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Get your own Free Home PageThis is the page were I fulfil my obligations to the Pipeline address by including information about so-called "extreme sports". Personally I don't see how this category is defined. I mean I will admit that the risk, should something go wrong, in say Rockclimbing is a lot higher than in Lawn Bowls. But surely the dangers of Football (Rugby, Australian Rules, American Gridiron, or Soccer if you are in the crowd) far outweigh those of rollerblading? I mean in one you have the risk of landing on your face at high speed, and in the other you risk the same thing, but with another five guys (or girls, depending on the makeup of the team) landing on top of you. Depending on your attitude and/or sexual orientation this may be all part of the fun, but it certainly makes football a very risky sport. Nevertheless I shall use this page to talk about sports that are generally considered "extreme" and if any readers have any explanations of the above quandary they can email me.
Click here for more climbing.
Brisbane is a good city for the sport of rockclimbing. This is because we have a cliff set right in the centre of the city on the edge of Kangaroo Point. This cliff ranges between 12 and 18 metres tall and is set up for the sport, with steel and reinforced concrete belaying points set up along the top and bottom of the faces. In addition there is a good system of lights that enable climbing to continue into the small hours of the morning. This brings up another advantage in that Brisbane's weather is usually warm and dry enough so that late night climbing is perfectly comfortable and on many days preferable to daytime climbing.
Of course, now I have moved to Sydney to start my new job. So I will have to look around to see if there is anywhere around here to climb.
Here you can see me bouldering on Natural Arch at Giraween.
For a much bigger page on rockclimbing, with heaps on pictures and info about secret (sacred) sites, click on my butt.
Hailing originally from Far North Queensland, I have been subject to the
enticements of the Whitewater Rafting companies that have sprung up on the many
tropical rivers that flow down from the Great Dividing Range into the Coral Sea.
This has merely encouraged me to expand on my previous behaviour of tackling
such rivers in craft such as tractor tubes and rafts made from pieces of wood.
These activities were performed on waterways ranging from the Mambari river in
Papua New Guinea to Whitfield Creek running past my parents home in Cairns.
Skydiving
What can I say? You get dressed up as shown, you get in a plane, you jump
out and you come back down. Definitely a major adrenalin rush but on a
dollar/thrill basis I would recommend on of the other sports on this page.
Scuba Diving
Since achieving my open water diving certificate at the age of 14 I have
dived over a variety of areas off the Queensland coast. But the best diving, no
question, was in the waters off Rabaul in New Guinea.
Rabaul was a large Japanese Naval Base during WWII and there is estimated to be about 1000 wrecks in the waters around the main harbour. The ones I dived on ranged from Sunken Destroyers, to Zeros, to an entire submarine base carved into the base of some marine cliffs. This particular base is smarming with fish such as in the accompanying picture.
While the popular picture of skiing is as shown here, my extremely limited experience has included a lot of other conditions, some of which never appear on the brochures. The most interesting of these is the whiteout as shown at the far right.
Because of the presence of fine snow particles throughout the air, all the
sunlight is diffused and scattered. This renders vision almost impossible. There
are no shadows, no vision....
Rollerblading
Now I am perfectly aware that while everyone refers to this sport as "Rollerblading", it is nonetheless the custom to use the term "In Line Skating" when in a public medium so as to allow for the fact that many in-line skates are not made by the company that owns the "Rollerblade " trademark. Well I don't care. For one thing I am not in America and so the ridiculous level of litigation that constrains free speech in that country does not affect me. And furthermore I see no way that the Rollerblade company could actually prove that I don't actually own a pair of their manufacture and hence was using the term correctly. They would not just have to show that I don't own a pair of rollerblades, they would have to show that I didn't own a pair at the time of writing this webpage and I'd like to see them try that.
And the same goes for substituting the term "ultimate disc" for the
well known "frisbee".
Well back to the actual subject.
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