Done: Try mountain climbing

Brisbane is a city for people who like to move, those like me that would rather read books and visit galleries are encouraged to move to Melbourne. That is an exaggeration off course; however it’s true that people in Brisbane like physical activity. Several people in my office run marathons an actually finish them, other swim and surf while others rock climb. The good thing about this city is that you can do all of that for free, all you need is your equipment.

A good friend of ours, Lucas, had been inviting us to rock climb for weeks, so on a Wednesday night, we decided to go ahead and try it. We went to the Kangaroo Point Cliffs, which are 20 metre cliffs on the riverside. Gorgeous location, some people were already going up, some were drinking by the river, I was a bit intimidated.


I knew Lucas had climbed before, what I did not know, is that he had been doing it for about six years, so I was taken aback when he started a demonstration, in which he basically transformed himself into Spiderman and went up and down the wall in front of me. Mutant powers aside, Lucas is a great teacher, the first thing he taught us, was the most important thing to learn when you are a beginner: How to fall and not kill yourself. It seems that you actually need to try and roll on your back so you don’t break your legs and bust a knee. It was kind of scary, but hey, what wouldn't I do for survival?

Nik and I took turns going side to side on the wall (no use going up, its better to practice side to side first, se previous paragraph on falling. And roll on my back I did, once, twice, trice, after that I lost count. I blamed my low performance on my size (Lucas is just a tad taller than I), blamed it on my shoes, blamed it on going barefoot, on having girly hands, on not owning muscular fibre anywhere in my body. In the end it doesn’t matter, it’s all about practice, practice, practice.

Although I wasn’t able to go higher than a meter and a half from the ground, I still enjoyed it very much, I discovered whole muscle groups in my body, tried something new and had lots of fun laughing at Nik and myself. Thanks Lucas.

The only thing that bothers me a bit now, is that I thought I would be a natural, I’ve climbed into rooftops, windows and others, usually because I forgot my keys somewhere, so I suppose that these performances don’t transcribe well into rock climbing, I wonder if I would do well doing “Parcour”?(google it), one more thing to add to the list. Exciting…