Gardner Walk

While the sea-ice is in, it is only a 3km walk from Davis to Gardner Island, where there is a large Adelie penguin rookery. We were allowed to head out there, provided we took someone ho was field trained with us. So one morning a small group of us cornered our field training officer and got him to take us out there. It was fantastic. The sea ice is pretty weird to walk on and very slippery in places, but at a measured thickness of 1.5 metres it was pretty much bomb proof! We got to Gardner with few worries. Our group comprised Martin (Met. Tech), Tim (Field Training Officer), Bri (Met Forecaster), Kane (Chippy), Spence (Plumber) and Myself. Once we got out there we started photographing the penguins as they came up to us. Eventually we all were quietly laying on the snow and were pretty much surrounded by the curious little birds. They seem almost fearless. They are keen to get within about a metre of people, but are then wary of going any further. Here's a photo of one of the birds stopping to have a look around as it passed between Martin and myself.
Basically it was great to get out and away from station to see real antarctic stuff even if it was for only three hours. The walk was good excercise and good practice at getting around on the sea-ice with and without boot-chains and ice-axes. Here's a final picture of us heading back, with a vague but discernable ice-halo forming around the sun.