Chatham Island is a rarely visited island off a remote part of the Western Australia coast. It’s hard to get to and it’s hard to safely get on and off the island. Chatham happens to be one of just a few specific places in the world that a particular type of fern is found; it grows at about 100m above sea level, on the south side of just a few islands in the area… And so it was many moons ago that I found myself as #photographer on an Australian Geographic mini #expedition to the island, along with scientists and climbers, back in… oh, lets see… I think around 1997. National Park rangers hadn’t visited the island for years and no-one had been able to confirm if the fern was still alive on Chatham. And so we were happy to find plentiful amounts of the fern thereby confirming its continued existence on Chatham. And, being climbers, we were happy to spent the rest of our six days there exploring this rocky outcrop in the middle of nowhere… and climbing some very cool never-to-be-repeated lines. This is Gary Phillips (from WA, not Tas) leading pitch two of his Wugster (19). I also climbed a very cool arete up a pinnacle at about grade 22 which required some bolts… which I removed afterwards, rather than just leaving them there to rust. #goodtimes #tbt
