Despite being great at everything, what I was best at was climbing. I could climb pretty much anything – trees, poles, cliffs. You name it and I could climb it. I was especially proud of the fact that somehow I could manage to shimmy up straight-trunk trees and even basketball poles – namely things that were straight up and down and which had no branches to help you up.
How I was able to climbs these things I have no idea, but it came in mighty handy whenever I was playing hide and seek chasey – I’d just hide up the hardest to climb tree I could find and I was safe. Why bother hiding when I could taunt people by staying just out of reach? I mean, no one but me could get up them. Suckers.
Of course, I eventually had my comeuppance. Everybody makes mistakes and I made my mistake when I tried to climb up a rock face in Kakadu in the Northern Territory. The place where I decided to go climbing was at UDP Falls (made famous in Crocodile Dundee) which better known as Gunlom Falls. I thought it would be an easy climb that would impress my parents and the tourists...I was wrong.
Foolish, foolish me.
At first I was doing all right. I was climbing and having fun – it wasn’t even an especially hard climb but eventually when I was about a metre from the top; I got stuck. I couldn’t climb back down again because I couldn’t reach the footholds and I couldn’t get any further up because the top of the cliff was just out of my reach.
At first I tried to play it cool, but as I was stuck up there longer I began to panic and eventually I started crying, convinced that I was going to plummet to my death. Why was I so worried? Well, not only could I see down in the waterholes below me, I could also see exactly how far down the next giant waterfall went. It was a long, long way down and even though I couldn’t have possibly fallen down the second giant waterfall, I was certain that somehow I would and that crocodiles would get me.
As I sat wailing on the cliff I saw a man below in the waterhole catch sight of me.
“Look!” He yelled dramatically and pointed at me, “A girl is stuck on the cliff!”
A crowd gathered to gawk at me and once I realised that everyone could see me (and that everyone knew I was stuck) I began to cry harder.
Eventually my father used the bushwalking track to walk to the top of the cliff and he rescued me. To this day I will never forget being stuck on that cliff, and although I continued to climbs trees and the occasional small rock face I never again tried to climb anything that big.
I still have dreams where I’m at the top of UDP Falls trying desperately to climb down…
So tell me, have you ever got yourself stuck in a stupid and completely avoidable situation?
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