Freycinet

This last weekend Leanne and I went to Freycinet National Park to do some rock climbing. This was our third trip to the park, which is located on a peninsula off the east coast of the island about a 2.5 hour drive from were we live. The east coast is beautiful in general, but Freycinet typifies the rocky shores and sandy beaches with the added bonus of some granite mountains thrown in.

We've been climbing at a cliff called the Star Factory, which despite the hour-long-up-hill-both-ways hike, has the greatest collection of hard routes on the island and thus attractive by default. Luckily the scenery is great and the rock quality is very good. I haven't taken any pictures of us climbing as the opportunity hasn't presented it's self yet (I have either been belaying or climbing, neither of which are good positions to take photos from) but hopefully will get some soon. Until then, I've included a couple stolen photos from some other locals to hopefully give a perspective of the climbing along with some shots I've taken on the hikes in and out. Enjoy-

Starting the hike in

Our encounter with one of the stranger creatures I've run across called an Echidna - a montreme marsupial that resembles a hedghog/porcupine/anteater mix. When we came across this one, it just promptly barried its head in the leaves and just sat there. I'm not sure if they know how to count, because after I took the photo and moved away it got up and started going about it's business even though Leanne was still there watching.

A look back down the "trail" we came up. I use the term trail loosly becuase although I've hiked in and out a total of 10 times now I haven't done it the same way twice.

There is a nice view from the top of the ridge when you get there though

and if you go for multiple days, you can stash your stuff, so at least you only have to pack in the gear once

The climbing is on slightly overhanging waterpolished granite, which makes for bad foot holds and tricky sequences (Climber: Simon Young on Entree 8a; Photo: Jed Parkes)

As it's a national park, most of the wildlife are quite accustomed to people and will beg like domestic pets. Lets you get a nice look at them if they think your offering food, but gets to be a nuisance once you start tripping over them in the dark.

Might be a few weeks before I come up with something else. Till next time-

As a researcher, I spend a lot of time in the lab. However, I do get out on occasion collecting samples, taking measurements, excreta, and not long after I arrived down here I had the opportunity to go out on a commercial tuna harvest off the coast of South Australia. It was quite an interesting experience.

The tuna that I’m referring to here isn’t the tuna that you’ll find on the shelves at your local supermarket (i.e. Albacore in the US), but Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT) - a larger, rarer species that currently is harvested mainly for the higher end sushi markets (or at least that is my current understanding). Wild ocean populations have seen drastic declines from overfishing in the past, and currently there are strict international quotas on how much can be harvested. For this reason, and also for issues of quality and availability, a good number of SBT is now “ranched” in Australia - meaning a set number of fish are wild caught, towed back close to shore, and then grown in net-pens to be harvested following a variable period of around two to eight months. The entire process is outlined nicely in a National Geographic Channel episode called Tuna Cowboys (I tried to find a free link to the video online, but didn’t have any luck). Check it out if you get a chance.

Anyway, on this occasion I showed up to the dock at around 4:30am for the two hour boat ride out to the pens. When we got there, it was just getting light enough to see without the floodlights.



The divers immediately jumped in the water and, aided by the crew, began setting up a purse-seine net within the larger net-pen to corral the tuna into a smaller area.

Once corraled, the divers estimate the number of fish and then get to work catching them…by hand!

These fish are about 100lbs each at the time of harvest, can swim at speeds over 40mph, and there’s well over a thousand in each net. I haven’t experienced it myself, but I would imagine that catching them in this manner would be a daunting task, but the divers appear to manage it alright, and pretty quick too.

When a diver catches a fish, he brings them up to the boat where they are pulled up on board, processed, and immediately transfered to super-chilled water for transport in the hold over to the Japanese freezer boat moored not far from the pens (in this instance) or for fresh transport directly to the market.

They make the trasfer using multiple cranes and then the fish are further processed before making their way to Japan

It’s been quite interesting to work with this species, as coming from Idaho and NY, my former knowledge about saltwater fish in general, much less tuna, was fairly limited. Additionally, tuna is also relatively unique in that they are warm blooded. Not quite the same physiologically speaking as warm blooded mammals, but they are able to keep internal body temperatures of around 80°F in water around 40°F which makes for investigations into physiological mechanisms different from other species.

That’s about all I have to say about tuna for the moment. I think in a week or two I’ll put something together about the climbing and traveling in Tasmania - some beautiful places and a lot of rock. Later-

Climbing and Wining in the Grampians

About a week or so ago, I took a week off of work and Leanne and I made the one hour flight over to Melbourne to meet up with our friends Mike and Tammy McClure who were just arriving from Idaho for a two week climbing/sightseeing/wine-touring trip to the Grampians. The Grampians are a world class climbing destination, both for route climbing as well as bouldering, and we were exited to check it out with the added bonus of hanging out with some old friends.
Mike had unfortunately injured a finger just before coming down and was unable to do much climbing. However, this resulted in him having ample time to spend behind the camera, and the following photos are mostly courtesy of Mr. McClure. We had some rainy weather, but it was still a great time and we found that the bouldering lived up to its reputation of being absolutely amazing. The Hollow Mountain Cave is probably the most impressive climbable roof I’ve ever seen.

The mountains themselves aren't particularly high by US standards, but the surrounding flat topography gives them an added sense of height.

 
 
We also got to see a fair bit of wildlife that I’m sure most Aussies would consider mundane but were quite novel to us: emus, parrots, and kangaroos. We were hoping to see a koala but they unfortunately didn’t present themselves for inspection.

As for the bouldering, the sandstone was bullet hard and the problems were amazing. Here are a few photos of Leanne and Tammy climbing on some of the classics

I personally found the roof climbing the most fun and inspiring lines of the area. The Hollow Mountain Cave has a roof over 100ft long thats almost nearly horizontal and is about 4ft off the ground. There is some really cool movement, and some awesome holds (check out the left hand splitfinger pinch in the second photo...so cool). World class for sure




There was plenty of other smaller caves and overhanging features with beautiful lines on them as well and we manage to tour a good number of areas

 

One of the best problems I did there, and probably one of the best boulder problems I’ve ever done, was a V7 called the Nevin Rule. An excellent line.

We did run into some wet weather, but the Grampians also has a number of wineries, and as Tammy and Mike work a winery in Idaho (you can check them out at indiancreekwinery.com), we figured we’d do some wine touring while we were there.

There was also a local olive farm that we checked out that was pretty cool as well. Did I mention Mike and Tammy had rented a Wicked Camper Van? Actually not a bad option for the price and convenience...and it definitely gets people’s attention.

There were lots of fun aspects to the trip and I'll leave it to the following photos to help describe them. You can checkout more of Mike's photos, as well as his account of their trip, at climbidaho.com. I've posted a full list of the problems I did on 8a.nu, nothing too hard, but a good number of moderate problems for the short time we had that gave me a good feel of the place. I will be psyched to go back maybe in a bit better shape, and do some of the harder things I tried this time that were really good.

Next time I’ll either talk about some climbing and traveling we’ve done around Tasmania, or  about going out on a commercial tuna harvest to collect some research samples, I haven't decided yet. Until then-