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Balls Pyramid book review 4-Aug-2016 At 10:36:39 AM Kable459

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Ben Sandilands gave the following Introductory Speech at the Balls Pyramid Book Presentation last Friday night. He spoke of his heroic swim across 200 metres of shark infested waters at twilight in order to get the Australian scoop of the spire's first ascent in 1965.

THE UNNAMED REPORTER – Ben Sandilands - 1965 Balls Pyramid Expedition

I was the unnamed Sydney Morning Herald reporter on the 1965 first ascent expedition.

In those days, ‘old school’ journalists were never the story. We were the narrator, the observer, the reporter. I liked it like that. I even pushed the boundaries of the times a little because I was also a participant, having only recently joined the SRC (Sydney Rockclimbing Club). I had been press ganged in a manner of speaking, into joining the Sydney Rockies while on a bushwalk that used the now vanished Fish River water supply pipeline ladders on the Narrowneck Peninsula in the Blue Mountains. I’d expressed curiosity to a few Sydney rockies who we saw in action beside the ladders, including Bryden Allen, who roped me up on the spot, to do the sensationally unchallenging but picturesque Giuco Piton route.

I even had to leave the Pyramid a day early to stop the Lord Howe Island’s resident ABC correspondent scooping me at my own story having learned that our state of the art 20 kilogram acid battery and vacuum tubed radio base apparatus had been ‘overheard’ every time I dictated copy to the Postmaster on LHI, for transmission to the GPO in Sydney via a daily 30 minute morse code session.

‘Granny’ Herald had chucked in a few hundred pounds to sponsor a successful climb, and if I was beaten through such competitive treachery, I’d have to find a new career. So I swam for Clive Wilson’s hastily summonsed boat to ensure that the Morse code operator sent my ‘Pyramid victory’ story, filed in person rather than by radio, to the GPO in Sydney in time for the first edition to go out before the other reporter would have realised there was a reason for the sudden silence from the pinnacle.

There are so many memories of the trip. We arrived, stunned into silence, at this jagged and gigantic place resembling the ruins of a gothic cathedral of unprecedented scale, surrounded by wheeling and screeching congregations of circling sea birds. Like nothing any of us had seen on earth, (well, sort of it was after all the 60s), but this was special, a place of powerful magnificence totally indifferent, but not hostile, to the arrival of a boatload of awestruck if unintended acolytes.

When I began turning the pages of South Pacific Pinnacle I read story upon story of other Balls Pyramidians who I confess, I had in many cases never even heard of, or had known, but lost track of, all drawn to this incredible place, and all being admitted to its stacked treasuries of experiences. Some found the Pyramid in an astonishingly wild and difficult state, while others received the benediction of a warm sun and calmer seas, and all were allowed to go home alive but no doubt altered in some way by their adventures.

This is a genuine gripping read for the climbing narratives alone, and made so by the exceptional care that editors, Jim Smith and Keith Bell have taken in researching those who spent time on this very steep, and highly unusual and complex place.

It’s not just a ‘pinnacle’ nor just a fragment of the walls that surrounded a caldera. I have never read a climbing book that comes remotely close to going so thoroughly into the astonishing natural history of any feature on this planet that attracts climbers.

It is accurate, scholarly and generous in its scope and exemplary attention to detail and chronology. There is no other book like this, in its words, and its superb illustrations, in the literature of climbing!!!

http://www.ballspyramidbook.com/
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