Environment Forum

Reuters East Antarctic Bureau shuts up shop … fast!

In January 1912, Sir Douglas Mawson finally made his way back to Cape Denison, missing his ship, the Aurora, by about three hours.

Some of his colleagues had waited at the hut hoping he would arrive back safely. When he appeared, they sent a radio message to the ship asking them to turn around, as they could see it lying offshore in Commonwealth Bay.

However, the winds were too strong to risk coming back, so they were stranded at Cape Denison for another 12 months of hardship.

I don’t remember what the book “Home of the Blizzard” says about it, but I came close the other day to understanding how they must have felt, as a few days ago I feared that our team, the Mawson’s Huts Foundation Expedition would face the same fate.

We received a radio call to say our ship L’Astrolabe would collect us within hours. In record time we pulled down our tents, packed our bags, emptied the toilets, disposed of food, tidied our base, the Sorensen Hut, and brought our baggage to an open space to prepare for a helicopter landing to airlift us out to the ship.

Just as we were finishing, we received radio contact from the ship to say bad weather had rolled in at Dumont D’Urville making it unsafe for the helicopter to make the 200 kilometre journey up the coast.

We could see the ship lying in the bay just waiting to collect us, so close yet so far without the support of a helicopter. No one said anything. We just unpacked some of the equipment and quietly settled back in.

Survival and the luck of the Irish

Australian Antarctic explorer Sir Douglas Mawson called Cape Denison ‘the home of the blizzard’ during his term here because of the incessant Katabatic winds which pour down the Antarctic plateau blasting everything in sight.

Wind gusts here have been known to exceed 370 kilometres per hour (185 knots), so I consider myself lucky to have only had to endure 100 kilometres per hour winds funnelling through my tent during the past six weeks at Cape Denison.

So it seemed only right that I test my endurance a step further by putting my survival training into action and spend a night in a bivvy bag in the great icy outdoors.

“If you really want to experience strong winds, sleep up on the rocks near the wind generator,” advised expeditioner Chris Henderson.

So over a few days we watched the weather forecast to get a perfect (windy) experience, but on the chosen day a blizzard rolled in and it was considered unsafe for me to sleep outside.

A few days later the perfect conditions arrived — mild winds but with the usual katabatic gusts after midnight.

Expedition leader Tony Stewart inspected the site to ensure it was safe and at midnight I carried my bivvy bag, a sleeping bag, sleeping mat, survival pack, two way radio, snow goggles, a padded freezer suit, pyjamas, a hat, gloves, eye pads and a book, up to my camping spot.

Dressed for all occasions

Being inappropriately dressed in Antarctica can be life threatening. However, being appropriately dressed takes a lot of time and an exceptionally good memory.

With over 40 items of clothing to track, it’s par for the course to see an expedition member walk in and out of our base three or four times retracing their steps to find a missing part of their polar apparel or backpack.

The conversation between expeditioners goes like this:

“What did you lose?” asks a concerned colleague.

“My glasses, my gloves, my balaclava, my backpack. I had them in my hand two minutes ago. I’m sure I left them on the table,” replies the frustrated expeditioner as he fossicks for the missing items in base hut, leaves and returns still fossicking.

This “deja vu” ritual can occur four times before the victim eventually finds what they are looking for and usually it’s nowhere near where they thought they left them.

For those of us living outdoors the comedy of errors begins in our tent.

An ic(k)y accident

When you live on the edge of Antarctica, coping with gale force winds, blizzards, snow and ice, the risk of accidents are heightened.

Every time we leave the base we carry radios and if planning to be out for a while we carry survival kits to minimise the risk of accidents occurring, as the nearest help is 200 kilometres away at the French base of Dumont d’Urville.

In my case I had my first accident today and radio contact or a survival kit couldn’t have helped me. Luckily, I survived, but my dignity was left a bit smelly.

Stuck inside for a second day because of an impending blizzard, with winds reaching 60 knots, the opportunity to get outside and work isn’t possible, so all 10 of us have been cooped up inside our base — the Sorensen hut.

In sheer desperation to get outside for fresh air, I volunteered to help with the slops run.

Having done this run many times now I have the drill down pat: put on an extra layer of heavy duty clothing, gloves, balaclava and hat; seal the containers tight; carry them from the kitchen and the toilet down a set of steps and pack them on a slay, or in more windy conditions in the trailer of a Quad bike; travel with a second person to the water’s edge to dispose of the contents.

Well, when we reached our destination today, I wrestled with a heavy container that was full to the brim.

Life in a blizzard

It was a cold night with the wind chill reaching -18.4 degrees Celsius. By 5.00 a.m. I’d had enough of being cold and weather beaten by the Katabatic wind smashing the side of my tent and bouncing off my head so I decided to make my way to our base, the Sorensen Hut, for a warm cup of tea and read a couple of pages of my book.

I should have known we were in for bad weather as my neighbours the Adelie penguin colony were no where to be seen or heard this morning.

Before I could walk the five minutes to the hut I had to get dressed for the journey.

The thought flashed across my mind to make a dash across the rocks in my pyjamas, but being dressed inappropriately could be life threatening in Antarctica.

Dressing for polar conditions takes a considerable amount of time as there are so many layers to put on before stepping outside your tent.

New Zealand Merino thermal underwear is considered the base lining as it serves as a neck-to-knee protection. After that comes either fleece top and pants or industrial duty shirt and pants.

A final lining of padded overalls, woollen knee length socks, a pair of polar lined boots, a Canada goose down coat, sun glasses, a pair of gloves, a balaclava and a woollen hat and a splash of sunscreen to protect against the harmful UV rays.

Penguin chatter heralds Antarctica’s ‘White Christmas’

Penguins’ chatter outside my tent woke me to Christmas Day in Antarctica, but instead of Santa’s sleigh there was just the usual run to ensure our human waste doesn’t permanently become part of this frozen wilderness.

With 24 hours of daylight it was, needless to say, very different from the traditional Christmas most of the ten members of the Mawson’s Huts Foundation living in East Antarctica are familiar with.

It was probably not the ‘White Christmas’. I would have imagined as a child growing up in Ireland and very different to the hot Australian festive season I have become used to, marked  by barbecues and often bushfires.

However, it was a fairly typical day for Antarctica, and for this icy plateau.

Here we are about 3,000 kilometres from the nearest part of the Australian mainland, working with a team who are trying to preserve the relics of the legendary 1911-1914 expedition of Antarctic pioneer Sir Douglas Mawson.

Mawson was lucky to survive that expedition, and basic though our living conditions may seem, they are a far cry from what he and his men endured.

On Christmas Eve we had smoked oysters on crackers washed down with a choice of red or white wine followed by lasagne. Some of us went out to the veranda and danced our way through 80s music to keep warm while watching penguins march in every direction under us and snow petrels glide in the sky above us.

Unexpected guests for dinner

Sitting at the base of the memorial cross at Azimuth Hill two nights ago watching the baby chicks that had hatched over a 24-hour period we noticed a black dot on the horizon.

In less than an hour the dot grew larger and larger, as it steaming towards us, until finally a large dark ship, with razor sharp spikes impaled around its exterior, dropped anchor in Commonwealth Bay.

It was the Steve Irwin, an anti-whaling protest ship owned by the environmental activist group Sea Shepherd and skippered by Captain Paul Watson.

Watson sails the Steve Irwin, with its Jolly Rodger flag, into Antarctic waters at this time each year to try and stop the Japanese whaling fleet from killing minke whales.

Watson said he had decided to sail into Commonwealth Bay to avoid being detected, in the cat and mouse game, with the Japanese whaling fleet.

We were not expecting guests until January so there was great excitement when we invited our unexpected visitors ashore and in return were invited aboard the Steve Irwin for dinner.

The Poo run

As I trudge toward the edge of the Antarctic ice shelf, the thought of tumbling over and down into the icy waters below is bad enough.

Orcas patrol the coast, looking to devour seals and penguins and — presumably — clumsy humans stupid enough to fall into their path.

But there is an even more horrifying prospect: to stumble over the edge while trying to empty gallons of human waste into the Southern Ocean.

As I stand there, wrestling a large bucket of excrement to the edge of the precipice, ready to empty it into the bay, I imagine the embarrassment of meeting my maker carrying a bucket of ‘poo’.

The ‘poo run’ is part of the daily routine at Cape Denison, where I am taking part in an expedition to restore and conserve a near-century-old hut built by Australian explorer Douglas Mawson, whose 1911 voyage to the Antarctic was partly funded by Reuters.

Life on Commonwealth Bay

It’s Dec 14, a special day for those of us lucky enough to be in Antarctica. On this day, 98 years ago, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the South Pole. He was wearing skis and heavy fur clothing and hauling his gear behind a team of dogs (many of which became dinner throughout the journey).

Almost a century later, as I look around our little camp at Cape Denison on the edge of the Antarctic ice shelf, overlooking the penguins of Commonwealth Bay, I can see how much has changed: high-tech waterproof fabrics and Velcro have taken over from fur, Skidoos have replaced the huskies and hand-held GPS can pinpoint our position to the centimetre.

One thing, however, has not changed: sturdy canvas tents still serve as ideal accommodation on the ice, even in the windiest place on Earth, right here at Commonwealth Bay.

My tent is pitched right on the edge of the bay, where our team is working to conserve a historic wooden hut that was built a few months after Amundsen won the race to the pole. It was home to another Antarctic explorer, Australian scientist Douglas Mawson, who was more interested in the “other” South Pole, the magnetic South Pole which, unlike the geographic one, can move about.

Our sleeping arrangements are shared between the bunk house and tents. Six people have chosen to sleep indoors and four of us have chosen to live in single polar tents, allowing us the luxury of space and spectacular views.

In deciding to sleep outside, we had to take into consideration the ice melt which will occur during our stay and could saturate our temporary homes and the harsh katabatic wind that blows through Cape Denison.

Setting up home on the ice

I am now standing on Antarctica, my icy home for the next six weeks and it’s minus five degrees Celsius and majestic. My new address is Commonwealth Bay, Cape Denison, 67 degrees South, East Antarctica.

A group of curious penguins greeted us as we unpacked our gear, but our nearest human neighbours are 200 kms west at the French Antarctic base Dumont D’Urville.

Commonwealth Bay looks like a tourism postcard. A curved bay with a coastline of ice cliffs. The isolation is stark. Apart from Sir Douglas Mawson’s huts, which we are here to restore, a radio mast and our portacabins, there is nothing but ice.

From today we will live and work in close quarters without seeing anyone else until a scheduled cruise ship arrival in mid-January 2010.

It’s 10.24 pm as I write this blog but it is not night. This is a land that never gets dark during summer, which is a little surreal.

I have been awake for nearly 24 hours since l’Astrolabe arrived in Commonwealth Bay in perfect weather, light winds and cloud cover, ending our 2,500 kms journey from Australia.