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.

Beard off!

Hey I've been feeling pretty ordinary these past few days; motivation low, devil-may-care attitude, the works! It's an amazing place down here but the isolation has it's difficulties.

Anyway, I thought a change might do me good, so I set my clippers onto my ranga beard.

Here's a picture of me before, smiling nervously with quivering beard:

and after the beard-crime, missing my furry friend. Man, it's gonna be cold riding on the quads now. I'll have to hit Zupy up for a new neck warmer. Mine seems to have gone missing.

As the guy sitting in the corner of the barber shop said when I had my my 4-month honours-beard shaved off 4 years ago, "I think you looked better before, mate". Maybe back then those honest words concerned me, but down here I've still got 2 months before there's anyone that I have to impress.

Plus, a man with a beard has something to hide, right? Well, that's not me.

I'll write soon about my weekend away at Watts Hut. Bye!

The Beep Test

On Saturday, some of the fitness crazy people of Davis opted to subject themselves to the Multi-Stage Fitness Test, also lovingly referred to as the Beep Test. Did you do this in high school? I did, but I can't remember what score I got.

If you can't remember, here's a summary: you stand at start line and wait while Hellboy presses play on his iPod. A voice comes from a speaker telling you to get ready. You prepare for the pain. Three beeps sound and you jog to another line, 20m away, and turn around. You wait for the next beep, then run back. This is done repeatedly for about a minute, and then three beeps issue again from the speakers, indicating that the next level will commence. The next level has shorter beeps, another minute goes past and three more beeps are heard and the next level starts. The higher the level, the faster one must run between the lines. This means that higher levels require one to run the 20m more times. Before you know it, you're running flat out and the next beep happens about that same time you put your foot down to finish the previous run. It's not long after that that you physically can't continue and have to bow out.

We had 8 people turn up on the day out of the 17 that were on station this weekend. Our names were drawn out of a hat and Spaggers and I were chosen to go first. Here's a picture of us in action:

Spaggers opted out at the respectable level of 10.1, and I managed to push through the pain for a little bit longer to reach 11.4 before opting out.

Next up was Hellboy and the Doc, both renowned for their cardiovascular fitness. Here's a pic of them about to plant their foot and wait for the next beep.

The first to go in this duo was Ben (left). As the test progressed, you could see in his contorted face that he wasn't going to give up without a fight, but he had to let it go at 12.10, which is an amazing effort. Hellboy kept going to attain a score of 13.8, which is on par with a lot of professional athletes. Very impressive.

Next up was Geoff (left) and Tommy. It was truly excellent to see this old diesel mechanic having a go and he ended up pushing his way to 6.6 without even breaking a sweat. That's enough to join the NSW police. Tommy pushed on to get 8.4, which means he's right if he wants to join any of the 3 armed forces.

Next it was Matt Azza (left) and Nick the Rodent. These two are right into their fitness and so it wasn't surprising that they both cracked level 10. Matty came through with a solid 10.4, while Roden broke the goal-worthy level 13, spot on 13.0.

I was really impressed with how everyone went. For posterity I took photos of everyone that I could right after they'd finished up. Here's a collage of pain that I've created.

And so, after all, it was Nick "hellboy" Helmore that took out the trophy/milk-urn-with-eyes. Here's the proud lad holding his award high for everyone to see.

The beep test. It was actually a lot of fun, when you weren't actually doing it. Now we're all going into training to beat our personal records.

Until next time, I've got my sights set on that milk-urn.

Voting in a Suit and Sorels

The other day our Station Leader, Ali, was contacted by the Antarctic Division's media officer asking her to volunteer (v.trans?) an expeditioner from Canberra to speak to a journalist from The Canberra Times about voting in remote locations. Being the only dude from Canberra on station I was dobbed in to pose for some photographs and speak to said journo about who I will be voting for in the up-coming federal election and why.

Yesterday I spoke with this guy on the phone. That was okay and I'm still waiting to see how what I said is used in the article that gets written. Then today I went and grabbed a Hagg. I attached to the back of it "Digger's Rest", the portable toilet that served our traverse-goers so well many weeks ago. Digger's rest was to be our polling booth for the shots.

 I went inside the ops building and there was Ali, setting up the polling box.

She'd also printed out some labels to put on the polling booth. These served the dual purpose of labelling the cubicle for the photos and masking the fact that the box is usually a crapper.

Now we were all set up, it was just up to our photographer and director, let's call him Rodent, to set up that winning shot. He is an enigma of legendary skill and does not abide by the usual laws of the the rectangular photo. Nobody has ever seen his face. Here he is in action:

Rodent took a few photos and we ended up with some good ones. Did I mention I was wearing a suit with some Antarctic accessories? This one of Pete and me has got to be the winning shot for the newspaper:

but for my money, I really dig this other one of Pete and me:

I like to imagine that the guy in the suit (me) has just parachuted out of a jet fighter to deliver his vote and there's a speedboat waiting to pick him (me) up nearby.

Well done, Rodent, you've done it again. The denizens of Canberra are in for a treat.

Well that's some of the news from today. I also went out ice-drilling again and completely lost sight of station in a mini-blizzard but was saved by the magical GPS. No problem, we have radios too and everyone knows where I go to drill but still, it's crazy to think that I had no idea what was around me or which direction I was facing. Two guys, two quads, one bamboo marker stick, and oblivion...

On that note, I've a speedboat to catch. Stay safe, keep visible, and look out for the article in this Sunday's Canberra Times.

Moving Rooms

Today, I had to move rooms.
I was asked to do this because the station Sleeping and Medical Quarters (SMQ) is being re-painted and -carpeted over the Winter. We have our resident painter, Frank the Tank, down here with us to make sure this happens (and to shout out 'PARTY!').

Here's a photo of my old room after I had moved most of the furniture, but not the little things and big books.
The mess extended out into the hallway. How do I go to Antarctica and still manage to have so much stuff?!

Here's my new room, at this point a sort of proto-room; the essence of the Davis expeditioners room without much of my own stuff. This was taken moments after the last photo. Everything can be moved. Even the shelves hang up on the wall on a strip of metal that acts like a long hook. It's magic.
I still had lots of stuff to move, including heavy books.
Eventually, after hours of dawdling and drinking coffee, I moved into my new digs. I'll have to do it all over again when they've finished with my old room, but this gave me the chance to re-arrange things and I like the new setup.

Walk to Anchorage island

Last night Adam agreed to run the lidar in preparation for a monster clear patch and correspondingly long lidar observation. It ended with some cloud coming over this morning after I had taken over, which meant that I had the shut the thing down by midday. So I was granted half a day out of nowhere. What would I do with this half day? Well, I decided to take a solo walk out to Anchorage Island.

Here's a photo of Anchorage Island from the sea-ice I trekked across to get there.

I don't know if you can make them out, but there are three crosses on the top of the island to commemorate the three people who have passed away at Davis Station over the years.

It was great to get out by myself. I had a nice sense of freedom as I walked across the open plain of ice. When I stopped I heard, above my tinnitus and the low hum of the powerhouse from station, the deep cracking sound of the ice being constantly pushed around by tidal forces. When I walked, the crisp sound of my shoes crunching in the hard-packed snow layer.

I soon arrived and trekked up the relatively sheer front of the island.


When I got to the top, I could see over the other side. There are some beautiful icebergs out the front of the station and it was awesome to see them from an elevated perspective for the first time since Summer. Here's a photo of one iceberg view.

Here's one of the crosses on the top of the island with the lens extremely close to one of the guy-ropes to give a perspective effect that I like.

and here's me looking deep in thought with a lucky shot of the cross in the background. I was actually thinking about cereal.


I then looked back to the base and could make out almost every building from the top of the island. This is a great shot for anyone back home. If you want to know what each building does, I can tell you. I think little things like that are surprisingly interesting.


After that I walked around the island a little bit and spotted Nick Roden commuting out towards the icebergs. You can't really tell from this, but the man is only wearing lycra!


It was -28 degrees and on my bottom half I wore jeans and thermals and by this time I was worrying whether I was getting frostbite on my bum. I did a bit of my patented 'ice-sprinting' to get the blood flowing to my rump again but my whole lower half was pretty cold by the time I got back. It was a small price to pay for an adventure off station.

Sorsdal to Slushie and Still Cloudy

On Tuesday Adam, Matt A and me headed out to Kazak Island, which is about 10km South of Davis, on the quad-bikes, as part of Adam's work programme to download data from an automatic weather station there and to change the flash card in an automated SLR that takes photos of the ice in front of the Sorsdal Glacier when there is enough light. I've put a map here of the route we took. This photo was taken in summer, so all the dark blue water has been replaced with white ice, and would appear similar in colour to the Sorsdal Glacier at the bottom of the picture. The ice to the West of Kazak seems to break out all the time and at the start of our Summer season here I saw a cool timelapse video from this camera of it breaking and reforming again and again. This is for the same glaciology project for which I gather ice-thickness data every Thursday from the front of station. The area around Kazak is littered with islands and the ice in those parts usually takes a little longer to form due to tidal pressures around them, so as we went we had to drill every so often to make sure we weren't liable to fall through to a cold watery plight. We pulled up to the island, almost got bogged, backed off, and parked the quads about 100m from the shore. We left the engines ticking over to keep the quads warm and proceeded by foot to the island. As with every piece of land around here, Kazak is characterised by brown rocks with blown-snow making 'blizz tails' on the lee-side of them. During the summer, Kazak island is home to a large Adelie penguin rookery and, as is the case with such islands, is also completely covered in guano. Mmm, that old smell from the Summer, though somewhat muted, was there to grace our nostrils as we traversed. The thick guano is sprinkled with the corpses of dead penguins that gradually fade into it over the course of the seasons.

The AWS and the camera are on a small peak on the island, and when arrived the top we could see the huge whiteness of the frozen sea extending to the horizon to the North broken by the many islands surrounding.

Adam and Matty taking in the view while the data downloads.

To the South was the Sorsdal Glacier which was just visible behind another Kazak peak as a beautiful blue crumbly mess of broken, pressure-rended ice. It's interesting that the ice of icebergs and glaciers seem so much more blue under the light of clouds. After leaving the island we got some photos of us in front of the glacier and here I am standing in front of it.

Getting back from such a trip it's absolutely imperative to get yourself into the living quarters, sit in the 'wallow' and grab a cup of coffee. I know that the engine of the quad did most of the work, but trips out from station in the Winter really take it out of you.
On Thursday I was up until 2am or 3am the next morning sitting with station leader Ali, deputy station leader Mark and cross-dressing met observer Linc chatting and having a bit more of a get-to-know you session. That was a bad move because on Friday my alarm tore me from my comfy bed to crawl down to the kitchen and get started on my Slushy duties at 6:30. Every 3 weeks or so each person on station has to work a day in the kitchen, helping the chef wash dishes and keep the kitchen running. This time, though, I was reponsible for feeding all the pundits because 12 of the 25 of us, including chef Kim, had gone up to the Antarctic plateau to rehearse for the up-coming traverse to the Russian and Chinese stations. The idea was to find the most miserable, barren place possible and set up polar pyramid tents to simulate the conditions over their journey. Sounds like they had a rough time and we couldn't help but wonder about them that night as the winds at station, typically more calm than the plateau, were gusting about 40 knots (70kph).

Looking like some sort of ghastly pirate with my red eyes and striped shirt, I got to work making about 8kg of bread dough. The fruits of this were 6 fluffy loaves of bread, 12 cheese-contaminated bread-rolls, 24 pepperoni and cheese scrolls and 12 vegemite and cheese scrolls. Check out my baked-goods in the photos below. It all went down a treat. That night, for dinner I made, with the help of Ole Geoff Brealey and young Chris Wilko (two of the dieso's on station), bangers and mash for all of us, including the exhausted field party who had returned 2 hours beforehand. It all went really well except for the 'orange delicious' pudding I decided to make 90mins before dinnertime that ended up being a mess of coagulated egg and watery stuff. I got Kim to do an autopsy and the verdict: not enough flour! Bugger...

Me with my unbaked scrolls, wondering if they're too scrawny...

Some delicious loaves fresh from the oven.

The scrolls turned out to be pretty good

Saturday night was good with the usual delicious food. I wore more stripes, striped shirt, striped tie. Nichol told me that the stripes clashed with each other. I said I liked to 'buck the trends'. He replied with stunned silence. The crowd at the candlelit dinner table soon thinned and I was left among a small group of people for some good candid conversation about some of the events of the past Summer. It was interesting to get other people's views on some of those. At one point in the conversation, our resident coffee connoisseur, Nick "the rodent" Roden, walked in with a long black that he was sipping on. He is one of the pundits tackling the long traverse in a couple of weeks, and has been talking at length about how he's going to miss his beloved espresso coffee. Excusing himself to go to the bathroom, a few at the table became inspired and quickly got to work replicating his espresso coffee with a cup of instant. The amount of coffee in the glass was matched perfectly, and water from the cooler was added in appropriate proportions to the boiling mix in order to make the temperature just right. When Nick came back, Wellsy, Plant Inspector for the Winter, was interested to hear more about the coffee. As Nick sipped his 'espresso' Wellsy asked him "So, is it really that much better than instant coffee?"
It was totally suss, the whole table had gone dead silent and everyone was staring at Roden.
Nick: Oh yeah there's no comparison.
Grins widen. Roden sips.
Wellsy: Really? THAT coffee is really a lot better than instant.
Roden: Absolutely!
A short beat, then contained laughter erupted around the table.
Wellsy: You're drinking instant coffee!
Hahaha, but to Roden's credit he took it incredibly well and an explanation was offered: "You guys shouldn't take advantage of a drunk man!" haha it was too good. He really did take it with style though. I compared the two coffees and the espresso was a lot better. I guess unfortunate Roden didn't expect us to stoop so low.

Later on we were talking about the overnight jaunt that half the station had arrived home from the previous day. It seems that Frank the Tank* and Hellboy, while bailed up in their tent with a blizzard outside, had failed to fully seal the outer shell of the tent from the elements. They both woke up in the morning almost buried by snow-weighted tent-walls and they were certainly trapped in there. They thought about radioing for help, and Frank had a battery but no more of the required hardware. If only they'd buried the flaps of the outer shell of the tent in the snow, none of that would have happened. While laughing about this at the dinner table I said, completely innocently, "looks like Frank and Hellboy needed some more weight on their flaps.". Linc, wearing his usual Saturday dress, jumped up from his chair, went to the bar and wrote that straight in the Davis quote book.

You really have to watch what you say around here....

Until next week my friends, don't forget to keep an eye on your coffee and keep your flaps under wraps. Adios!

*Frank is our resident German painter. Every day at smoko break Andy, our senior comms officer, brings out short summaries of the Australian and world news. Earlier this week an article appeared in the world section entitled "Uproar! Germany Out!". Apparently, half the German team had been caught using a banned anabolic steroid and wouldn't be playing in the up-coming world cup. We all know this isn't true do to the complete flogging they gave the Socceroos last night, but it was all Frank could do to keep a weak smile on his reddened face. He was seen taking his smoko snack straight to his room to jump on the internet in order to verify this 'uproar'. Andy had cleverly doctored the article according to a scheme that the four of us had come up with while we were bailed up in Platcha Hut a few weekends ago. Tonight, Frank got his own back by presenting Andy with a box of tissues painted Aussie green and gold, with 'socceroos' carefully printed on the side, so that Andy would have something with which to wipe his loser Australian tears up with. We're still waiting for Roden's revenge.