It all began a week ago today when Jo arrived from Melbourne having been visiting friends. Jo is a very good friend of ours: both Kevin and I used to work with her in England. Jo is now living and studying in London and therefore deserved a trip to Australia to have a holiday and catch up with friends. (Jo also came out here with us when we first arrived: see blog entry from Jan 2006!)So, back to the story..... It involves drinking wine, lots of catch up chats and then a conversation about what we should do whilst Jo is here. Back in Dec 2005, Jo and I had talked about climbing Brisbane's Story bridge, but unfortunately we never got round to it. Therefore we decided to do it during this visit!!
At 9.40 this morning , Jo, me and 8 others were 'briefed' following a breath test, and given lovely climbing suits to wear. We were given a harness and had to practice attaching and detaching it from a simulated bridge static rail. We were to be harnessed to the bridge for the whole of the climb...good job! We had to remove all hair clips, dangly earrings and weren't allowed to take anything on the climb which couldn't be attached to our suits. NO mobile phones, cameras etc. This also meant that if we needed a tissue, we had to take an old man's hankerchief supplied by the climb leader on a piece of elastic around our wrists. It then needed to be tucked in to our sleeves so as not to attract the attention of drivers on the bridge. I hasten to add: we refused the hankies!! After attaching our hats, sunnies and radios, we then set off! The climb covered a walk of approx 800m and invloved 1138 steps. It was great! It wasn't scary in the least despite being a height of 80m above the Brisbane river. It felt very safe. The photos were taken by our climb leader.....we had to have a picture to prove we'd done it!!
