By Ben Maddison

There are three main climbing areas at Cloudy Bay at South Bruny Island. The first described is in and around Hidden Zawn, a parallel sided zawn in a spectacular setting on a small peninsula jutting out into Cloudy Bay. It contains a high proportion of good quality routes on excellent granitic dolerite, including powerful trad lines, bolted steep face routes, and some elegant slabs.This sector also includes Shoreline and Octopus's Garden, which are passed en route to Hidden. The areas are only 20-30 minutes walk from Cloudy Corner campsite. All routes at Hidden and Octopus are accessed by abseil. The cliff is well equipped with fixed belays, abseil points and lower-offs. It is less effected by wind than the Top Ciff, and has both shaded and sunny faces.

The second area is the Jaws Peninsula, the home of World's End, a neat little area coming off a sea platform, with a nice concentration of excellent quality climbs. The area also has 3 impressive zawns - Jaws,Jaws 2 and Jaws 3 - currently under development.

The third area is the Top Cliffs, set high up on slabs looking over the Southern Ocean. On sunny afternoons you can see Pedra Branca and the Eddystone. The rock is generally good, hard, pockety granitic dolerite. The climbing is steep and pumpy at the Aviary, less so on the Southern Ocean Face, although here the routes have a big feel as the Southern Ocean bangs away in the zawn below. Because the crag sits on slabs 80+ metres above the sea, the rock does not suffer from the oceanic glaze that characterises many sea cliffs. It is also unaffected by tides and swell, although southerly and westerly winds can be a problem. The BoM’s MetEye function has a South Bruny station, which gives pretty reliable wind and rain forecasts. The routes are mainly single pitch, and you can get away with a single 60m rope on all sections of the crag. There are quite a few mixed routes that require a rack, but on the Aviary there are plenty of sports routes. Most of the fixed gear and lower-offs/rap stations are glued-in U bolts.

From the ferry, take the B66 to Lunawanna, and turn let onto C629. Follow this to the junction with C644, Cloudy Bay Road, and dive to the beach - the drive to Cloudy Bay takes about 50 minutes from the ferry.
Drive down the concrete ramp and along the beach (4wd not needed – usually very hard sand. I once saw a Barina in there, and the truck that fills the water tank at Cloudy Corner makes regular trips along the beach) to campground at Cloudy Corner. Drive clockwise around the perimeter track to park at start of track to East Cloudy Head, marked by tap next to water tank.

Hidden Zawn
Take the East Cloudy Head track. Follow the main track for 10 minutes, heading up a rise, and steeply down the other side. As it begins to climb again, at the second log erosion control step, take the small but well defined track on the right heading in the direction of a bay. Follow this distinct trail through the brush, until you can actually see the boulders on the beach [about 20 m from the beach]. (Take note of where the track is at this point. It is easy on the return journey to turn up L too soon on a little worn ridge, and get mired in some deep and very thickly scrub-filled gullies.) At this point head R up the tussocky hillside ( or L across the creek up the World's End track, for Shoreline), always keeping to the tussocky and/or worn ground and more or less paralleling the cliff edge. After 10 mins or so, at a cairn, cut R and straight across the hillside, passing a cliff top (Octopus's Garden). Keep heading straight across the bouldery ground in direction of cliff-top boulders ahead of you. Soon you get to the edge of Hidden Zawn, where you can look across and scope out the different areas. Walk around the head of the zawn and across the neck that separates Hidden Zawn from Rumbling Zawn, to the cliff top. Total access time <30minutes.

World's End
Follow the route towards Hidden Zawn. Where the Hidden Zawn track goes right on the shores of Beaufort Bay, hop across the creek to the left, and locate a tagged and cairned track up the hillside above Beaufort Bay. At the crest of the ridge , the track drops through the scrub to a notch at the start of the little peninsula. Follow the track past the notch and onto the peninsula. Walk down past a deep zawn (the area known as Jaws, currently being explored with the first routes being the obvious trad corner Blue Water Classic, gr20, and the crack next right, Sharkbait gr 21). From the slabs above Jaws, go across left to join the track through the scrub, to a handline leading to the ledge at the cliff top (45 mins total).


Top Cliff
Walk up the East Cloudy Head track, past the Hidden Zawn track, up the hill and continuing past the flat area at 35 mins (there is a 4 m diameter patch of flat dolerite left of the track at this point), up the hill and traversing the hillside (spectacular views of the Friars Islands) for a further 15 mins, through a patch of eucalypt forest. The trail to the crag is on the RHS of the main track, 15 meters after the forest ends and the main track heads uphill for the final climb to the top of East Cloudy Head. Follow the trail marked by cairns, slanting down diagonally leftwards towards the ocean until, after about 10-15 mins, you reach two large cairns on a rock slab on the RHS of the track. From here there are two main ways to access the crag.

Access 1: Follow cairns/tapes directly towards sea from these cairns, down beside a slab, to a fixed handline that descends a gully that leads to the bottom of the crag. Follow cliffline rightwards (facing in) from bottom of gully to reach the LHS of the Aviary. If you use Access 1 you only need to bring a 60 m rope.

Access 2: from the cairns keep traversing the hillside on the footpad track for 5 mins, until you see a post, which marks the place where you can drop down to a good terrace and anchors. Fix a rope (i.e. if you choose this access, you will need to bring a rap rope) and abseil down to the Aviary in the region of Birdbrain/Blackbird. Tip: if there is enough spare rope, you can use it to rig a handline from the first bolts of Powerful Owl (5 m right of abseil) and Your Tern (20 m right again).

The cliff top is quite rubbly and unstable, not so much a problem when you are at the top, but very dangerous if there are people below. For this reason all routes have lower-offs/rap stations.

The campground at Cloudy Corner has water and two toilets. Its a great spot, and usually pretty quiet, and a good place to base yourself for a couple of days trip to Cloudy. Fires are often permitted but you must bring your own wood.