Kylie!

Went to Kylie concert last night. It was her final appearance and it was very good, but sadly, she did ot invite any surprise guests (like Bono) onto stage with her. She did sing a very gothic sexy version of Locomotion though.

In other news, I found the following toy in a store near my house:



"Everyone wants an imaginary unicorn friend that they can call forth to smite their enemies. The Avenging Unicorn Play Set has everything you need to use the power of the unicorn to rid your life of irritations."

Moonarie

Preamble:

The week before our whirlwind South Australian trip I climbed a 10 pitch 18 with Mikl and Chris and on pitch 7 I sprained my finger. Silly boulder problem start off the ledge and I refrained from using the small hold on my right because of my fucked right hand and chose to use the smaller hold on my left as I haven't hurt my left hand for a while now. I proceeded through a process of flailing to hurt my left hand. I was confused as there was no popping snapping or tearing sound and I could kind of still use my hand. This was very good as I could climb out, as opposed to walking 6 hours our across the valley after 5 yukky raps. Anyhoo, it turns out it was a sprain (I think) and not a rupture, so this week finds my finger almost back to its normal fucked state. Which is odd. I now understand all those people who ever said "I sort of hurt my finger" and I though "yeah right, if you'd hurt it you'd know about it - how can you sort of hurt it?" just because I had always had the full-monty injury. Well, it did hurt to pull on my finger then, but I could still use the rest of my fingers and pull quite hard - usually my hold hand is out of comission for months - I can't even brush my hair. Standing on the ledge with Chris and Mikl I totally held it together - so proud! I though I might have a breakdown having hurt my finger again and the not knowing was driving me insane, but I managed to remain positive. I think they both only got a very small dose of my anxiety on the car drive home, and I was trying so hard to be positive. Anyway, we went to Moonarie with the plan that if I couldn't climb, we could drink wine. Good plan. At this healing rate my hand should be back to its normal fucked state in another month or two.

Moonarie!

Flew down to Adelaide (South Australia) Tuesday afternoon and picked up the campervan, which was great! Not cheap, but awesome - fridge, bed, sink, beats the hell out of car camping.


The van at Moonarie

Tuesday
After packing the van with food for our trip, I met up with Mikl and after a spot of shopping (Adelaide isn't very big, but it has the best she store in the world) we went to dinner with Mikl's pipeline engineering group, which was very, very, very blokey. But they are all rich industry types so we ate at a very expensive restaurant at their expense and i had the best Tuna tataki I have ever eaten, followed by an awesome steak. Then I got pistachio creme brulee, just to top off the close to a bottle of wine.

Wednesday
After a night in the Adelaide Hills we drove through the Barossa Valley, an awesome Shraz specialising wine district, that happens to be on the way to Moonarie. All in all we collected a case of wine, which we posted back from there: the wineries have a deal that if you get a case you can send it anywhere is Australia for free. Wednesday everning we drove to Orraroo and spent the night on a windy hillock.

Thursday
Drive the remaining 2 hours to Moornarie and headed up the hill. The "hill" being the hour long walk in. We were lucky with the weather - it was only 25 degrees ! Apparently it had been almost 40 a few days before.


Start of the walk up


Hot at top camp!

Amongst our climbing today was Garden Refuge Removes Easily (13?), which was good.

Friday
Back up the hill again - weather was also great, not even 30 today!

Climbed Pagoda (15) today, which you can see in the above picture - the flake to the right of my shoulder


Me at the top of the flake

This afternoon I got lichen in my eye and scrathed it pretty bad, so I couldn't see out of it for the evening.

Saturday
My eye was better today! Yay!
Some people Mikl had planned to hook up with arrived today - one of them had driven across the nullabor from Western Australia, and oicked up a young German tourist - Cindy (a real German name she assured us) along the way.
After climbing Vortex (17, awesome!) and Hangover Layback (15, great, but a bit dirty), it started to get actually hot. Climbed a bit more, then took Cindy back to camp with us where we drove to Brachina gorge (an hour away) to see the amazing geology - a complete history of Australian rock formations all in the one area. Even more amazing is the Ediacara stone - containing the only links between pre and post Cambrian life forms.


Ediacaran fossils just behind us


Baby Emu !!

After a HUGE dinner with the crew we were sitting around the lantern watching the insects that were drawn to the light and this montrous wolf spider appeared and started hunting the insects. It lept into the air and scored this huge moth. I was facinated, but totally freaked out too.

Sunday

Left to head back to Adelaide - we had to return the car today, and it was actually a nice 4.5 hours drive.














The drive happened to go through the Clare Valley - awesome wine region! Had lunch there, and stopped off at a few of the little towns - all very nice and cute along the way. Free standing houses from circa early 1900's in mint condition for $100K. With what we are trying to spend in Sydney we could afford a few of these, and only two hours from Adelaide!

Monday
Plane left at 6.20am, our taxi that we booked for 5.10am didn't show up. We finally managed to get a cab at 6.05am after much hassle, and got to the airport at 6.14 thinking we'd missed it for sure, and there is only 1 flight a day, we both had to work too. Thankfully, the plane was delayed, and we were the last to board. Yay! Back to work...

More Trip Photos

How much stuff can you fit in a station wagon?

Holiday news

News from our recent holiday:

Saturday afternoon: Drove to Canberra (ACT)
Stayed with les, she made me run. It was good, but it was also 5 kms, and I'm secrtely not a runner. Dinner at a French restaurant with Les, the duck made up for the run. We got dressed up, the "fancy" restaurant turned out not so fancy, but hell - I got to wear my new favourite dress and black pumps, so I was a happy lass. Les is in love too, which made the evening really nice, despite the service (well, I guess we were in a French restaurant).

Sunday: Climbed at Booroomba (ACT)
Excellent day out - my thighs hurt from the run, but the route (Closer In - about 21? was very good).

Monday: Drove to Melbourne (VIC)
Stayed with Tim and Clarissa, dinner near there place near St Kilda, where apparently there are loads of hookers as prostitution isn't as accepted as in Sydney, so the hookers don't have a headquarters.

Tuesday:
Shopped. Bought best jeans ever, best suit ever (70% off! - I normally could not afford a Saba suit). No shoe success, dammit. Bought a new car radio and speakers which we put in - it has an auxillary input where I can plug my ipod directly in. Yay!. Stayed with Steve and Rake

Wednesday: Great Ocean Road (VIC)
Drove the great Ocean road from melbourne all the way to Warnambool and then onto Mt Arapiles. I dove most of the way - the great ocean road is one of the best coast drives in the world, very, very windy. The driving stopped me throwing up. The road goes past Bells Beach (suppoed to be best surfing in the world) and past the twelve apostles (sea stacks). Through some great country too - the road heads back inland at one point though some great farming country - rolling green hills.
Dinner at Horsham Pub, the onto Araps for the night

Thursday: Mt Arapiles
HOT! Climbed:
o/s Dracula (1 pitch 12? - quite scary. Yelped and asked for help a lot)
o/s Rosie Shy (1 pitch 19 - great route, very staright forward)
seconded Scourge (1 pitch 20)
retired to the dam where we stood in freezing water for an hour to return core temperatures to normal
seconded Tony's Route (aka The Desired) (2 pitch 19 - 19 my ass! The rock was so smooth and slippery, perhaps it would have been easier in the cool)
Total fire ban - Cooked at Simon's place, camped at Araps.

Friday:
Not as hot, but still spicy:
o/s Libretto (2 pitch 16 - Simon took photos of me leading for the new guide, and made a mock Rock cover:)



Retired for lunch and to escape the midday heat, found a shingleback lizard (there were hundreds):



o/s Oceanoid (2 pitch 17 - really good - Simon took photos again)

Thats all we had time for at Araps this trip, the weather was a bit much



We stayed at Simons place to avoid the Friday night crowds that head in for the weekend from Melbourne

Saturday:
Drove to the Grampians, went to Van Diemens Land, where Mikl climbed a 23. As much as I wanted to climb it - I'm sure I could have, I restrained myself (yay for me) as my fingers probably needed a rest.
Headed to Melbourne for Tim's birthday celebration. Rolled into Steve and Rake's place and after a quick shower/change, off to the celebrations at "mothers Milk" watering hole, the dinner at an Indian restaurant.

Sunday:
Brekky with Rake, Mikl, and I at the "Silly Yak". I ate EVERYTHING. Shopped with Rake, Mikl went to visit an old friend, Glen.
Late lunch with the hungover Tim, Clarissa, and Kevin (who flew down for the party). After a spot of shopping, Tim got the flue, which hit him like a sack of bricks, so we went to their place and watched a movie. Later Kev and I drove back to Steve and Rake's place to meet up with everyone for dinner. Meanwhile, Mikl had spent the day drinking at Glen's place (apparently they had 5 bottles of wine between three people), and had arranged to have dinner - at a Vietnamese restaurant.

Monday:
Left for Mt Buffalo.
Drove through awesome country again - there was a biplane doing acrobatics, and we stopped to watch it. Some cows wandered over and I stood there talking to them for a few minutes. A car that was passing pulled up and wound down the window - "You talking to me?!" the woman driver yelled. "No, I was talking to the cows" I said. Realized I was sounding crazy (I normally hide it better) and backed it up with "and mu husband. Sort of. Mosty the cows" (I'm not a liar either). The woman looked at me, shook her head, and roared off. Perhaps she though the car was having problems and we were in trouble? Perhaps she was just country folk.
We drove onwards to Bright where we found a lovely B and B and ate a HUGE piece of meat for dinner.

Tuesday: Climbed at Buffalo - Eurobin falls
Mikl backed off all the 23's on the wall. He sent me up to lead "No holds barred" (21) which I did - its the slabbiest slab you've ever seen. I cried in between bolts (almost) and kissed the anchors when I got there. The twin ropes we were using fell into the cold stream that the falls next to the climb merged into during our rap. Yummy - wet ropes. On the walk down we pased some older - much older - people running up the hill. They all seemed awfully fit. A young man was huffing and puffing after them - he told us there are a walking group of 80 year olds - he was "minding" them. Well, trying to at least. It was ver inspiring. I needed to be doing more, godammit.

Drove back to Sydney

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