The Road to Becoming OZ Experienced – Grampians from Mt Gambier

Photojournalist David Savage travels Australia on the OZ Experience…

On The Bus…
After Paintball last night most of us were all pumped up for more adventure. We made our way to Mt Arapiles. This area is world renowned for it’s climbing with over 2000 documented climbs. We weren’t about to tackle any ‘Everest’ calibre rock faces, but we were going to challenged none the less. Our instructor for the day was Hugh, of Arapiles Climbing Guides, (1800 357035).

Within our group were climbers of all abilities. For the more experienced there were harder climbs and for the novices there were climbs that were still challenging, but good to build confidence on. As people climbed, there was plenty of encouragement and help from the rest of us below. Josiane from Quebec was especially helpful, shouting up to one climber in difficulty,

“If you look down between your legs, you’ll see a crack”.

The supreme award for effort however had to go to our driver Tom. The same guy who had shot me in the back during Paintball the previous night. As he tackled the hardest route of the day, his cartilage popped out. He shouted his trademark ‘Ahhhh errrrrrr… yeah’, and popped it back in to complete the climb.

Grampians
After we had climbed and conquered, we then headed deeper into the Grampians. We stopped for a short hike to The Balconies to take photographs. The Balconies are two massive tongue-like rocks that jut out horizontally into thin air. Beneath is an amazing valley covered in a blanket of thick bush and trees.

The Grampians are the southernmost tip of The Great Dividing Range that stretches from top to bottom of Australia. Travelling from Adelaide to Sydney, by the time I had finished my OZ Experience I will have crossed The Great Dividing Range six times.

We made it to our hostel in Halls Gap. We had shopped earlier and tonight our group was going Mexican. Headed by team Sylvie-Shauna, the girls knocked out some class Buritto’s and we stuffed ourselves silly before slumping in front of the fire to watch TV.

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