Arapiles
- Anthony
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
It's a Friday afternoon in 2019. I jump in my car—a 2004 Holden Commodore station wagon—in Melbourne, and join the peak-hour traffic to get onto the Western Highway. I follow the road out west, the traffic dying down the further from the city I get. I'm soon going past Ballarat, then onwards through Beaufort, Ararat and Stawell. A quick stop in at Horsham for supplies, then I keep heading west. I've been on the road for four hours, and the sun is setting. The silhouette of the Grampians shapes the skyline to the south, and the plains reach out west, undisturbed, except for one anomaly on the horizon. Arapiles stands out as a lone mountainous formation in a sea of crops. The unassuming mound grows gradually bigger and its features become clearer. The sky is getting dark as I come into Natimuk, the town closest to the rock. The silhouette of the mount now dominates the field of view through the windscreen. This is the well-travelled path of the Melbourne-based weekend warrior, of which I was one until I moved to NSW in early 2021.
The more time you spend at a place, the better you get to know it. You learn its intricacies. Each gully, each face, the different features of the wall. I learnt my way around Arapiles—the hard, rocky ground and the harsh scrub became familiar. I learnt the characteristics of the rock: the amount of friction between the quartzite and the rubber of my climbing shoes; the unforgiving nature of the glassy, smooth rock. The wave-worn quartzite is broken occasionally by horizontals and pockets with grainy, textured interiors. I became familiar with how those grains felt on my skin as I held onto the wall.
I estimate that I have spent about 60 days at Arapiles, covering about 6000m of rock climbing, with most of that time being concentrated between 2018 and 2020. Back then, I felt like I knew this place well. I had seen many of its features from above and below.
In 2017, this place was not familiar to me at all. On my first trip to Arapiles, and my first time rock climbing, I began up Dunes Buttress. Eskimo Nell was my first multi-pitch; the climb was established in the 60s and takes a natural line of weakness up the middle of the buttress. As I knew nothing about rock climbing in 2017, I was reliant on the experience of friends to bring me safely up the climb. Higher and higher above the plains of the Wimmera, I began to be transported to a different world—the Vertical world.
In this Vertical world, everything down on the horizontal plane no longer occupies space in my mind—no longer exists. All that matters is the next pitch—the next piece of protection—the next move. How am I going to get from here, to there? Climbing above the ground is complex, but also has the powerful effect of simplifying the world, even if only for a few hours. The combination of physical effort and cognition calls for an intense focus that is hard to simulate today in our world of endless distractions. Each time I returned to Arapiles, I would seek out these experiences.
In 2018, one of my challenges was to climb the Pharos—a huge, freestanding pinnacle. All day my climbing partner and I worked through the pitches, moving upwards towards the summit at a painfully slow pace. It was the first multi-pitch where I was the one with the most experience. Placing each piece of gear, and doing each move felt hard. I second-guessed myself when building every anchor. Is it good enough? Have I done this right? It felt a little bit out of control, like the Pharos was making the calls, and I was just trying to survive—and I did. It was an important milestone for me; something I was proud of. An obstacle I had overcome. The Pharos gave me confidence to back myself, and explore my potential. Since that first climb, I have climbed to the summit of this pinnacle seven times. There is a story behind each of those climbs, and an impression left on me—memories made with good friends, and a deeper connection fostered with the landscape.
In 2019, feeling bolder, I looked at other places I could challenge myself. Tiger wall looked daunting. A sea of reds, oranges and greys. Me and my friend Pietro wanted to push ourselves. Yo Yo is a grade 16 climb with a tricky crux. It felt like a bold step, to head up there and test ourselves in this terrain, far above the ground. I remember the stance below the obvious crux of the route: a last place you can have most of your bodyweight through your legs. I placed a wire to protect the most difficult move, before climbing back down to the stance to shake my arms out. Once you commit to the crux moves, there is no going back. The feet are poor, and there is just enough room to get your hand in the fold of the corner and work your way up. The Arapiles quartzite takes no prisoners: you either rise to the occasion or pay the price. I didn't have my feet right, and was unable to move upwards. I made a desperate move for the next hold—my foot slipped and I was airborne. The curtain of quartzite whipped up in front of my eyes; I saw that wire I placed whiz by—it held, and Pietro caught my fall. One move, one sequence out of 100 metres of climbing that I had not been good enough for.
I came back later that same year to try and do better. I found myself at the same stance, with that exact same wire in the same crack, and the same trustworthy Pietro holding the same rope to catch me if fell—a moment replicated to the millimetre, yet separated by months. But this time, I was better. I did the moves, and climbed through to the next good hold, without any dramatic falls. Tiger wall made me a better version of the same me.
In 2020, feeling stronger, I looked at harder terrain. Bam Bam is a grade 20 crack in Central Gulley, and this was my first trad route of the grade, placing the gear in cracks for protection against a fall as I climbed. A psychological barrier overcome that opened up new, steeper terrain to be explored.
In 2021, life would take me away from Melbourne and Arapiles, but the skills learnt and the friendships made would last.
I see wonder and inspiration in these walls at Arapiles. How could you not? And I know I am far from the first—for generations people have known this rock by different names, and have seen the values I see, in their own ways.
In late 2024, a draft amendment of the Dyurrite Cultural Landscape (Mount Arapiles-Tooan State Park) Management Plan was released by Parks Victoria which is available here. A consequence of the amendments made to the plan is that access to over 60% of climbing routes at Arapiles will be affected, with a disproportionate amount of easy and accessible routes being shut off to the public. This announcement was met with outrage by the local community and wider climbing community due to the lack of consultation, the blanket-ban approach to managing indigenous heritage, and the consequences these closures will have on the area, being one of Australia's most iconic rock climbing destinations. The announcement went down like a paper-mâché boat for Parks Victoria, and was soon followed by the departure of the Parks Vic CEO, and an independent review of the organisation being initiated by the Minister for Environment. Much more can be read about this in the news, like here, and a writeup in Wild magazine which I believe captures the perspective and feelings of many climbers who I have spoken to about the issue.
The Pharos is just one of the areas that will be shut if the contested management plan goes ahead later this year, with little transparency on the reasons why the closure is necessary. It makes me depressed to think that future generations of climbers and restless souls looking to immerse themselves in a focus and connect to a place may not be able to experience what I experienced on the Pharos, and learn the lessons that it taught me.
I don't know what the right response is to the issue of access to public land in Victoria. All I can hope to do is capture some of the experiences I have had in this place, and reflect on how Arapiles has shaped and changed me in my short time there. I feel sad that the climbing community could have so much taken away with very little assurance provided that the protection measures are in fact appropriate or even necessary.
In 2025, I returned to Arapiles with my wife. I had been away for a while, but I still recognised the place. The hues of sunset lit up the yellows and pinks, greys and reds of the mount, and the silhouette of Bard Buttress was familiar. But there was a sense of difference. It felt like a previous life I was here last, when it was normal to have the cliffs loom over me on the approach to the day's crag. I felt separated from those old memories. I was a little younger then—a little more ambitious. I would have my eyes set on the day's objective, and I wouldn't look around all that much. But this time visiting felt different—I couldn't stop looking around at the place. It all looked new; details I hadn't noticed before. I had a sense of reverence of the scale and beauty of the place that I hadn't felt before. It makes sense—a lot of time has passed, and I have changed since then; I'm still fundamentally the same person, but different. I have a deeper appreciation for the places I go to—for their natural beauty, witnessing the interactions within ecosystems, and feeling a part of the earth, rather than just living on it. I think those 60 days spent immersed in the magic of Arapiles has had more than a trivial role to play in that change.
