Winter is over and summer is here again...

Hi there all you people out there,


It's been one year and one week exactly since I first set foot on the Antarctic continent, and hard to believe that I haven't left the surrounding 30kms of land since January. I'm writing to you all because I feel so estranged from things back home, and that so much has happened while I've been away that I want you to share in the experience that I've had since that first day over a year ago, at least a little bit.

First I should apologise to those people who have told me they enjoyed reading my blog (and to those that may have enjoyed it but didn't tell me). I know I said I would write in it every Sunday! I know that I said I really enjoyed writing in it! It's something that I really had wished that I had kept up, but keeping up any sort of routine down here has been difficult. In fact, the only routine that I have managed to maintain has been to exercise or go to the gym 5 or 6 times a week, and I seriously think that played a large role in my staying balanced while I was down here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I would have gone postal had I not exercised on a regular basis, but when the sun doesn't rise for six weeks and you're working long and strange hours alone in a small building at the edge of a remote Antarctic station it can be disorientating and isolating. Sticking to a routine; forcing myself to gym-it every day was great stress relief and one of my more successful social pursuits. Davis winter team 2010 were a very fitness conscious lot and we would joke and share music as we lifted weights, jogged, boxed etc.

It's been a unique time in my life to date for so many reasons, my working conditions being only one aspect. I hope you can believe me when I say that it was the people that made the experience what it was. I think this is because of the amazing diversity of occupations, personalities, habits, senses-of-humour and talents the group possessed, coupled with the sense of adventure one needs to agree to winter in Antarctica. This winter I've lived with 3 carpenters, 3 plumbers, 3 diesel mechanics, 3 electricians, 3 weather observers, 2 engineers, a chef, a doctor, a station-leader/geologist, 2 communications technicians, a general tradie, and a painter. That is, I lived with bakers, musicians, a hang-glider pilot, snowboarders, share-traders, smokers, darts-gurus, photographers, an amateur film-maker, hunters, a cross-dresser, motorcyclists, divers, and more than one practical joker (though I think he thought he was the only one for a while), a major pundit, crossword geniuses, intrepid hikers. We weren't all best friends; I don't think that's possible, but everybody got along well enough, and that counts for a lot when you're living and working in the same place for 7 months. We respected each other and I liked most of them very much.

When the ship left on that day in March, taking with it all the summer personnel, we looked around and tried to believe that we were to be isolated with each other for 7 months. I said goodbye to my girl Bianca, and her shaky voice, heard over the radio as the ship blew its horn and turned to leave, was still in my head as I went back inside to sit at the bar with my new live-in friends.

This winter we all shared an amazing experience. We shared the opportunity to have a quad-bike provided for us to ride for fun; traversing the frozen sea-ice and fjords around the Vestfold Hills. We stayed together in field huts and talked about our lives back home, drank too much or not at all, slept in bunk beds with the gas heaters on low and tried to block out some bastard snoring across the room. We awoke to beautiful clear days where the sun sat low in the sky at noon and we slid sideways on quads over beautiful smooth frozen lakes. On a clear night, the sky would light up with iridescent Aurora Australis snaking past. None of us saw sunlight for six weeks. We celebrated the darkest of days with a wonderful feast and toast to the Antarctic Heroes of old. We laughed in the face of the winter chill by jumping into the freezing ocean one by one and remember forever the looks on each other's faces as we surfaced. To think about the now beggared belief, though it seemed at times like Davis was the only place on Earth.

When the sun first came back it peeked feebly above the cloud on the horizon, casting heatless rays of orange that we yearned to feel on our faces. Magnified 10 times this sun couldn't be felt on bare skin, though I felt like I'd emerged from a cocoon when we started to have earnest daylight again. Now was the time for exploration and the next few months were ours to explore the surrounds with the combination of solid sea-ice and sunlight that is the wonder of spring in Antarctica. Some say it is a Big Dead Place, though I wonder if they've seen the animals return after the sun reappears. I wonder if they've seen the weddel seals arriving, fat from pregnancy and food, to give birth to their furry, wrinkly, adorable pups, or the skuas that come back that very same day to feed on the discarded placenta that is rich in nutrients. It's about this time the Adelie penguins return to their rookeries to set up their rocky nests and begin the search for partners. All of a sudden there's a lot more company around.

Not long after I witnessed all of this, the ship returned. It felt like I was just starting to get to know the people around me and they went, replaced five-fold by new faces, smells, food, and one very happy girlfriend. 10 other of my wintering family have stayed behind so it has made the transition to summer-mode much easier, and having my girl here is so surreal and so comforting. It looks like it's going to be a great summer, but winter-time will always be a special time to me. I'll never forget it and I may even do it again.