divine intervention

Monique Forestier working Divine Intervention (29 M0) on The Cathedral, Mount Buffalo, Victoria. Buy print

The last few months I’ve been shooting personal work as well as several commissioned jobs. I’ve stayed pretty busy near home in the Blue Mountains and also have done a series of trips to some of my favorite climbing areas in Australia; including Nowra, Point Perpendicular, the Grampians and I’ve just returned from two weeks up in SE Queensland. After completing the Red River Gorge guidebook earlier this year I was feeling in need of a break and for sure I slowed down for while there, but we’ve cranked back up to full steam ahead now. The result: I’ve got a ton of new unseen pics to show you; stay tuned as I release them in this newsletter over the coming weeks.

The pics in this newsletter are from a quick trip to Mt Buffalo in April; it rained, it snowed, it was cold but the light was nice (especially at dawn!) and Monique got to play on a route recently established by Doug McConnell, it’s in a pretty spectacular position as you can see. I did my best, I like the results, and I’m making the above image available to download for you to use as a computer desktop wallpaper image, download it from here, it’s free. I’m only offering this to my newsletter subscribers; it’s just a little thanks for following.

The other pics in this newsletter are — shock, horror — indoor pics! Don’t be too surprised, most of my work is about the outdoors but I actually love training indoors and even shoot it from time to time. These are from a commissioned shoot of the new 9 Degrees bouldering gym in Parramatta. There is a real explosion of indoor facilities in Australia at the moment and this new gym is one of the best I’ve seen; it’s fun and a great training facility. Check it out.

OK, some announcements:

- World Expeditions NZ trip. I’m delighted to announce that, following our very successful trip to Sicily last year, we’ve got another trip off the ground with World Expeditions. Monique Forestier (my wife) and I are hosting an 8 day trip to the Paynes Ford area of New Zealand’s South Island in February next year. This trip is for people who want to have a great time in a fantastic climbing destination, who are already competent lead climbers AND want to push their climbing up a few levels. Consider it a luxury coaching camp and we promise it’ll be fun. Monique is one of the most accomplished climbing coaches in Australia and I’ve also learnt a few things over the years. We’ve got the necessary concessions to operate in this beautiful area and we’re also working with a local guide who knows the area very very well. To ensure everyone gets lots of personalised attention we are keeping the group size very small. Hope you can join us. All the info is on the World Expeditions web site here.
- Monique has been cranking her climbing coaching business up to the next level. If you really want to improve your climbing, then it’s most sensible to learn from the best. Info on her September Sydney clinics is all here.
- The Women’s Adventure Film Tour is touring all over Australia in September and October. It’s going to be great! See schedule and ticketing info on their web site here.
- We now working on a new edition of the SE Queensland selected crags guidebook. If you have any corrections or new route info since the 2013 edition, please submit it here now. The new edition will be out in November.