Few crags offer the wild landscape, adventure, and experience of isolation on offer at Killiecrankie on Flinders Island, Australia. To get the flavour of the place, you might like to read my piece of personal writing, Just Tatters!.

Flinders Island in Bass Strait has magnificent windswept beaches, scrubby, rolling hills, a few scattered farms, and magnificent granite peaks. Incidentally, Killiecrankie is by no means the biggest crag on the island — check out Mt Strzelecki, with routes like Giraffe to 220 metres!

Hard to get to, situated in the Roaring Forties, half-way from Victoria to Tasmania, Flinders Island will never become a major climbing destination, but it nevertheless offers an unforgettable climbing experience.

The Craddock family ventured down there several times in the 1980’s, repeated the old routes, and established a few (easy) new climbs. We were accompanied by my long-time climbing partners, Anthony Mignani and Greg Lovejoy.

For many years, we acted as a postbox for climbers’ new routes, typing up the climbs, sketching and mapping the crags, and keeping the electronic guidebook up to date. Climbers heading down would call us for copies of that year’s self-published Killiecrankie Guide, and send us descriptions of their new climbs on return.

Now there is a ’proper’ guidebook, with wonderful

photographs, Climb Northern Tasmania, written by Gerry Narkowicz, and partly based on our archives, which may
be purchased from any Australian climbing shop. It details almost 300 climbs!

Killiecrankie is just above the sea, but is not a typical ‘sea’ cliff, with choss and rotten rock. It is composed of smooth granite, surprisingly reminiscent of the hard pink Arapiles quartzose sandstone. The crag images in the album below
are organised from left to right.

Link to ‘Just tatters!’...

Link to Glenn Tempest’s Open Spaces Books...