Gelidity

Amery Angst

2008-06-08T19:35:00.000+10:00

One of the big jobs over the summer was the retrieval of a whole lot of data from several sites that are logging temperatures on the Amery Ice Shelf. The Amery Ice Shelf lies between Davis and Mawson (around 250km from Davis). It is basically where the Lambert Glacier (the largest glacier on earth) pushes ice out over the ocean. Think big, flat (apart from the occasional enormous crevasse), white and cold. Think one and a half hour helicopter trip one way from Davis. Big problem (as always in Antarctica) is weather. We need a very long period of really good weather in order for the helicopters to get us out there. We needed 12+ hours at each site to download all the data logged over the last year, which meant we needed a really good 24 hour weather window to make the trip worthwhile. Our beloved forecasters did their best, but they had very little data from the region to go on. Basically I got all the gear together ready to go (heaps of it - lots of electronics gear and a whole lot of camping equipment organised by our FTO, Tim) weighed it and then sat around for days wondering when we were gonna get the OK....
Eventually we got a small window and so we decided to cache a lot of the equipment at the edge of the ice-shelf on Sansom Island. We sent two tradies (Neville the chippy and Hughsey the plumber) from Davis with the helicopters, ad they absolutely loved it! The coastline was spectacular there and back. I had seen the coast as far as Zhong Shan, but their descriptions left me champing at the bit to get on with it and get out to do this work. It was to become (another) pretty serious case of “hurry up and wait”!

World Tour of East Antarctica

2008-04-02T03:27:00.006+11:00

There is an experiment that is run by the AAD at the Chinese station Zhong Shan. Zhong Shan is located in another bit of Antarctica that is not covered by ice and now - the Larsmann Hills. Luckily, I am the one tasked with keeping the experiment running, so it means I got on the first helicopter trip down to the Zhong Shan base. This first trip meant a little bit of work for me at Zhong Shan, but there was a lot of diplomatic stuff to do too. The Larsemann Hills is a very popular little area for putting bases. There are a lot of freshwater lakes, and a reasonable, relatively close, ice runway. Unfortunately there is a lot of multi-year sea-ice there, so it is very difficult to re-supply by boat. Anyway, India have started looking at setting up a base there (they have semi-permanently erected shelters known as “melons” and “apples”) on an island south of the other bases in the Larsemann's. The other bases are all within 1km of each other and include Law/Racovita base (joint Australian/Romanian), Zhong Shan (Chinese) and Progress II (Russian). There is also a former Russian base (Progress I) a little further inland. Anyway, we got to see all of them in one day thanks to the Davis Helicopters (the other bases don't have Helicopters - I wonder how they get anything done...).
Anyway, here is a picture of our first stop - the new Indian base. I guess you can see why they are called melons! The circular ones are called apples for similar reasons. After finding no-one was home at the Indian Base (no-one seemed to know when or if they were planning to be there this summer), we headed on to the Law Base.We had a quick stop at Law. One of the apples there had been completely destroyed, and had been blow throughout the surrounding hills. We did our best to clean up the mess, but we were running relatively short on time as we had to get to Zhong Shan at a reasonable hour (I think they are on Beijing time!). It is a bit nerve-racking rocking up in Helicopters to a foreign base (at that stage they had no re-supply, so we were the first visitors they had (apart from the occasional Russian) since the Australians visited on a winter traverse. They all seemed very happy - I guess they must have had a good winter. After the obligatory cup of Chinese tea, I got on with my geeky work stuff, while everyone else got a tour of the station. After the completion of our work we were treated to some very good food and were plied with some of their beer, (called REEB - they get it for free as the brewery basically sponsors Chinese Antartic Research Expeditions - CHINARE). I had a couple of beers, but figured it was best to keep well and truly sober, so when offered more I attempted to explain the great Australian tradition of “one for the road”. They laughed as I tucked a can into my jacket and headed off (on foot) to Progress II, so I think they got it. Here's a picture of Ray and myself with our Chinese counterparts at Zhong Shan). Finally we got to he Russian base. We were vary wary walking in, as we had received no response to our fax (the only method of communication we have with the Russians) so had no idea if they knew we were coming or not. The Russian station was very quiet, but the workers (busy completing an impressive workshop come power-house). We were finally approached by a magnetometer scientist who spoke quite good English. He as very apologetic and informed us that the Russian Station leader was still in bed unwell. We offered our doctor from Davis who had come with us, but were informed that they had two doctors already at Progress and that the illness was simply due to it having been the Station Leader's birthday the previous day!Anyway, we were shown around by the Russian's, who were remarkably good natured about us rocking up out of the blue! They keen to tell us about their station and their lives back in Russia, which was really quite amazing. Eventually the Station Leader joined us and we had a Russian beer and a bit of vodka (some had more than others) before completing our tour and hopping back in the helicopters ready for home. It seemed to me that our arrival may have marked the end of what was probably a fairly emotional winter at the Russian base, after one of their communications technicians died of heart failure during the year. There seemed to be a lot more smiles as we waved goodbye than there had been when we arrived. Perhaps they were just happy to get rid of us meddling Australians...As we returned to station, the pilots buzzed the station buildings at the Station Leaders request and we walked into the bar with a couple of slabs of REEB much to the delight of some of the summer tradies, who finished it all at lightning pace! It was a phenomenal day. I have to stop and think sometimes about just how incredibly lucky I am to be here experiencing all this!

Saturday Night Dinners

2008-04-02T03:26:00.001+11:00

Given that it is somewhat difficult to pop down to a cafe or pub when you are living on an Antarctic Station, it is common to run a special event of a Saturday Night. Often these take the form of Saturday Night Dinners - Where the chef makes a little extra effort, and we put out table cloths, block the windows (it is light 24-7 over summer, so the candles on the table would seem a bit superfluous if we didn't do this) and everyone has pretty much a sit-down restaurant-style meal. With almost 60 people on station it is a big job for the chef. People are rostered on for Saturday duties (helping out and cleaning up around the station) and normally this includes one or two extra people to help in the kitchen (along with those who help out anyway just 'cause they are nice). I was rostered on to help setting up for the dinner, so set the table fairly meticulously and put on some smart black pants and white shirt and went around trying to set a fairly high bar for whoever was rostered on to do it next time. I even grabbed a pepper grinder and went around to all the (very closely packed) tables asking if people wanted cracked pepper with their salmon or steak. It was also a bit of a Birthday celebration for Clare (one of our Comms Operators - later known as the golden voice of Davis radio). Anyway, a good time was had by all, and I got plenty of compliments for going the extra mile with the whole waiting on tables thing.

Zolotov Is

2008-03-21T18:19:00.002+11:00

Now quad trained and ready to go, we took off with Tim, Didier and Dave (the pilot now stranded at Davis waiting for a plane to fly!) and headed to the penguin rookery on Zolotov Island, near the Sorsdal Glacier to the south of Davis station. One of the main reasons for this trip was to check sea-ice conditions in areas where it traditionally melts out early. It was great fun belting along on the quads. Next to the Glacier, the sea-ice was like wet glass! It was impossible to keep the quads straight, I am not sure how they managed to gather any momentum with he wheels having so little traction. Occasionally you come across things that have the unfortunate ability of providing a lot of friction very quickly. Tide cracks around 30cm wide were pretty common, as were small bands of blown snow that sit on the ice (kind of like small Sastrugi). If you hit one of these while you were side-ways, you would know about it! Anyway, we got to see a fair bit of the country to the South of station, a whole lot of penguins and (by Antarctic standards at least) a small glacier. Here's a pic showing a whole lot of Adelie Penguins on Zolotov, with the Sordsal glacier in the background. Riding quads on sea-ice along the edge of a glacier - only in Antarctica!

Field Training

2008-03-21T18:12:00.005+11:00

I was lucky enough to be prioritised for early field training. This is good because it means I will be allowed out in the field sooner rather than later, and that we get to train on the quad bikes that are used to get around Davis Station when the sea-ice is thick enough. It was great to be kitted out with all the gear and head off for a good look around the Vestfold Hills. The crew were a pretty mixed bunch (as per usual at Antarctic Bases), but included 2 weather forecasters, one fixed wing pilot, the station Doctor and myself. It was fantastic! The quads make it easy to cover distance really quickly. We belted through the bergs that get stuck fast in the sea-ice to the north of Davis. There was heaps of penguins and the occasional skua to keep us company. Our field training offficer (FTOs are renowned for their vanity) taught us all how to look really good simply by carrying an ice axe. Michelle (one of the forecasters) managed to tip one of the quads over on a bit of steep rifted sea ice. Here is a link to her blog on the topic: how to roll a quad bike. We ended up staying the night in our bivvy bags not far from Bandits Hut. I had my first antarctic snow-cone and spent half the night tying to get a photo of a snow petrel (see above). Also, here's a little picture of me beginning to look a little bit scraggy, but sill very cool, with the aid of my trusty ice-axe.

Gardner Walk II

2008-01-04T03:19:00.000+11:00

The second time I went to Gardner was with Didier, who has spent the winter at Davis as the LIDAR physicist (I will explain about the LIDAR in another post sometime), and he was an excellent guide. It was a fantastic evening and we set out from around 10pm to have a look around and take some pictures while the sun was low in the sky. It was quite fantastic, with the possible exception of climbing down a very steep guano covered slope to get to a little bit of ice clinging to the far side of the island. Anyway, the picture at the start is of some nesting Adelie Penguins and the bright colored stuff in the background is the buildings of Davis Station. And here is a panorama (including Dider) taken on the far side of Gardner.

Sea Ice

2008-01-04T03:07:00.000+11:00

I had better explain a bit about sea-ice, so people understand a bit about what we are walking around on. When it gets cold enough (below -1.8 degrees) for long enough, the salt water in the polar regions freezes from the top down. Firstly, "grease ice" appears on the surface (some is visible around the bits of solid ice in the photo above). It is so thin, it actually bends without breaking as waves go past. It looks like a darker or lighter patches on the water, depending on what angle you are on. This then turns to "frazzle ice", with sugary crystals of ice floating on-top of the water. Often as the ice becomes thicker, wind and wave action separate the ice into round flat chunks, called "pancake ice" (see blog entry here). Finally the whole thing clumps together and freezes solid to form true sea-ice. As he ice becomes thicker, it effectively insulates the water below from the cold air above, and the rate of growth slows. Eventually the growth almost completely stops at around 1.7 to 1.8 metres. According to our AAD field manual, 200mm of ice is OK to walk on, 400mm of ice is OK to drive quads on, and 600mm of ice is OK to drive the tracked vehicles (Hagglunds) on. The ice we walk over to get out to Gardner Island is called "fast ice" because it is attached fast to land. It is really solid ice, but continually develops cracks at the land/sea interface due to tidal action (tide cracks). Now it is melting (degrading from above) and rotting (degrading from below), care needs to be taken crossing it. You occasionally fall through melted sections to a depth of around 30cm, so it is a good idea to wear water-proof boots! This pic shows some of the melt pools on the surface of the fast ice near Gardner Island.

Gardner Walk

2007-12-28T01:18:00.000+11:00

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.

Dingle Road

2007-12-28T01:08:00.000+11:00

To give people who are not field trained (i.e. only those of us that haven't wintered at Davis in the last couple of years) an opportunity to get outside (and hence get some excercise) the station management team have allowed access to Dingle Road, so called because it heads to Dingle Lake. It goes past many of my radar (within 1km or so of station), before meandering up Heidemann Valley and turning a corner and rising a little to get to Dingle Lake. So one afternoon when we had nothing on, a group of us headed out for a walk in incredibly bright sunshine. The sunshine heated the rocks of the Vestfold Hills that surround Davis to a much higher temperature than the air, resulting in obvious heat-haze on the horizon, despite the cold.
Dingle Lake is one of the hyper-saline lakes in the Vestfolds that never freezes. It is much slatier to taste than sea water and the small mouthful I had made me feel decidedly queezy during the walk back. Anyway, it is a suprisingly picturesque walk despite the lack of vegetation and being confined to the roughly graded track. There is still enough snow around to make many of the
hills look attractive and the rocks themselves are often very clearly patterned due to their make-up or scarred by glacial action. Anyway, the picture above shows some of the rocks coverered by the salty water at the edge of the lake. And here's a picture of the people
we went with, including plumbers, carpenters, a boiler maker, a weather forecaster, a plant operator, a radio tech, a radio operator and one electronics engineer (me)!

Work Problems

2007-12-22T20:52:00.000+11:00

On my first real day of work managed to pick up some problems with a few of the experiments. Some had been neglected for a while as Dave had been getting treatment on his leg and would be unable to do anything with them regardless. Anyway, it was a bit of a baptism of fire throughout the first month. Trying to catch up on everything that had been neglected, do some of the annual stuff that needed to be done (Dave had deliberately put-off some stuff so he could show me how to do it) and getting my first real look at a lot of the hardware I am dealing with. I know not too many people would be interested in exactly what I am working down here, so I will keep it short - Magnetic Instruments (deleting small changes and variations in the local magnetic field), Optical Instruments (looking at lot of the different weird lights that come from the sky when it is dark down here) and Radars (Lots of different types but they are all pointing upward, looking at different parts of the atmosphere. Anyway, here is a picture of one of the 33MHz meteor detection antennas that are going to be replaced this year. If you are really interested (and who wouldn't be) you can look at some of the data it produces by clicking on the "Recent Observations" link from here.

Slushie

2007-12-22T20:28:00.000+11:00

Everyone on station takes turns being slushie. There are two slushies everyday, and they help out the chef by cleaning up some of the common areas, doing dishes and generally trying to help out. Some people complain about it, but really it isn't too hard and can be a bit of fun. There was also plenty of people not on the slushie roster who were happy to help out occasionally, which makes things run smoother. I was rostered on for the very first day of the slushie roster. I spent the morning cleaning out the bar and lounge area (called "The Wallow") paying particular attention to the coffee machine that I intend to be using on a fairly regular basis. once all he cleaning and tidying was done, I helped put out the food for lunch and after lunch, we cleared up did some dishes, ran the burnable garage up to the incinerator and had a couple of hours off before sorting out dinner. There are a lot of different attitudes towards having to do slushie duties, but I think that I actually look forward to doing something different for a day occasionally.

Saying Goodbye to BOB

2007-12-22T01:59:00.000+11:00

For those not keeping notes BOB was the name we gave to the Aurora Australis (Big Orange Boat!). Saying goodbye to the boat was a fairly big event. The boat comes twice a year and when it slowly made it's way out of Davis Harbour, it was like waving goodbye to our only link to the rest of the world. It was a strange feeling. Happiness at finally being here and able to get into the work, but a hint of sadness at the departure of Dave and the rest of the people on the boat heading on to Mawson, or back to Hobart. Anyway, the picture is of one of my workmates deep in thought as the boat sails away. The smoke is from flares that were activated to say goodbye to the ship. It was a beautiful night, and very warm outside. Here's a photo of me (looking marginally more scruffy than I did in Australia, outside at 10pm in Antarctica waving goodbye to the ship in a T-Shirt. I am absolutely thrilled to be here, but already missing my wife and family.

Goodbye Dave

2007-12-22T01:41:00.000+11:00

I have been told that I don't have to do any more work regarding re-supply as it is more important to get information out of Dave's head. Re-supply is going really well and I was asked if I would have had enough time with Dave if the boat left tonight (only three whole days after it arrived!). Anyway, I said hat it really wasn't long enough, but I wasn't going to expect the ship to hang round on my account, so I spent the entire day in Dave's room as people continued to pack his gear and generally say their goodbyes. I took heaps and heaps of notes and tried to record bits of it on an MP3 player. Dave gave me an absolute heap of information on a removable hard-drive and suggest that I get in quick and ask if I could move into his room (it has a much better view than mine). I was thankful that he had come out of the anesthetic without any real grogginess and was able to sped an entire day simply passing the information on. Eventually we had to call it a day, and Dave was assisted out to the heli-pad and loaded into a chopper to be carried out to the ship. He intended to wave to all the poor people that were heading out to the boat across the sea-ice in land vehicles. Here's a photo of Dave on his way! I think I'm going to be busy.

Bad News

2007-12-18T02:23:00.001+11:00

After knocking off of my fuel line duties at 8am, I helped out unloading a couple of containers of food (mostly frozen meat and a lot of cheese that looked like it was fairly high quality stuff). Upon coming back in and having lunch, I found the personal effects had been unloaded from the boat and so began moving into my room. Not long after this, Ray (the supervising scientist pictured in my last blog) knocked on my door with a worried look on his face. I immediately assumed that the other Engineer who should have been showing me the ropes over summer was heading home. This proved to be a fair assumption, but Ray explained further that Dave (the other Engineer) was going to be put under a general anesthetic in a few hours, and have his leg set in plaster. So I had a few hours to talk to Dave and absorb as much of his wisdom as possible before he went into surgery. I was surprised that I coped so well with this news, but the prospect of doing the work of two engineers over the summer was a daunting challenge. Anyway, I had a really good chat with Dave, while other wintering expeditioners ran around us packing his stuff up ready to head back to Australia. It was quite surreal and more so considering lack of sleep had left me a little drained. I was very pleased to get a break by the time 4pm came around and Dave was whisked off into surgery, but I hoped that we wouldn't be too groggy in the morning and I would be able to get some more info out of him then when was a bit fresher!

Fuel Line

2007-12-18T02:13:00.000+11:00

During the re-supply I was rostered on to work on the fuel line on the 4-8 shift. The first night I was on from 4pm to 8pm(not too bad), then back on the next morning from 4am to 8am (a bit worse). Never really had to do shift-work before and coupled with the fact that we were only getting about 4 hours of near-darkness, I was pretty tired at times during the process. The station has close to 1 million litres of diesel in the fuel farm, and this gets topped up during re-supply by pumping off the ship through a hose of up to 3km length into the tanks. There is a pump on the ship and a booster pump on the sea-ice, which is where I was stationed. When we started work at 4am DBT (Davis Bastard Time = GMT+7 Hours) the sun was just coming up. It was quite pretty. There were a few Adele penguins wandering around, and they weren't too sure what to make of the fuel hose! Here is photo of on of the Physicists down here who was working with me at the fuel farm (note the friendly helpers in the background!).

A beer with the winterers

2007-12-09T19:29:00.000+11:00

The guys that have been at Davis all year, invited the new winterers into the bar at Davis on the first night we arrived. We were allowed to walk in from the ship, which was fantastic (see the pic).
The winterers had kindly moved out of the main living quarters and set in the newly commissioned Summer Accommodation Module (SAM). I think they were happy in there as it is more modern, quite comfortable and they had all put work in to getting it on line. Anyway, we were basically able to move into our new rooms straight away. It was great to have a quiet beer (for them it was probably the rowdiest beer they have had since the previous summerers had left last February). By the end of the evening I was quite excited about spending more than a year in at Davis. The bar at Davis looks fantastic! There is plenty of history around the place including a feature wall behind the bar made from a bit of the original station that was built at Davis. The bar is named Nina's after one of the Huskies that used to be an integral part of many (especially Australian) antarctic expeditions.
Met the guy who I was replacing and found that his ankle injury (originally described as a "sprain", then "worse than first thought") was now "a spiral fracture of the fibula. His ankle had gone all kinds of weird colors, but he was pretty confident he would be up and walking around in a week or so.

Finally!

2007-12-04T02:17:00.000+11:00

The arrival at Davis was fantastic. Flares were set off and we had a great day to weave through some fantastic bergs and ram into the very solid fast ice that surrounds Davis. It took a surprisingly short time to get to Davis from Casey, due to a large number of open leads. One in particular close to Davis had been caused by a massive ice-berg (>80km long) being blown through the sea-ice and hence clearing it out of the way. It was great to see what will be my home for the next 15 months or so. I was at the very front of the boat when I first began to make out the brightly colored buildings of Davis. Here is my first pic of my new home. And here is one of the ice-bergs that welcomed us.

Melbourne Cup

2007-12-04T01:56:00.001+11:00

The second special occasion on the boat (i.e. an occasion where we are allowed to have three beers each) was the Melbourne Cup. We all gathered around, dressed up (at least people did) and listened to a recording of the call of the race that was taken using an MP3 player to record from a HF radio. If you know anything about the operation of long range HF it is probably obvious that we had no idea who the actual winner was at the end of the call, and so had to rely on results that were emailed in over a satellite link! Anyway, it was an evening of much mirth and mayhem. It is amazing how good some of the costumes were considering the very limited resources on the ship. Here is a picture of one of the many ingenious hats/fascinators that were produced!

Helicopter Ops

2007-11-29T23:57:00.000+11:00

There was ice and snow all over the boat this morning some of it was quite spectacular. This is an icicle attached to the life raft.
The helicopters are flying to Casey. It is something like 60 nautical miles and is about 1.5 hours round tip. They are carrying gear and people in and out. It is a huge operation. Everyone involved is very busy and frantic. Those that aren't really involved are bored out of their minds. We are not moving, so there is no new ice to look at and no chance of seeing any wildlife unless it is silly enough to come up to the ship (now often referred to as BOB=Big Orange Boat) to see what is going on. We have 3 helicopters on board, two squirrels that will stay with us at Davis for the summer and a big S76 that is going to go home on the ship.
For those of you that aren't helicopter geeks, this is what an S76 looks like:
and this is a squirrel:

Boredom

2007-11-29T23:54:00.000+11:00

Sitting on the boat can be quite boring. I have my email set-up on board now. It gets sent/recieved via a satellite link-up three times a day and we are limited to 30KBytes per message. I have actually done some work while on board the Aurora, that is how bored I was getting. Wrote some code that seemed to impress my boss, but suspect it is full of bugs as my head is still a bit groggy and I didn't really have any ability to thoroughly test it. Got an email from my boss indicating that the guy I am replacing (lets call him Dave) had slipped and badly sprained an ankle, which meant that he might not be available for field work for a while!
The ship is totally surrounded by near solid ice as far as the eye can see. Here is a (>180 degree) panorama of the ice from the side of the Aurora. It is stark, beautiful and fantastic, but a little boring after a couple of days!

Bergs and Emperors

2007-11-28T05:22:00.000+11:00

We are now almost entirely surrounded by ice, and we have seen our first bergs. The photo is one of the first bergs we came across as the sun was setting. I have been spending a lot of time on the front of the boat or in the bridge. We have seen a lot more seals and have now come really close to a few emperor penguins! I got a little excited because there was a possibility that I would get to go into Casey station to have a look at some of the equipment there, but because the boat can't get close enough most of the low priority things will be dropped off the list. The weather is looking really good for the helicopters to get going...

Ice

2007-11-28T05:03:00.000+11:00

At last there are bits of ice floating in the water! The pancake ice really does look like pancakes! Suddenly everyone on the boat is really excited again, like they were when we first left Hobart. It is a great feeling. There are till a lot of albatross around, along with a lot of other smaller birds . It is getting colder and colder and the ice is getting thicker. We are now seeing the occasional Weddell seal ontop of the ice and it is occasionally snowing. Here's a photo from the top of the Aroura at night with snow blowing through the spotlights.

Crossing the line

2007-11-27T00:37:00.001+11:00

As per maritime tradition, there has to be some ceremony on-board to celebrate the crossing of significant lines of latitude. In this case, it is 60 degrees south. The ceremony basically involves King Neptune, a fish and a whole lot of yoghurt, Vegemite and various other food stuffs. It is all a bit of fun, but can see why it has upset a few people in the past, (especially hearing that it used to be a lot worse!). Anyway, that is probably as much as I should say about it, but here are some pictures of some of the ceremony. The young man covered in Yoghurt is our station leader at Davis this year!

More of the Southern Ocean

2007-11-27T00:29:00.000+11:00

It turns out the southern ocean isn't all bad. Appart from an unusual lack of ice-bergs (we haven't seen one yet!) The southern ocean is now as calm as it ever gets! Here's a picture of two of the Davis carpenters sunning themselves on the Helideck. There are plenty of birds flying about the place generally making it difficult for us to get photos of them, but at least it passes some of the time. The weather is amazing! Sunny and warm.

The Aroura Australis

2007-11-25T20:18:00.000+11:00

The ship, not the phenomena!

I have to stop calling the ship a boat or the crew will get angry and refuse to feed me any of the fantastic food on board! Here's a view from the Helipad on the back of the ship as we steamed out of Hobart. The first night on the boat was pretty good as the waters were relatively calm and everyone managed to get some sleep after a few frantic weeks of saying goodbyes and organising their affairs. It wasn't long however before the boat started to rock and several people spent a lot of time in their bunks. I was a bit queezy and went off my food or a while, but held up better than I thought I might (those little pills the doctor gave us were great, but they really put you to sleep). So spent the it few days dosed up on drugs slowly getting used to the swell and not getting uot of my bed much. Eventually I got outside and got some pics of the boat rocking around, but I missed getting shots of the really bad stuff. The one shown here is of Dave (who is heading to Mawson) on the heli-deck coping with the roll!

Goodbyes

2007-11-25T20:12:00.000+11:00

The boat left Hobart on the Saturday, 20th of October. Sam arrived on the Friday and checked into the hotel where we would spend our last night together for 15 months. Here is the last picture I got of us together. I met her after finishing up at the division ad dropped my gear off too, before heading to a pub to meet a lot of the other expeditioners and introduce Sam to the people I would be spending a lot of time with in the near future. It was a great night, and a fair bit of alcohol was consumed. Eventually we snuck away and had a lovely tea in a Fish Cafe thing (Mures) before retiring for the evening.
The next day I had briefings from early in the morning. I had to run through Hobart to get back to my usual accommodation to pick up all my gear ready for loading onto the boat. I just made it! My Mum and Sam's Mum flew into Hobart on the Saturday morning, sorted out their rooms and headed (with Sam) to the Salamanca markets where I met them around lunchtime. We were all a bit tired and not real keen to do anything in particular so we wandered around the markets for a bit. We had 4 more hours than I had expected as the ship's departure was delayed to 8pm for technical reasons. Eventually we end up at Mures again for tea, which was a lot busier than it had been the previous evening! We barely had time to eat our meals before I had to be back at the boat.
The final goodbyes were hard, but all the girls were very good and I don't think anyone shed a tear on the night except me (just one or two). It was great to leave on such a high note with everyone happy, and great to finally be on my way south!

Last week at Antarctic Division HQ

2007-11-24T18:31:00.000+11:00

Not really sure why the antarctic division get us back to do more training the week before departure. Everyone was so excited and bustling that I don't think much of the final training sunk in. Most of it was revision of what we had been through previously. Especially for some of the winterers that had been training at the division for months (some of the summerers only get three weeks at the division before departure).
I guess the highlight of the final week was a bit of light SAR (search and rescue) training for the winterers. Basically this involved an abseil and a rescue exercise on the coast at Blackman's Bay. For those who had abseiled before it was a pretty nice day out, but for some of the less adventurous types it was pretty hair-raising!
Here's a picture of one of the Diesel Mechanics wondering what he has got himself in for!
Not long before we are off now...

A week at home

2007-11-24T18:16:00.000+11:00

Us winterers are lucky enough to get a week off prior to departure to spend with friends and family. I headed back to Adelaide, and managed to spend a lot of quality time with my lovely wife. We managed to sort a few more things out with regard to packing everything into storage and getting the house sorted out. Sam (my wife) is going snowboarding in Canada while I am away, so there was lots of stuff to sort out. It was very dificult to find a balance between getting stuff done ready for us to go way and spending quality time together. I think we managed a pretty good compromise.
Sam had secretly arranged for us to stay in a Hotel the first few nights back in Adelaide as a Birthday present (it was my Birthday while I was home too!). It was a fatastic idea and we had a great couple of evenings together (Sam still had to work during the day).
I also managed to visit my grandparents before heading off, which was great!
On my last night in Adelaide I had a bit of a going away bash! It was a really great night, and my family put a lot of effort into organising it. It was good to talk to friends and family one last time before heading off. I am really glad so many people came along. I got to show off my Antarctic survival gear to everyone. Here's a picture of my wife with all the gear on!
It was great to have time to say goodbye to most of my family. By saying goodbye to so many people a week before I actual get on the boat, it split up some of the pain of leaving. It wont be until the boat is pulling away from the wharf that I will have to say goodbye to Sam, Sam's Mum and my Mum who are all coming down to Hobart see me off!

Cargo Cut-off

2007-11-17T17:34:00.001+11:00

Cargo for our voyage (the second trip of the Aurora Australis for the season - V2 for short) had to be all sorted by October 4, ready for he ship to leave on October 20. It was a bit of a stress packing my entire life into a cubic metre of cargo space. So prior to the ship going I was living out of a backpack comprising the 30kg of stuff we were allowed to take on board with us. Everything was chucked in the back of utes and vans at the various accommodations that had been provided by the antarctic division, and was taken down to the wharf, where it was all weighed and logged into the electronic consignment tracking system. Here's a pic of my stuff (4 plastic crates and a couple of cardboard boxes) on the ute. Hopefully they will magically appear in my room once we are on station. With so much stuff heading down, it is remarkable that everything got there. It was a exciting experience as it meant that we were getting very close to going. I was also looking forward (in some ways at least) to spending a week of quality time with family and friends before heading away.

Finally!

2007-11-17T17:25:00.000+11:00

I know am finally on the Antarctic Continent (YAY!) and have a bit of time to scratch myself and start catching up on blog entries! I will try and keep things in chronological order to make things easy to follow, so it might be a while before I catch up with what is going on in the present. I apologise (it seems to be becoming a habit in this blog), but otherwise things might not make sense ...

Sorry for lack of posts...

2007-10-17T08:15:00.001+11:00

Seem to always be apologising, but this is just a short note to say that I have been very busy getting ready for the voyage south and haven't really had time to sort out any more posts, nor am I likely to until after re-supply of the station in several weeks time. Hopefully then I will then be able to put up a lot of posts detailing what I have done since the weekend at Mt. Field. Basically I have been packing, having a great time back in Adelaide and then packing some more and training. If you are wondering where I am and what it is like, have a look at the tracks and situation reports regarding voyage 2 (links from this page: http://its-db.aad.gov.au/proms/public/schedules/sitreps.cfm). Hopefully I don't get too sea sick! Will post again as soon as possible.

2007-10-03T22:42:00.001+10:00

On the weekend we headed out to do a walk in Mt. Field National Park, but we were thwarted by a lot of snow high up and some bad weather. I was amazed that there was so much snow at 1400 odd metres above sea-level at this time of year. I did however really enjoy the walk (thanks to the Pandanni bushwalking club for taking us), which kept quite low and took us into twilight tarn and twilight hut, both of which looked spectacular surrounded by snow (see picture).

Will probably have very few posts over the next month (and not many with pictures) as my personal laptop is being packed away as cargo, and I will be relying on my work laptop, until everything is unpacked at Davis. It is all getting very close, very exciting and a little bit scary!

2007-10-03T22:35:00.000+10:00

Sorry for the delay between postings. Have I mentioned that life is pretty hectic. This is especially true leading up to the cargo close date, which is tomorrow! I really should be packing, but writing here is a good way of avoiding it for now.
The most important thing that has happened since my last post was getting my gear. This didn't ocur in a straight forward manner (as they didn't have me on any of their lists), but finally I managed to not only get some stuff, but actually some good stuff for taking out into the field. The pictures included are of me mucking around with some of the stuff in my hotel room (I particularly like the gimp mask...).

Anyway, the other bit of news is that I finally have a decent camera to take down with me. I ended up with a Nikon D80 wit one of the "super-zoom" style lenses (18-200mm). It seems to be a good basic set-up, but I have lots of experimenting still to do, and I will hopefully get another lens before sailing (a 30mm F1.4 prime). I think this will give me the ability to do everything I want to do down there photography-wise.

Looking forward to spending my final week with family, friends and my wife before eventually getting on the boat.

A walk with hartz

2007-09-23T21:00:00.000+10:00

Today we were lucky enough to have a local bushwalker take us out to the Hartz Mountains and show us around. It was a great little walk and it was really good to have a knowledgeable tour-guide. We climbed Hartz peak, which has a fantastic view despite being a relatively easy and short walk. It was a great day and would could see pretty much all the principle peaks of the south-west, including the spectacular Federation Peak (pictured).
I have had a pretty bad cold during the week, so it was good to get out and get some fresh air, and now I think it is finally clearing up!

Just to keep the picture loving public happy, here's a 360 degree panorama from the summit of Hartz Peak including the two guys I was walking with.

Back into the fire!

2007-09-23T20:44:00.000+10:00

The first two days of this week were taken up with fire and confined space training. Both these proved pretty entertaining and they were both provided by the Tasmanian Fire Service. It was good to finally be on a training course that involved all of the people likely to be at Davis over the winter. It was a serious course, but it was good to talk to and start "bonding" with these people (although I guess there will be plenty of time for that once we are on the boat!).
The rest of the week was taken up with more specific training and finalising all my dental stuff ready for the trip, which is getting closer and closer! Here's a quick picture of our doctor being lowered into a storm drain that already contains our station leader and a very suspicious sounding goat!

A Week in Adelaide

2007-09-22T16:26:00.000+10:00

Sorry, but my entries to date have been pretty irregular. I seem to have a lot of stuff to arrange before heading off! I was lucky enough to spend a week back in my home town of Adelaide a couple of weeks ago. Three days on a radar training course, followed by 2 days of leave! It was great to catch up with everyone again. I get to spend another week in Adelaide before departure, but there a few people that I wont be able to catch up with again. Saying goodbye to these people made me realise how little time I have left to be with family and friends.
My week in Adelaide was great for me, but probably not so interesting for those reading this blog, so I will keep this entry pretty short.

Mt. Wellington

2007-09-03T21:00:00.000+10:00

On the weekend, my roommate and I hiked up Mt. Wellington form our Hotel room, close to the middle of Hobart. We climbed up over Knocklofty (a small foothill of Wellington) and back down past the Cascade Brewery. Here's me on top of Knocklofty:

Here are some more pictures of the walk. This is a rainbow seen from just below the summit:

Here's a picture of the deteriorating weather on the summit as we descended:

And finally, a picture of my room-mate Danny.

The walk was quite hard (20+ kilometres and more than 1000 metres of climb and descent). We climbed quite fast in the morning and I had to stop on the final stretch to the summit due to cramp in my quads. Luckily the cramping cleared up, and we made the remainder of the journey fairly without hassle. Starting at around 7am meant that we were able to return by 3pm and have a relaxed afternoon before heading to bed suitably exhausted.

My Room (Finally)

2007-09-03T18:52:00.000+10:00

After much fanfare, here are the pix of my room in Hobart.

Very comfortable indeed! Glad to have a kitchen where we can prepare meals, and a room mate who is a very good cook.

Tower Climbing

2007-09-03T18:42:00.000+10:00

Finally including some pictures so you guys don't have to put up with reading any text, you can just stare at the pix. The first day at the Antarctic Division, I was sent to get some gear from the clothing store, and then onto a rescue at heights course. The course was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed learning about how things are done in the rigging industry as apposed to how they are done in rock-climbing (from my limited climbing experience). Anyway, the picture is of the senior communications tech at Davis being rescued by yours truly. Suprisingly, he looks pretty relaxed about the whole deal.

Still no pix ...

2007-08-31T22:26:00.000+10:00

Sorry, still haven't got around to sorting out pictures, but this will happen soon (I promise). I now have a room-mate who has made coming home a bit less empty. This week I have done even more training. Both specific training for the various experiments being run at Davis and general training so I can be of use in the general operation of the station. I now have a forklift license and a rescue at heights course under my belt. I am doing some shopping tomorrow, and on Sunday I am going to walk from the hotel to the top of Mt. Wellington with my room-mate. I will take some pictures and try and include them (along with the previously promised images) in another post soon. Cheers!

The story so far ...

2007-08-25T20:59:00.000+10:00

Well, I am finally in Hobart undergoing training to become the engineer at Davis Station for the 07/08 season.
Leading up to this point, life has been pretty fast and exciting. Up-ending my life in Adelaide and heading down to Hobart was pretty draining.
This first week has been hectic. I was on training courses from the day I arrived, and I have had an interesting time getting used my new work and home environment. I have met a lot of the people heading to Davis and they seem like a great bunch. It makes me excited about spending the next year and a bit in Antarctica. At the same time, coming home to an empty hotel room forces me to think of those I am leaving behind, especially my wife. This might get better when I get a room-mate (which I think is happening tomorrow).
Anyway, I will post a few pix of my accommodation in Hobart soon, and I will be back in Adelaide a few times between now and sailing southward on the 20th of October.