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!

Postcards from the South

Greetings and salutations from the frozen South, the land that has so much ice its sheer mass is keeping the Earth on an even keel and balance out all those big continents in the Northern hemisphere. Well, I'm sure someone around the world believes that one...

A few short months ago I was contacted through a marvellous network of people working off the 6 degrees of seperation theory and asked to send a postcard to the Handley Homeschool in Redmond, WA, USA. And now I'm finally getting off my lazy bum and doing as I promised and posting a photo of the postcard before sending on the next available post..... on a flight in Novemeber.

Pillip Law on the summit of Arthurson Bluff, Oates Land, with a Bell 47G helicopter, 1962

In the mean time, email and phone calls are definitely the best ways to stay in contact with people down here. Unfortunately video calling software is generally blocked as they are peer to peer based and they don't let us have those sorts of programs. Of course, for these sorts of conversations to work each side has to actually remember to reply to the other, which is something I've been guilty of not doing recently. Sorry people.

Living in Antarctica

In case you're wondering, yes, I did sing the title to the tune of James Brown's "Living in America" although I think that's about where the similarities end. What I really want to highlight in this post is what our living space actually looks like, how we entertain ourselves and all of that sort of stuff. The fact is we still try and lead a so called 'normal' life in that we go to work, watch movies, try to keep some semblance of fitness and have socialise together.

The station with the Red Shed in the middle and Green Store to the left

The main living building here is the Red Shed (such an original name) which contains our rooms - and with such small numbers we even get a spare! - a library, the kitchen and mess, a bar and pool table, a cinema and a sadly now defunct climbing wall. Apparently there's a new one being put in next year but we don't get the benefit of enjoying it. Actually, I hope they make it a bouldering wall as that'll make using the wall easier if only one person wants to do it.

We also have a spa and sauna and both are used fairly regularly, plus skis for the more energetic people.

A typical cold porch where jackets and boots can be placed so as to leave all the snow and ice outside

Anyone for cross-country skiing?

If someone feels like doing a spot of sewing, here's the place to do it

My spare room -what's that peering out the window?

My room is much cleaner than it has been in a while and yes, the building is warm enough that I use a doona cover and mattress protector to keep me warm at night.

The music corner

One defunct climbing wall

Billiards goes with...

Darts...

And beer!

The table tennis comps can be ferocious. Well, they would be if we used the table.

Library with an incomplete puzzle

And the rest of the library

We even have air hockey!

A cardio room (the weights gym is hidden in the Green Store)

Movie time!

In reclining chairs and dark corners

A few years ago the Comms Techs had a little project building this arcade machine

"The Wallow" that occasionally turns into a dance floor complete with flashing lights and mirror ball.

The mess

And a phone booth for all clandestine calls. Otherwise feel free to call from any other phone and run the risk of having people come past and listen in on your conversation.

Ant-AR(c)T-tica

Keeping the mind busy with little projects is vitally important when in this sort of isolation. Why? otherwise thoughts go haywire with all the little things that are irrelevant suddenly blown waaaaay out of proportion. Then there are arguements and unnecessary rage and groups form and then people get isolated from those groups because the others think they're weird or something. Also, boredom isn't anywhere near as much fun as it sometimes sounds, so these little things help stave off the mundane.

Last time around I made some wooden jewellery and it seemed to get pretty good reviews from the girls on station, so I've been making more and will continue to over the rest of the season. Not sure what I'll do with it, but probably either give various pieces away or sell them - I'm open to suggestions and ideas. Do you want to request a piece? Hmm, don't know about that one, there is actual work to do.

A few weeks ago the station leader (SL) started some drawing classes with a view to getting us to do portraits of each other. In this link you'll some info and there's a link to photos of a show that has some of his work. So far we've been working in charcoal and last week we were given a artwork or photo, chosen by the SL based on the styles he's seen us draw with and we tried to copy them or adapt them to fit our style (from his point of view...). I was given the *cough* easiest hardest one of the night - a version of Van Gogh's "Starry Night".

Steve the sparkie

This was supposed to be John Casey, namesake of this station...

I guess it kinda worked

The Most Amazing Colours

What colour would you generally associate with Antarctica? Yes, you reading this post, this question is directed at you. I bet your answer would be white. And, generally speaking, you'd be fairly accurate. However we get every colour of the rainbow down here and they are phenomenaly vivid. The pinks and purples at the later stages of sunrise and sunset and the orange during the early parts are beautiful. And what of the intense blue of the sky or the greens, occasional reds and rare blues of the Aurora Australis simply blow the mind. Enjoy the photos.

Pinks and purples at sunrise

The golden light of the sun as it looks over the plateau

Sunset orange on the base of cloud

Colourful buildings of the station

Red granite on a nearby hill

The setting moon at sunset, looking at Reeve's Hill.

Blizzed in at Browning Hut

A great perk of being the Met Tech is that here at Casey station there are a few weather stations out in the field, some as far as 125km away. Later in the year I'll be making a traverse or two to visit the stations at Law Dome and Cape Poinsette, but recently I was at Haupt Nunatak which is located next to the Vanderford Glacier, near Browning Peninsula. These names and places probably don't mean much to you without a map, so here it is:

This is our world. Outside of this map, there be dragons

The weather was rather spectacular on the way out and was forecast to go to shit deteriorate the following afternoon, so I made the executive decision to do the necessary work on the station on the way, rather than drive back from the hut in the morning. Luckily all the instruments were within calibration and no extra work was required as the sun was setting fast and we were getting cold.

Steve the sparkie, Scotty the chef and Gav the mechanic lend a hand

The Hagglunds parked on the hill

Another spectacular sunset

Next morning as we prepared the quads (ATVs) for getting to the sea-ice and drilling into it to check the depth, I took myself to the dunny, which is a completely different experience to the shovel required on Macca. Here, the huts have a little room off to the side with a toilet seat over a bucket lined with garbage bags. Whatever you do, only poo in the bag and bucket, then wipe and cover with talcum powder to reduce the smell. There's a separate drum for piss. Why is it so? Helps with disposing back at station. Anyway, the door handle is a little stuffed on the Browning Hut dunny where it will close, but the plunger on the inside is hanging on a piece of string instead of being installed correctly and allowing the door to be opened easily from the inside. I happened to be happily going about my business when suddenly the door burst open and one of my fellow expeditioners was looking at me aghast and in his haste to close the door allowed the plunger on its string to go flying outside so that when I'd finished... I was locked in. Luckily it didn't take long until I was let out.

Quads are by far one of the best ways to get around, unfortunately the helmet visors fog up quickly, as do our sun glasses and even the anti-fog ski goggles. The problem with the fog is that in sub zero temperatures (we averaged around -20ºC on this trip) it ices up instantly. Anyone got a really small heater?

The sea-ice wasn't thick enough to travel on, so we hopped over to the elephant seal wallow to see the happy seals trying to breath through the ice and get onto land. Poor guys looked really tired from the effort.

A nose in the ice

I think I can

That afternoon the blizzard came in and we became 4 guys stuck in a hut at the end of the Earth, playing cards, eating, drinking a little, snoring, farting, talking absolute rubbish, but most importantly: sleeping. I think we were in the hut for about 36 hours, except for those times we had to dig the snow out of the dunny so that we could do our business.

The blizzard started to dissipate on the second evening, only to build up again later that night

Playing the now favourite card game "Man Bites Dog" where you get points for making up believable newspaper headlines such as "Teen Nurse Weds Dead Urologist"