The hospital rocks

...or so Climber Boy tells me, enthusiastically.

I'm thinking - why would a hospital rock, and why is CB waxing lyrical about it.

Hospital Rocks, Nowra.

Hospital Rocks, it turns out, is a smallish sandstone cliff right next to the Shoalhaven District Memorial Hospital in Nowra, NSW, along the banks of the Shoalhaven River. The hospital road runs alongside the top of the cliff and the river runs about 100m from the base of the cliff. The cliff itself is 10-15m high and near-vertical.

It's roughly on the way home from Point Perp and a good place to hang out when Point Perp is blowing a gale, as it has all weekend. There are a couple of routes that CB has decided should be within my capacity, and so that's where we head at the end of our weekend at Point Perp. Just when the menacing roar of the thousand-headed fire-breathing monster appeared to be diminishing as we departed Point Perp, I now find myself spying tell-tale plumes of rancid smoke emanating from the scrub below the road.

The vast majority of climbs around Nowra are sports climbs, meaning that steel bolts have been anchored into the rock wall for climbers to clip their rope into, instead of using the more traditional method of inserting protective gear themselves as they climb. There are distinct factions of "sports" versus "trad" climbers.

It's a 2 minute walk from the car to the base of the cliff. We're surrounded by lovely coastal scrub and the river glistens invitingly beyond and a little below us. The path along the base of the cliff is well worn - this is a popular crag for after-work and lunchtime visits by Nowrites.

A quickdraw clips a climbing rope to an anchor bolt while
allowing the rope to run freely.

The multitude of bolt lines tracking up the cliff face, which climbers have been installing here since the 1980s, is evidence of the richness of climbing potential that this rocky wall offers. CB identifies one of the few lower grade routes, which is a grade 11 called Uncle Udfuddy (...who knows!?) and 15m high. I watch him deftly placing hands and feet into the sandstone pockets as he climbs steadily up the wall, clipping the rope to each bolt via a quickdraw as I belay from ground level. At the top he loops the rope through the top bolts via some magical Chinese puzzle of slings and carabiners that enables him to untie the rope from his harness whilst remaining safely anchored, and I lower him to the ground.

Climbing shoes on, rope secured to harness, and this time I'm managing to avoid the need for a last-minute bolt into the scrub, toilet paper and trowel in hand. I step up to the base of the wall and look up. And up. And up. The vertical wall towers above me and blots out the sky beyond. All those crevices, ridges and pockets that seemed so obvious, and even inviting, when CB found purchase on them, have mysteriously vanished. Dragon scales - they lie flat when you're looking to haul on them, only to jut back out like knife blades when you want to pass over them.

A climber at Nowra shows how it's
done on a sandstone wall.

The mass of wall looms ominously and blankly in front of me, and I'm totally overwhelmed by the impossibility of the task at hand. How? Why, even?? One mighty roar from that dragon of doom and I'm straight back into ICDI land.

"Just give it a go, sweetheart!" CB encourages me.

I have no idea what to do with this goddam wall, except walk away from it as quickly as possible. It's vertical, blank, hard rock that isn't talking to me in any language that I can interpret, and I'm feeling more and more demoralised by the experience.

CB has a few more goes at pushing me into any kind of vertical action, and eventually decides that discretion is the better part of valour. I can see that he's unimpressed as much as bemused. It doesn't help.

To be fair, I'm as perplexed as he is. I have no idea why this climbing thing is so difficult for me, nor why my mind so readily goes into meltdown. The weather feels too hot, my brain feels too sleep deprived, I'm hypoglycemic and menopausal, and basically I just can't seem to get it happening.

I lie down on a big flat slab of sandstone at the base of the cliff and gaze incomprehensibly up at that 15m wall. CB has gone off to investigate other routes more suited to his skill level, as I doze off in the afternoon heat. I dream of a huge pair of dark-skinned arms that come out from either side of the rocky slab on which I'm lying and wrap me up in comfort and security. They hold me firmly as I sleep, and when I wake, I have a very vague sense of some huge rock spirit having come and given me its craggy blessings.