There has been a mysterious removal of about $2000 worth of gear from Hillwood recently, which thankfully has been recovered, but nonetheless was a weird situation indeed. Bob McMahon was conducting a school climbing camp at Hillwood and left several abseil setups, top-ropes etc overnight for the school kids the next day. When they came back the next morning, all the gear was gone. There were some climbers at Hillwood that day while Bob was with the school group, and if they were the culprits, should have realised that it was Bob's gear for the school group. By a sheer fluke, one of the students found a note stuck in a bush saying `we have the gear' and gave a phone number. When Bob went round to collect it an evasive fellow gave him the run around before finally admitting that the gear was in the house. It seems he was not at Hillwood on the day, but his mates had dropped the gear at his house. Was this to stay anonymous? Were they fair dinkum thieves who got cold feet? Who knows - a mystery indeed.

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2 Comments

  1. Chris Hampton

    Hmm... that's really weird Gerry. Glad Bob got it all back though. long time no see, hopefully get up North between Christmas and New years, will give you a buzz then. All the best for Christmas.
    Cheers,
    Chris.

    p.s. do you know how the boy who fell abseiling in the gorge is? Mercury reported he deck from 7-10m with possible spinal injuries.

  2. Andrew Windy Hill

    Take a step back and look at this from a different perspective. Some people are climbing and a school group is nearby, the school group leaves and some gear is left behind, the climbers don’t know the school group or guide. Was the gear left there accidentally? The climbers don’t know. Let’s assume the climbers are not local, (they didn’t recognise Bob, and he is quite famous in these climbing parts), they collect the gear knowing its value, leave a note where it won’t get blown away and drop the gear a friends place in Launceston(question).
    Obviously Bob rang the number and was told where to get it from. Bob rocks up and the person (maybe a non-climber) at the location asks a few questions about the gear to make sure it belongs to Bob, or perhaps the person the gear was left with wasn’t home and the person Bob spoke to didn’t know anything about it. Either of these scenarios or others could be interpreted as “evasive”.

    Before jumping to conclusions, think about it, they left a note with their phone number so the gear could be collected. They didn’t treat it as booty.

    So from that perspective there is no mystery, no culprits, no theft, just some responsible climbers that have done the right thing, kudos to those guys.