Still haven't found what I'm looking for

A job, that is. I guess I am out of practice looking for jobs but work isn't as easy to come by in a city of 4 million people as I thought. Still have a few possibilities that look hopeful though.

Mum and dad on the beach, Prince Philip island

I was great to see mum and dad in January. We had a fun couple of days down at Prince Phillip island walking on the beautiful beaches and watching the penguins come from the sea at night. The way the Little Penguins come out onto the sand, wander a few steps up and then freak out and run back to the seas time and again before they work up the courage to run up the beach and scramble onto the dunes was hilarious.

Friction slabs at Buffalo - not my forte.

I had a very colourful climbing trip to Buffalo which kicked off with me forgetting to pack at least 6 different things and finding that even at 1500m above sea level the temperature in the sun is purgatorial. I have never been particularly at home on granite and on buffalo granite I felt about as at home as an American in Iraq. My balance was shown to be sorely lacking by the slab padding pitches and my crack skills were mocked by... well, the cracks. Before I could properly get to grips with the place, I had a severe episode of deja vu when we had an impromptu trip back to Melbourne after someone else was helicoptered there (not climbing related). After we returned to Buffalo I was able to get spanked by a slab 22, then have to rest on a slab 20 and finally take a small factor 2 fall on a crack graded... something like 16 which ended with my girlfriend suffering a nasty hand-meets-belay-device-meets-rope event (gruesome closeup on facebook in fact). After a brief visit to the local doctor we called it quits a day early and vegetated in Melbourne (turns out I am currently far better at computer games than climbing).
And in spite of all this, I am keen to go back and try to improve my crack and slab skills. I think that if I can only get over the humiliation of dropping so many grades to climb there, there are real skills to be learned beyond the train more, crimp harder, get stronger mentality that I have fallen into (although I went to the bouldering [gasp!] wall recently and my arms were in pain for 4 days after so clearly some standard training is needed as well).
[Private note to the Buffalo guidebook authors: Your guide has more errors and misleading information than a WMD dossier.]

I have had a couple of day trips to climbing areas near Melbourne as well. I would particularly like to expound on my experiences at Ben Cairn, frankly, is shittier than then underside of a dry drop toilet, mainly because:

• Of the 40+ climbs, approximately 4 are not completely covered in moss.
• There is an abundance of snakes, horseflys, mosquitoes, leeches and other vengeful creations of a bitter god.
• While advertised as a crag that is "good in summer" it essentially gets burning sunshine all day long.
• It is cloaked in rain forest which keeps everything nice and moist, sorry I meant "disgustingly moist".

So basically, the message is, if you are going to climb near Melbourne, don't bother going to Ben Cairn.

Life in the big city

Midnight and it's time to play with long exposures.
Dry cave, roaring fire, hard climbs, no mosquitos,
what more could a man want??

Well, I had a good time at Bundaleer, camping under a huge overhang where we tried some ridiculously steep routes (45-50 degree overhangs) climbing literally over the top of our tents. I was supprised to find that I can actually crank pretty hard routes on such outrageous angles and monkeying around on them was quite a lot of fun. Sadly both routes I tried had a big dynamic lunge move at some point that I couldn't catch, on the third day of climbing stupid angles I woke up with a back so shafted I could barely walk!

I spent a day seeing the Great Ocean Road, got lots of sea stack photos but they are pretty ordinary, still was fun to do something touristy for a change. I have been living in Melbourne with my girlfriend Billie and trying to find a job (between getting sidetracked by facebook, forums, blogs, etc.). I had fun spending christmas day with lots of relatives in Melbourne and spent new year with a friend of Billies in the country where the temperature hit 40C and we met the new year in an outdoor pool under the stars. I also drove a combine harvester for a little bit which is remarkably good fun (apparently though, that wears off after a month of driving it 18 hours a day every day during harvest).

The crux on Aftermath turned out to be
hanging on long enough to clip the bolt.

In climbing news, I went to Werribee Gorge for a day and was back at Arapliles for a few days also. The weather was a bit too hot to get anything spectacular done at Arapiles but I managed my first 24 onsite (sport though) at Werribee - but honestly it was pretty soft for the grade - and I did a few other bolted lines, all of which were on very nice rock, it was great to find that there is such quality climbing available close to Melbourne as well. While I'm talking about climbing and I can include pictures again, I thought I might add one of me trying Aftermath (24) quite a while ago.

Ok, enough for now, I have to go find a job and get a climbing shop to return my DMM brass offsets (DMM has a rather different opinion of how these items should be used and how long they should last than I do, it turns out.)