Five Caves Five Days
Featuring athletes Ben Cossey and Lucy Stirling, FIVE CAVES FIVE DAYS explores the crags of northern New South Wales and Queensland. Leaving from his doorstep and travelling north, Ben Cossey sets out to discover climbing areas outside the major four in Australia.
About Five Caves Five Days
When we think about the best rock-climbing locations in Australia, it's easy to focus on the top four – the Grampians, Arapiles, Nowra and the Blue Mountains. Of course, there are other places to climb here and there, but they’re not considered climbing destinations.
At least, this is what Ben Cossey thought before he decided to look further afield and explore some of the other climbing areas this country has to offer.
Five Caves Five Days is a uniquely Australian, climbing adventure film set on the east coast of Australia. Ben travels in his van from Campbeltown, NSW to Coolum, QLD, meeting local climbers along the way to show him the goods at their local crags.
About Ben Cossey
Ben Cossey has been climbing for over 28 years and in this time has made first ascents and repeats of the hardest sport routes in the country.
Ben is not just a sport climber. He has also completed difficult boulder problems like The Wheel of Life (V15) and tackled classic English "death routes." This includes his first ascent of the direct start to John Dunne's iconic Parthian Shot (E9 6c) and the first-ever solo of Johnny Dawes' challenging 80s test piece Gaia (E8 6c).
Ben is finding the balance between work, family and climbing life – all while keeping some big goals in his sights.
While he loves hitting the open road to explore new places, oftentimes he is to be found bombing down the highway south to Mt Arapiles – his favourite place on earth. Here he loves listening to the magpies and smelling the golden wattle in the air. In 2024, he ticked an all-time life goal at Arapiles – The Sean Myles Project. A 32-year-old project, Ben dubbed it Light Weight Baby, giving it the grade of 34/ 5.14c/ 8c+ – a first at the crag.
Ben grew up in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, where he is equally at home projecting new sport routes as he is developing new bouldering areas such as The Ukulore Valley – a relatively unknown but super high-quality bouldering area just outside of his hometown of Blackheath.
He is known around town for being an obsessive trainer and he hopes to put this training to use on some of his projects around Blackheath. This training will also put him in good stead to return to Germany’s Frankenjura to have another crack at the Wolfgang Gullich masterpiece Action Directe – a route that he got achingly close to sending in 2012.
Ben works as a physiotherapist, runs a little climbing coaching company – Garden Club Training, and can be found at the occasional open mic night playing pre-war acoustic blues.
About Brecon Littleford
Outdoor-focused creative team rumblr crafts authentic stories centring people and the outdoors.
Director Brecon Littleford brings a unique style to storytelling, blending humour, documentary realism, and genuine experiences to create content that feels real and relatable.
Follow along here: @_rumblr_.
Photos by Nathan McNeil, Talia Suh, Kamil Sustiak, and Caitlin Schokker.
See more of Ben’s adventures by following along at @benjcossey on Instagram. Stay up to date with athletes from The North Face team, film screenings and events at @thenorthface_aunz.
