I have had, from time to time, the most interesting experience of spending Christmas at Mt Arapiles (pronounced "ar-apple-ies", not "ara-piles") in the Western District of Victoria. Arapilies is regarded as one of the "absolutely must visit" places for rock climbing. They say that there are seven places in the word that any really serious climber must go to before he dies. I forget exactly now, but there are two in France, one in Germany, one in England and two in the USA. Plus Arapiles in Australia.
So people come from all over the world to climb here. (Plus hordes of Aussies too, of course.) The great thing about that is this: all the Aussie climbers go home a day or two before Christmas to spend it with their families, but the foreigners can't do that - home might be 10,000 miles away, so they stay on at the Arapiles campsite.
Now me, I've never liked Christmas much, so back when I used to climb a lot, I got into the habit of going to Araplies for Xmas instead of going home - and the company was wonderful. I'd end up sharing a campsite with 3 Australians, a New Zealander, 4 Californians, 6 Japanese, 6 Germans, 3 Italians, 5 Englishmen, two girls from Canada, and a Pole. Or something like that. And a good many of the foreigners spoke very little English.
I always used to say that it was the cheapest way to have a world tour: spend four hours driving up the Western Highway and stay at Arapiles over Christmas. It was just like being overseas, but without the airfare.
And, over a bottle or seven around the campfire, we would talk, and talk, and talk. That, after all, is the only thing climbers love doing even more than climbing: talking about it afterwards. (Bit like fishing, really.)
Many is the happy hour I spent talking to a climber from France or Japan or Austria, and despite some of them having no English at all (they'd just come for the climbing, remember) we could converse happily for hours, freely intermixing gesture, drawings in the sand, and a host of technical climbing terms, which are more-or-less universal.
I wondered at that at the time - how was it that Franz and I could talk for 20 minutes about a climb called Syrinx or Tannin, despite the fact that Franz spoke no English and I spoke no German? The answer, of course, is that climbers - all climbers, two Australians, say, or two Germans - talk in gesture to an incredible degree, and that nearly all that is not conveyed in gesture has a technical term, which though it might be English or French or German or Italian in its derivation, is known to all climbers of any nation. "Left", "right", "on belay", "carabiner", "stitch plate", "mantle", "number 3 Wild Country rock", "number 1 RP" - all these terms are universal. And everything else can be conveyed just as easily by gesture, by facial expression, or at worst by drawing pictures in the sand.
(Yes, there really is a climb called "Tannin" at Arapilies, it's a three-star route (i.e., amongst the very best) and a 40-metre grade 19. I probably had it in the back of my mind when I chose my handle. It's a little too hard for me to lead, even back then when I was young and very fit, but I have seconded it cleanly, and can vouch for the three-star rating from my own experience.)
