn’t over yet.
Slowly and steadily I continued my climb downwards, inching closer and closer to safety. 5minutes later my feet touched the bottom of the rock and I sat down as the shock of what just happened washed over me.
I felt traumatised.
I couldn’t speak properly to the others and they could see I was struggling. They sat down with me and Vincent regaled for us a climbing story of what happened to him once upon a time.
I vaguely remember it was a similar story to the movie 127 Hours where the man goes out by himself to one of the huge National Parks, is climbing around and gets stuck and there was no way of getting help.
Vince wasn’t so unfortunate as that guy though, he did manage to make his escape with both arms intact but he said he was in a dire situation on the rock face and when he’d finally made it down he felt traumatised and he needed to be around people again.
He went to a cafe and sat there all day just really appreciating the life of other human beings around him.
Once I had gathered my wits about me, we packed up all our stuff again and headed back down the hill side. Much easier than the outgoing journey the return hike was later in the day and so a lot cooler; the other two weren’t in such a hurry this time, not needing to escape the sun’s heat.
Back at the car we chucked the stuff in and set off for our final destination of the day…
The Mountain Cave!
Turning on some different music now, changing it up from Brittany, this must have been the post climbing playlist, and it was:
The Django Unchained Soundtrack
I really liked it. Which was good because they played it on repeat the whole rest of the journey.
We pulled in at a carpark much like the one previously, in the middle of nowhere, and we took out the same as before but also replenishing our water supply, restocking our food rations for that night’s dinner and the next day’s breakfast, as well as needing our ground mats and sleeping bags.
Again was another hike exactly like before, supposedly around 40minutes and up a rocky hillside.
It was around 6pm when we set off and because it was Summer, the sun didn’t set until around 8.30 so we had enough time to find the cave before it got dark.
I have no idea how they found it. It wasn’t like there was any sort of path out there, just some drab looking trees and a whole bunch of grey, rugged rocks for landscape.
But find it they did and here is the view from our hideout and a video I took having just reached it:
I was exhausted but exhilarated and really impressed with our sleeping quarters for the night. I was also very thankful to be alive to see another sun set, following the death defying climb but 1 hour ago.
We fixed some dinner and I can’t remember much else about that night because my mind wasn’t all there anymore after all the events of the day.
All I can recall is the guys talking about some really sick movie, like the nastiest movie I’ve ever heard of which, thankfully, I’ve forgotten the name of now. They would like to hypothesise a lot and ask themselves how they would act in any given situation, like if you were that guy in the movie, would you fuck the girl or call the police, or both.
It was pretty funny banter anyhow, albeit rather disturbing bed time stories while falling asleep up a mountain in the wilderness with two guys I’d just met.
The only other thing was… the mosquitoes. Those bastards kept whining in my ears and waking me up and there was bugger all I could do about it. But the morning was upon us in no time, the sun rising bright and early and Ben was keen to get going with some bouldering.
Here is a picture from that morning:
I wasn’t in the mood to climb after yesterday’s cliff hanging antics, so I just watched Ben do his thing and WOW was he showing off on this next video making it look easy:
SO COOL!!
After he’d had his fill of climbing, we left our humble mountain abode and were back at the car before the weather got too hot.
Back to Django Unchained and onwards in the direction of Melbourne.
I bade farewell to Ben and Vincent once we’d made it all the way to Melbourne, thanking them for taking me along for the adventure and teaching me how to boulder. Ben had Facebook so I added him, took my bag and all the memories from the past few days and hopped on the bus from where they dropped me.
It was such a drastic change being in the city again: the chaos of the traffic, the noise and pollution, I was struck by an assault on the senses. When I’d eventually arrived at my hostel, I met my road trip buddies Jasper and Esme and they were excited to see I was alive and well and they wanted to know all about the trip with ‘the Frenchies’.
It was at this moment I realised the effect on me from the last 2 days. I felt really clear in myself. I wasn’t thinking nearly as much and I felt very peaceful and happy.
Being out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do had made a big difference in the relationship I had with my mind. To begin with, in the Grampians, I found it difficult to do nothing as my mind was racing and I was following it from one thought to the next. But over just a couple of days in the middle of nowhere, there appeared more space from my over thinking mind and the compulsion to follow it had gradually weakened.
Jasper, Esme and myself all agreed that I had grown a lot from that experience. I was rewarded for my leap of faith to join with two strangers and stray way out of my comfort zone, to have an incredible experience learning bouldering, and climbing with two pro’s by the names Ben and Vincent, and they also taught me what it’s like to slow down and create Space from thinking.
