Midwinter Madness

Midwinters, as far as I'm aware, is commonly considered a pagan celebration for... um, something. There's probably dancing and mild nudity with a bit of fire thrown in for good measure and maybe something about rebirth of the sun. Anyway, down here the Midwinter celebrations mark the middle of our 12 month posting and essentially act as a bit of Christmas within the wintering crew where we have a too much food and argue with each other give each other presents.

Another tradition is a swim where a hole is cut in the ice and we jump in one at a time for a dip in the lovely cool water. The look on some people's face will make you think that the water is a little on the frigid side where perhaps they'll need to do a little searching later for some special appendages, but that is a lie! Just look at me swimming like a duck having a bath. Unfortunately we had to wait a few days for the wind to calm down so that we wouldn't freeze as soon as we got out of the water, but we still had to move quickly to get our footwear off before the shoe laces froze in place.

Enough rambling, here are some photos of food, our decorations and mostly nude men.

Flags of the world and, as usual, Michael eating.

Wilfred made an appearance and a very funny speech

We each gave each other a present, inside this pretty wrapper was a book of amazing photos taken around Tasmania

One of 3 desserts for the evening, a Troll Doll... Or, panncotta with Turkish style fairy floss.

Aaron was moving quickly to get dry

Ben H enjoyed his dip

The hole. Would you be willing to jump in there?

"Splish splash, I was taking a bath"

Matty had 2 goes. Yes people, there's someone nuttier than me down here.

Caning Along the Cane Line

While we don't have any actual roads down here, there are routes between the field huts and the runway that are marked by canes set up in a nice neat line and, with all imagination possible, are called cane lines. The canes are made from bamboo cut into 4 to 6 metre lengths and have a steel can tied to them about 3/4 of the way up.

The idea is two fold:

1. When driving in really bad weather where the wind is strong and the visibility virtually non-existant and by having the route marked with these canes set at reasonable intervals apart, we can have a pretty good idea of where the route is. Following the GPS also helps...
2. Also, with the steel cans being picked up by the radar, that system can also be followed. Back-ups for back-ups and all that.

Last week I went with Mick and Matty for a couple of days worth of drilling ice, placing canes and generally having a good time with the machinery we took with us. We left later than expected and dragged a hut, known as The Silver Chalet, behind a tractor. Yup, we took our house with us like snails (thanks for that one mum!). As the days are so short, by the time we reached the start point at 5.30pm, the sun had been down for a couple of hours and we were hungry, so we set up the Chalet and got to work on unfreezing dinner. Good thing we've got a chef on station to prepare all this delicious food.

The night was windy but we were toasty warm in the hut. I'd like to say we had another late start because of how warm were over night, but the real reason was that an alarm was set to remind us to fill up the generator... at 2.30am. All we could here was "boing, boing, boing, boing" coming from somewhere in the hut. Took about 5 minutes to find the offending iPod in a cupboard, which was duly put next to the culprit's head who failed to wake up until he was yelled at, turned off the alarm (or so we thought) and then "boing, boing, boing" came back about 15 minutes later. So, a restless night and a late start was followed by a spectacular sunrise and brilliant day. We spent the day with one of us on the quad bike, one driving the Hagg and one driving the tractor with the quad and Hagg people doing the drilling and cane placement every 250m. The process was slow as we had to keep the track exactly on the GPS route, plus the tractor only goes about 15km/h with that kind of load on the back. Another short day with first light around 8.30am and sunrise about 10.45am, the sun saying 'hello' for about 3hrs and last light fading by 3.30pm, all followed by a beautifully starry night with a sickle moon and slight aurora. Pity none of the moon and aurora photos came out very well.

The amazing pre dawn light.

The red Hagg carrying a drill on the back and the tractor pulling the Silver  Chalet

We actually rested well that night and were up at 8.00am to get an early start to finish the job, then plod along on our way back to station. We finally arrived just in time to catch the last part of light which helped us with refuelling the vehicles and packing everything up. All in all a great trip out, but I've left off one important thing: there's no toilet attached to the hut and we don't leave any waste out in the field. For pee we have large buckets with screw top lids that also take the grey water and for poo, we have the wag bag. You haven't lived until you've squatted behind a tractor for protection from the wind in the middle of nowhere in Antarctica and taken a dump in a bag, all while your fingers slowly freeze. Needless to say I held on as long as I could and made sure I only had to do it once in the trip. Has to be said, it was one of the best views I've had while squatting.

I'm not sure how well it can be seen, but on the horizon and especially on the right are some heat lines causing weird reflections and refractions off the ice.

I drew a face!

How to Guide for Families and Friends

One of the things that we generally miss out on celebrating with family and friends are birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Mother's/Father's Day and all those sorts of days that are all about gathering people together. Although with 21 men on the station this year, I'd be surprised if anyone gets a Mother's Day present... alright, that's a lie because mum sent one to me.

Apparently a very odd story, but definitely a good Mother's Day present for me...

The first thing to do is to know your expeditioner well or get to know them if you don't. Next, pick out one or more things to send to them and wrap in a box or envelope or other such thing. Write strict instructions that the parcel should be delivered on a specific date to the expeditioner and then write the address as found on this page. After that you should check the shipping/flight schedule, the lunar calandar, consult some sort of almanak, ask the locals if their bung knees are playing up and post the package in the hope that it'll arrive at the AAD in time to be sent to the station before either the expeditioner leaves that station or winter arrives and nothing can get in.

Unfortunately we're in the middle of winter so no cargo will arrive and I'll be out of here by about the time the next opportunity comes along, so don't send anything to me. Feel free to send something fun or completely useless down to the station just for the hell of it as I'm sure someone will get a laugh.


My family has been spectacularly brilliant and hilarious in helping alleviate the problems with missing these days by sending in a box of stuff at the beginning of the season and writing dates on everything for when I'm supposed to open them. There were chocolates that I didn't need, but were delicious and t-shirts that I did need, but didn't taste as good, plus a few books that have been well digested except for the one about the discovery of vegemite because I'm still getting through the other ones I brought with me. Mum did pretty well at having a box of stuff put together from all the family - made me laugh a lot.

Multi coloured birthday beanie from the multi talented Jannelle of Macquarie Island.

A polar bear made from really tiny blocks from a formerly really tiny person, Jen. Think I might give the making of its own post.

Thanks for sharing the love on my birthday Liv!